Start a "gPod" in your area
You've heard of an iPod and a pea pod, but what about a gPod?
The g is short for gardener. A gPod is a group of kitchen gardeners and other garden-variety foodies who get together from time to time, regularly or irregularly, to share information, plants, know-how, their gardening victories and defeats, and delicious, seasonal foods. More than being focused on just themselves, members of a KGI gPod also look for ways of giving something back to their community through their combined knowledge, time, and resources.
In his critically acclaimed book "Bowling Alone", author Robert Putnam writes about how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, and neighbors and how we may reconnect. Kitchen Gardeners International is encouraging its members and supporters to form gPods because we believe that we are better and stronger together than apart. By banding together at the local level, gardeners can help alleviate global problems such as food insecurity, climate change, and tasteless supermarket tomatoes. We can also have more fun!
Efforts to bring about garden-powered community revival are already under way. In the course of the past year, KGI gPods have started forming and their members have worked together to plant new gardens in their communities, behind homes, schools, and churches. They have organized garden tours. They have hosted educational talks. They have helped to raise funds for local kitchen garden projects. They have held tastings and have organized potluck meals made with local ingredients.
As with peas, to start a new gPod, someone has to plant a seed. Why not you?
Below you'll find some resources we're offering to help local organizers start new pods in their areas. Once you have a group of 5 or more people organized, we will help you get your local effort organized by setting up an e-mail list, helping you pick a group name, creating a group logo, etc. Please let us know what additional organizational resources you need and we'll do what we can to help.
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1. How to start a KGI gPod. An inspirational and informational guide to local group organizing by John Walker, founder and lead organizer of Kitchen Gardeners Bluegrass (Kentucky, USA).
2. KGI informational flyer for downloading, printing, and posting in your area. Add your name and contact details on the tear-off tabs so that people know how to reach you.
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Added on: Jul 17, 2007 in
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From the Garden
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Pole bean or out-of-control bean?
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By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, August 2, 2007 in The Washington Post
If pole beans are allowed to get into trouble, they will. Early on, they are like a good baby that sleeps through the night. You poke the conveniently fat seeds into the ground, then let the warmth and easy moisture of late spring nudge forth the young shoots -- big healthy-looking things grouped in tidy circles at the base of their poles or lined up in long rows.
A vine will sometimes seem to hesitate in its upward climb, poised like an acrobat a few feet above the soil as if looking for a trapeze to clutch. That's your cue to guide it gently in the direction of the pole, trellis or fence you have provided for its support. Sometimes a lethargic plant will need to be lifted bodily from the ground and taught to twine. But from then on it's go, go, go.
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June 2007 Newsletter
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To read the full newsletter online, please see: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterjune07.html
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
You are cordially invited to my house on August 26th to celebrate
Kitchen Garden Day. We'll be organizing a walking tour of some
home gardens in my neighborhood, making a stop at the newly-planted
kitchen garden at our local elementary school, and munching on some
delicious food along the way.
Since I'm assuming that some
of you will not be able to make it (for example, those of you from
Argentina, South Africa and Australia!), I thought I'd give you a quick
virtual tour of my June garden through the picture above. I've
left out a few identifying labels (e.g. garden hose, kale, onions,
misplaced toys, etc.) for lack of space , but it gives you a feel for
what's planted. For those of you who are curious, that's not grass
growing in between my beds, but fresh untreated grass clippings that I
put down as a mulch...very soft under summer's bare feet. I've posted a
high resolution picture of my garden
here without the labels if you want to see it in its natural state.
As you can see, it's been a
busy month getting plants and seeds in the ground and quite a few greens
out and into the family salad bowl. It's also been a busy month at
KGI "headquarters". We harvested a bumper crop of public awareness
raising this past month due to an
Associated Press article that featured our efforts to bring about a
kitchen garden revival. The article appeared in over 30 papers
across the US and has attracted a number of energized people to our
effort. Welcome newcomers!
Speaking about reaching out
to new folks, I continue to brainstorm ideas for reaching out to people,
some old, some new. In the new category, I've recently posted a
new short video to youtube,com which hopefully will get people
thinking and, ultimately, eating in a different way. If nothing
else, it's good for a chuckle. Please pass on the link if you find
it worthwhile. We're also adding prizes to our "Grow-Off
Show-Off" competition, too, so be sure to check that out.
Grand prize is $500 and all the international celebrity one gardener can
handle.
For those of you who can't
make it to Scarborough, Maine for our celebration of Kitchen Garden Day,
why not throw a little garden party of your own? That's the best
way I know to grow the number of home-growers: by bringing new people
into kitchen gardens - whether big, small, urban or rural - to
show them the quantity, quality, and diversity of crops a small plot can
produce.
I know this works because I
just recently helped some neighbors who attended our Kitchen Garden Day
party last year plant their first garden. They're delighted
to be eating their first home-grown foods ever. If that's not
cause for celebration, I don't know what is.
Happy summer,
PS: Next month, I'll report
from southern France: ooh la la, good things ahead!
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