NE Organic Farming Association Winter Conference at PU this weekend

Cultivating Change: Growing the Organic Food Movement

Princeton University - Friend Center, Princeton, NJ

Saturday & Sunday, January 28 - 29, 2012

Sorry for the short notice, but I just found out about this myself. This weekend's Northeast Organic Farming Association's winter conference may be of interest to gardeners. I have heard that admission is free for PU students, although I don't see that corroborated on the website anywhere. The program looks like there will be some very cool sessions.

Garden Sign-ups are complete!

Welcome, new Butler Organic Gardeners! We have been able to assign plots to everyone who requested one- please see the updated map, above. You will be receiving an email soon about garden rules, plot fees, posting to the blog, and so on. The returning gardeners voted against having the University come plow this year, so you're welcome to start digging in the dirt as soon as the weather warms up (or even earlier, if you're very hardy).

The last remaining plot, 19b, flooded quite badly last year. We believe the problem with the pump is resolved, but, just in case, we chose to assign it last. If you have any intrepid friends who would like to take a chance on gardening there, let us know. We usually get some late inquiries from new students, so it will probably be taken over at some point.

Watch your inbox for an email from Khirika soon, and, again, welcome!

2012 Garden Sign-up for prospective gardeners

Prospective Butler Organic Gardeners!

New plot sign up will take place on this blog on Friday, 1/20, at 8 am. A blog post with an embedded form will go live at that time.

We will ask for your name, contact information, and plot size and location preference. Plots will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, and we routinely "sell out" of spaces, so set an alarm clock. Gardeners who are not granted a plot will be placed on the waiting list for plots that become available during the season.

Garden dues ($10 for a half plot, $20 for a full plot) will be collected in the next month. This money goes to buy and maintain garden tools and equipment. If you have any questions, please contact one of the garden coordinators.

Renewing Your Plot

Hello Gardeners,

Check your e-mail to renew your plot for the 2012 gardening season. Please get these filled out and submitted as soon as you can so that we can then open available plots for new gardeners. For those of you waiting to see if you can get a garden plot for 2012, sign ups will begin at 8:00am on January 20th. Check back here on the blog for more information (plots available, where to sign up) in the coming days.

Look forward to gardening with all of you this year.

Khirika

Ready for Winter...?

The large Mantis composter has been fixed and is ready for use again! While swapping out parts, we found a few things that just don't seem to break down well... spoons and knives, for example. Plastic bags, even "compostable" ones, also don't compost in our non-industrial system. Please refrain from trying to compost bags and/or flatware in the future.

We also removed and drained the hoses to store for winter and raked up a bunch of leaves for the "dry material" bin.

Think about spending one of these short, gorgeous fall days cleaning up your plot for next season, maybe even planting some fall crops.

Photo from flickr user "life is good (pete)."

Large Composter is Broken

The 2-sided tumbler composter (brown) is broken. Please do not add any food scraps to this composter, as the handle has broken off and it can not presently be turned. It's okay to use the smaller "Tumbleweed" (green) while we deal with this problem. We are, as usual, short on dry material, but fallen leaves make GREAT dry material, so if you add a few handfuls of those with your vegetable scraps that works really well.

Fall has arrived

Gardeners, it's decorative gourd season!
You might enjoy this article from today's New York Times about competitive pumpkin growing. Locally, Terhune Orchards has pick-your-own apples and pumpkins well into the fall. The Butler Garden is still going strong; I've noticed some of you are planting fall greens, etc, for the cooler weather. We'll organize a "garden clean-up" event to pull out cages and pre-winterize when it gets a little closer to the end of the season.