The UW Student P-Patch is in the Daily! With the garden in full spring swing, we were featured in The Daily this week. Here's an excerpt (see http://dailyuw.com/2009/5/26/seed-salad/ to read the full article):
Think about where your salad comes from — the crisp bed of greens you find in the dorm cafeteria or conveniently prepackaged at the supermarket. There’s a chance the lettuce hails from Mexico, the tomatoes were plucked in California and the carrots, quite possibly, traveled to your plate all the way from Chile.
Fourteen UW students know precisely the source of their food, and it’s as local as a piece of land bordering Fluke Hall. In an organic garden dubbed a P-Patch, they tend 10 plots of vegetables, fruits and herbs from seed to harvest.
The P-Patch, which is now run by Students Expressing Environmental Dedication (SEED), started last spring as an environmental studies capstone project and is open to all students living in the residence halls. Because students who opt to live in the dorms lack access to a vegetable garden — and therefore the opportunity to grow their own food— the P-Patch is a way to eat fresh, local and organic produce.
The P-Patch has a beautiful, brand new, home made
compost bin!
On Sunday, February 15th, many P-Patch Gardeners, SEED members, and other friends got together to build a three-bin compost system for our yard waste. We used design instructions from The Natural Soil Building Program, and carpentry/composting mentors Dennis Lund and David Wright helped us by providing tools and expertise. More than a dozen people showed up for the work party, which turned out to be a fun, collaborative, educational and inspiring effort. And how satisfying – to see the beautiful, sturdy result of hard work sitting next to our P-Patch Garden! Our yard waste compost is useful for several reasons. We now have a place to put our weeds and other plant material that is removed during the general upkeep of the garden. We will build up the compost pile, turning it every month to loosen and aerate it, and the material will break down, eventually decomposing enough to be mixed back in to our soil. This adds valuable organic matter and nutrients to the soil, improving soil quality and making it possible for our vegetable plots to continue to thrive.
Stay tuned (check the P-Patch calendar or send an email to seedppatch@gmail.com) for work parties to turn the compost bin and learn more about it! Thanks to everyone who helped make the compost bin a success!
We made the front page! Here's a short excerpt:
SEED member Kelly Miller says the project has been a blast. “[We’ve had] garden parties with music and food. So much work has been accomplished,” she said.
The patches are truly a community project, as most gardeners are not even SEED members. The project has drawn together UW students, community members, UW staff and professors, who all have the same goal.
“It’s really cool seeing lots of people come out to help,” said Taylor-Stanley. “It’s been really fun working in this small community and getting to know people."
Read the whole article here.