Our first Virtual Monthly Education Meeting!
Backyard Permaculture: Regenerative design for food and herbal medicine production
April 21, 7 to 8:30 pm Via Zoom.
Click here to view their presentation.
Program
7:00-7:10 People get oriented on Zoom
7:10-8:00 Presentation
8:00-8:30 We answer questions from the audience (and of course folks can sign off at 8 if the are feeling complete)
We will introduce Permaculture, and then dive deeper into applying Permaculture principles into regenerative backyard design and local food production. We hope to inspire a dialogue about these topics in the context of COVID-19 and the climate crisis. We will cover topics such as veggies beds, water (re)use, fruit trees, chickens, backyard herbal medicines and more! The Backyard Permaculture Guild is a select group of Permaculture experts that collaborate to design, implement, and maintain permaculture inspired backyards.
Professional bios
Nina Gordon-Kirsch believes that building community around shared local resources and tending to the earth are some of the most effective tools for climate resiliency. She earned her Permaculture Design Certificate at Occidental Arts and Ecology center, after which she envisioned the Backyard Permaculture Guild (BPG)! Nina is the BPG water woman – installing Laundry-to-Landscape (L2L) greywater systems and envisioning rainwater catchment designs. She apprenticed with Greywater Action in Oakland for 3 years before becoming trained as a CA Professional Greywater Installer. When not installing greywater systems, she spends her time educating folks on where their water comes from and how to restore human relationships with the land, waters, and other humans. Moving forward, she’ll be following the call of the Waters and backpacking her way from Oakland to the Headwaters of the Mokelumne River, where EBMUD sources our East Bay tap water from. Sign up here to follow her journey!
Helen Cowart grew up on a Christmas tree farm in central Vermont and has been chopping firewood and pruning trees since she was a kid. After graduating with a BA in Environmental Studies from Vassar College she found herself continually wanting to be working hard in the dirt outdoors (not in an office!). She worked on small, organic, vegetable and flower farms for several years and then founded a few farm projects. Finding herself drawn to the synthesis of design aesthetics and outdoor work with plants she founded Solscape Ecological Design in 2015. Helen has been designing and tending native plant gardens, veggie gardens, pruning fruit trees ever since. She joined the Backyard Permaculture Guild in 2019 to share knowledge and inspiration with a group of like-minded earth tenders. She is also studying forestry and land management and has a passion for returning healthy fire to local landscapes. In her spare time Helen is a primitive skills enthusiast, mythologist and artist.
Alejandra Vargas-Johnson (Ale) completed her permaculture design course in Chile in 2010. She lived in Brazil between 2014-2018 where she helped organize agroecological events for rural, working class communities. She currently works for a non-profit health care reform think-tank and gardens in Alameda and Oakland with Nina and her mom Holly Johnson, ABG Board Member.
Container Gardening with Natives
with Jeff Bridge, General Manager of Ploughshares Nursery
Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 to 7:30 pm (note change in time)
Via Zoom. To attend, register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/container-gardening-with-natives-a-virtual-meeting-with-jeff-bridge-tickets-104498225004
Once you register, you’ll be emailed the Zoom link and instructions. Limited to 100 participants.
Live from Ploughshares Nursery, Jeff Bridge will discuss what various native plants need when in a container and their role in the environment. He’ll demonstrate how fun and attractive native plants in containers can be.
Alameda Backyard Growers invites you to attend a
Self-guided Tour of Italo’s Garden
Tuesday, June 23 2020
Italo’s Garden (ABGC)1900 3rd Street, Alameda, CA, 94501
6:30-7:15pm 20 people/tickets
7:15-8:00pm 20 people/tickets
More information on the ABGC Garden
In 2012 the Alameda Boys & Girls Club had a vision to transform a neighboring ¼ acre urban lot into a thriving healthy foods and habitat garden that would support the nutritional health and develop the ecological literacy of Club youth. In summer of 2013 the Club hired its first Seed to Table Director, Kristen Getler. Italo Calpestri, together with other Board Members and ABGC staff, began fundraising and reaching out to community partners like GoDaddy to enlist in help with projects such as building and filling the raised beds. His background as an architect and experience on the board was instrumental to the garden’s successful and accessible installation. A keystone of the Club’s Health and Wellness Initiative, the garden provides a living, outdoor classroom where youth steward the garden using organic practices to grow annual and perennial food crops. A complementary culinary education program teaches our youth how to prepare the garden-fresh produce into healthy-foods recipes they are able to share with their families. Current Seed to Table Director Gretchen Doering took over in March 2015 and continued the installation of fifteen additional planter beds, a bioswale, greenhouse and outdoor classroom. The garden continues to grow with support from local Eagle Scout projects, the Alameda Garden Club, Alameda Backyard Growers, invaluable volunteers, and other generous donors.
Click here for a downloadable map of the garden tour.
Click here for the downloadable Alameda Boys & Girls Club – Italo’s Garden Master Plant Descriptions
Click here for a downloadable list of plants in Italo’s Garden.
Eric Kos and Italo Calpestri look on while Marla Koss and Gretchen Doering teach kids how to plant a fig tree.
Join us Tuesday, August 18 at 7:00 pm for a virtual potluck on Zoom in the comfort of your own home. This August ABG meeting will be a “Garden Show/Tell and Ask” where we all get to relax, enjoy our own snacks and compare notes with friends.
If you wish, please email us a photo by August 16 of one of your garden successes or challenges that you’d like to talk about. Send it to abg.grow.food@gmail.com.
Then, during the meeting we’ll invite you to share a gardening story, a photo, ask some gardening questions and enjoy visiting with fellow Alameda backyard gardeners.
Our next virtual meeting is: Alameda: An Agricultural History, with Eric J. Kos on September 15 at 7:00 pm. We asked Eric to put together a presentation for us about Alameda’s original settlers’ primary occupation: agriculture. It promises to be full of intriguing photos, informative glimpses into our food-growing past and really entertaining narrative. Join us!
Our speaker: Eric J. Kos, owner of the Alameda Sun newspaper for the past two decades, has collected a vast amount of historical Island City images and information to share with the public. Eric has written, helped publish or contributed to countless publishing efforts, most notably, San Francisco Then & Now and locally Bay Farm Island: A Hidden History of Alameda.
Registration is required, and the audience is limited to 100. Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqcuuqrjkpG9Ky282kIjKrCAAOweCazFMN . After registering, you’ll receive your individual link for the meeting.
The Fernside neighborhood was once the Fernside Estate owned by one very notable family.
One of Alameda’s many monikers included “The Dahlia City” for a time.
Thank you to those who joined us on Tuesday, October 20 at 7:00 p.m. on Zoom for our presentation: Carbon Farming for Home Gardeners, with Trevor Probert of StopWaste.
Trevor explained how home gardeners can make use of carbon farming practices to build healthy soil and protect the health of the climate. He will share lessons learned from local urban farms, resources for residents to make sense of soil health and carbon farming at home, and tips for how residents can support carbon farming in their cities.
Trevor Probert is an outreach coordinator for composting and carbon farming at StopWaste. He manages StopWaste’s partnerships with urban farms and tests their soil to measure carbon sequestration and soil health. He is a garden educator, a home gardener, and a resident of Alameda.
Click here for a link to Trevor’s presentation (PDF) which includes his speaker’s notes.
Here’s a link to information from StopWaste on building healthy soil.
Or view the presentation below:
Please join us for a presentation on
‘The Politics of Food and Agriculture‘
with Twilight Greenaway
Thursday, December 3 at 7:00 pm
Register by clicking here.
Please bring your questions on food systems, organics, climate and food, agricultural labor and technology, food safety and seafood.
Twilight Greenaway is a writer and editor focused on food and agriculture, and the senior editor of Civil Eats. Her work has appeared in a number of media outlets including the New York Times, The Salt (NPR’s food blog), the Guardian, Food & Wine, Slate, Mother Jones, Eater, and on Grist.org, where she served as food editor. She lives in Oakland.
Happy New Gardening Year!
January 19 at 7:00 pm on Zoom
Meeting Details:
Thinking about starting a garden for the first time or just want to see some friendly faces? Please join Alameda Backyard Growers for Happy New Gardening Year. In this hour-long Zoom meeting we will talk about how to prepare for the new gardening year.
We will discuss some of our favorite tools as well as how to clean, store, and sharpen them. Wondering when to prune fruit trees? We’ll tell you. Wondering how to take care of your most important asset – your soil – in January? We’ll discuss that too. Whether you’re a new gardener or a seasoned expert, there will be something for everyone in this meeting.
Please pre-submit any gardening questions to info@alamedabackyardgrowers.org prior to January 15.
Speakers: ABG Board Members Alison Limoges, Marla Koss, Birgitt Evans, and Kristen Smeal
To register in advance for this meeting click here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You will also receive a follow-up email closer to the event.
with Birgitt Evans
Starting vegetables from seed can save money and will give you access to thousands of vegetable varieties not available as transplants. And with three Free Seed Libraries in Alameda in 2021, you are going to want to know how to care for your seeds. This year’s class has – of course – gone virtual, but with a twist. Birgitt will alternate an online talk with two “how to” videos that will walk you through the process of starting seeds as well as growing and transplanting seedlings. After the videos, she will answer questions.
We will cover which seeds are best planted directly in the ground and how and when to start them. We will move on to seeds that are best started indoors and how to plant them. The discussion and videos will address the importance of cleanliness, seed starting mixes, which containers you can use, how many seeds to plant and how deeply, seed viability and hybrid vs. open pollinated seeds, watering, fertilizing, providing light and heat for your seedlings and hardening off seedlings before transplanting them out into the garden.
About the Speaker: Birgitt Evans has grown her own food on a large scale for the past 30 years and created a successful garden and nursery business. She is passionate about growing and raising food and seeks to encourage and educate others so they can also share the benefits of fresh, healthy, homegrown food. She grows vegetables in four different Alameda County gardens and starts 90% of her plants from seed. She has been an Alameda County Master Gardener since 1999 and was on the advisory board for 14 years, including three terms as president. She has served on the board of Alameda Backyard Growers since its inception and is currently the Treasurer.
Thank you to everyone who attended the meeting! Following are some takeaways that you will hopefully find useful.
Questions from the Meeting:
- What type of seed starter mix should I use?
You can use a homemade seed starter mix by using this recipe: 2 parts cocoa coir or peat moss + 1 part vermiculite or perlite You may check the local nurseries for a sterile seed starting mix. Make sure to hydrate it before planting. You’ll want the soil to stick together when you squeeze it, but not be soaking. - What types of seeds should I soak before planting?
You may soak bigger seeds, like peas, but do not soak them overnight as that will restrict the oxygen flow to the embryo and lessen the chance of germination. - How do I keep slugs away from my seedlings?
You may use an iron phosphate slug bait like Sluggo. Check here for more tips on keeping snails and slugs away. - How do I read a fertilizer container?
See Birgitt’s January talk (video, minute 43:10).
Check out these videos on our ABG Video Resources page:
- Growing Cool Weather Crops
- Seed Starting 101
Also, please read these seed starting articles for additional information:
- Growing Vegetables from Seed by Birgitt Evans
- Growing Vegetables and Herbs from Seed by Birgitt Evans
- Growing Seeds Outside by Linda Carloni
- Growing Vegetables from Seed in April by Birgitt Evans
Francis Mendoza with Carla Muñoz, Tribal Chairwoman of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe)
with Francis Mendoza
Naturalist, interpreter and environmental educator, Francis Mendoza will talk to us about the history of the Chochenyo land that we inhabit. He will also focus on horticultural and medicinal ways Ohlone peoples use to take from and give back to the land.
The Indigenous peoples of the area now known as the Oakland Bay Area have talked story, lived sustainably and protected their land from invaders since time immemorial. As we acknowledge the land we live on, it’s also increasingly necessary to learn the true history of invasion, subjugation and trauma that native peoples have endured and continue to endure to this day. Through discussion and demonstration, Naturalist Francis Mendoza will present a holistic view of native people in the bay, one based on culture, language, food and land management. He will focus on TEK or Traditional Ecological Knowledge having come from the Philippines, where traditional Indigenous knowledge is also valued and shares a similar history of colonization by first, Spanish Colonizers, and later, American Imperialism.
Francis Mendoza (he/hey/sila) is a naturalist, environmental educator and JEDAI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusion) Consultant with more than thirty years experience serving marginalized communities at the intersection of race, gender, culture and nature. He is the JEDAI Section Director for NAI (National Association for Interpretation) and a Certified Interpretive Guide and California Naturalist. He can be reached on Instagram as @roving_ranger.
Here is a list of resources provided by Francis Mendoza:
- Ohlone Curriculum with Bay Miwok Content and Introduciton to Delta Yokuts by Dr. Berverly Ortiz, EBRPD, download at www.ebparks.org, 2015
- Native Peoples of the East Bay by Dr. Beverly Ortiz et al., EBRPD
- Bad Indians by Deborah Miranda, Heyday Books, 2012
- An American Genocide by Benjamin Madley, Yale University Press, 2016
- The Ohlone Past and Present: Native Americans of the San Francisco Bay Region, compiled and edited by Lowell John Bean, Ballena Press Anthropological Papers; No. 42, 1994
- Tending the Wild, by M. Kat Anderson, University of California Press, 2013
- Indian Summer: Traditional Life Among the Chiomumne Indians of California’s San Joaquin Valley by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, California Historical Sociaety, 1993
- The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories and Songs, eidted and with commentary by Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books, 1992
- The Ohlone Way by Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books, 1978