This letter will go out to all gardeners who reserved a plot at Bandi Shaum:
Dear Gardener,
Welcome! Even though spring seems far away, you’re probably already receiving your garden and seed catalogues in the mail and thinking about what you’d like to plant in your garden this year. Meanwhile, we’ve been hard at work getting Bandi Shaum ready for the 2013 planting season. The big news is that we’ve received a grant from The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation (http://www.ftpf.org/), which will provide free fruit and nut trees, fruit bushes, and fruit vines for Bandi Shaum! FTPF is an international organization that plants orchards all over the world, so this is quite a coup for us. We’ll keep you posted, via the blog (https://bandishaum.wordpress.com/), on details concerning this exciting grant.
Also during the off-season, the work on the shed continues; we expect it to be finished by Planting Day. We have nothing new to report on the water line, but the City assures us that it will be in place by growing season.
Just like last year, Grow Pittsburgh will be conducting informational sessions to help us get ready to garden successfully. The first session, “Gardening 101” will be about organic gardening basics, and is open to both current and potential Bandi Shaum gardeners. It will take place on March 18th at 6 pm at Brashear. Keep an eye on the Bandi Shaum blog for information on the other gardening sessions. Grow Pittsburgh will once again be providing us with free flower and vegetable seeds and seedlings on Planting Day, May 18th,starting at 9 a.m. Get there early for the best selection!
On April 13th, join us at the garden for Clean Up Day to help spread the mulch on the pathways and prepare the garden for growing season. This year, we will use the large jersey barrier storage space on the left for composting and the one on the right for mulch storage. No weeds or insect-infested materials should be deposited here. Instead, they should be deposited behind the jersey barriers. Last year, so many people deposited unusable materials in the composting bin (large pieces, weeds, etc.), that we were unable to compost our own materials. Since Bandi Shaum is designed to be self-sustaining, it is important that we each follow the composting guidelines. Learn more at the “Composting Basics” garden session at Brashear on May 6th, 6 pm.
Enclosed with this letter are the Southside Community Garden Guidelines for 2013. The most important change is the new volunteer policy. As you can imagine, it takes a great deal of community effort to bring a community garden into existence and to help it to thrive. The Steering Committee has devoted countless hours to the creation and maintenance of Bandi Shaum. Since this is our last year under the stewardship of Grow Pittsburgh, which has been a huge help to us, we need to move toward becoming self-sustaining. With that in mind, we instituted a new policy: gardeners who do no volunteer for one of the garden jobs listed on the next page will be assigned to a position. So be sure to sign up quickly for the volunteer position of your choice!
Happy Gardening!
