Monday, September 1, 2008

[OG-ComAd06]COMMUNITY GARDENS – TEAMING UP TOGETHER – WHAT TO DO & HOW?

COMMUNITY GARDENS – TEAMING UP TOGETHER – WHAT TO DO & HOW? [OG-ComAd06 - V101-080921]

This is the ad version of
http://optimalgardens.blogspot.com/2008/08/community-teaming-up-together-what-can.html It is followed by the model of a standard reply you can use when local people inquire about what can be done. You are licensed to use this reply as well, under the same conditions as all the other material made available on this website.


COMMUNITY GARDENS – TEAMING UP TOGETHER – WHAT TO DO & HOW? (Where you are!)
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Reply to: sale-820055094@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-08-30, 1:54PM PDT


COMMUNITY GARDENS – TEAMING UP TOGETHER

WHAT CAN YOU DO, and HOW?


There are more and more people sensitized to the issues of how most of our illnesses and particularly almost all “modern” degenerative diseases are related to the way we eat. So directly related, in fact, that it is safe to say that one is a function of the other.

However, in the fragmented, hectic and mostly senseless way most of us think we have to live, time, and of course money, can often be an impediment. But it is age old wisdom that Union Begets Strength.

So why don't you consider teaming up with others? Start or join some grass root informal group of people aware of the issues, and wanting to do something about it, such as to start to eat right!

Teaming up to buy wholesale basic staples such as organic grains and pulses, flax seed, quinoa, cocoa beans, etc, can be surprisingly cost effective. This is truly nothing to be surprised at, when you consider that a package of what your local supermarket calls “bread” actually contains something like 4 cents of wheat and 2 cents of sugar. Some wonder how anyone can actually *eat* such a thing that more conscious people would actually be reluctant to feed to animals, but that is another issue altogether.

Buying co-operatively is a good way to start, but in the end, the real way to go is to have your own vegetable garden or “potager”, and to rely heavily on it for food.

There are many ways to achieve that goal, from Community Supported Agriculture endeavors, to of course the king of it all, creating and maintaining your own garden: 96 or 128 square feet, that is, three or four 4' x 8' (125 x 250 cms), intensively gardened, can feed a person for as long as the garden is productive. Which can be all year long in places such as Southern California and Florida, or even most everywhere if greenhouses and hothouses are made part of your dwelling.


If you don't have any surface available that could be turned into a garden (even a rooftop or a parking lot), then, team up with someone who has land! Or see if you can't get access to space set aside by the city or some specialized non-profit for local community gardens. Or try to find unused city lots. Or even, why not, consider “guerilla gardening” on public lands!

And if, for lack of time or inclination, you don't want to do the work to create a garden yourself, there are solutions too: Simply find up someone who will do it for you! This could be for money, or perhaps for some other consideration in some form of barter exchange. For example, some people are willing to create and maintain a garden in exchange for that unused spare room or in-law quarters you may have, as long as they get their share of the garden's production. And this is not just theory -- we know of several such people. Just be creative in your approaches. The only thing that counts is the result: A productive garden, and you eating more and more foods that are produced organically and sustainably in your own backgrad, literally or figuratively.

Another way to go is simply buy a Ready-Made Garden. [For the entrepreneurially-minded, there is huge business potential here. In fact, some of our members with the specialized knowledge are looking at the issue of perhaps patenting and licensing a whole existing methodology for the creation and marketing of Ready-Made Gardens. This actually includes gardening robotics approaches, at the cutting edge of the second oldest profession of the world, food growing, and of dot-com information processing and robotics. But this can also be done in the simplest ways, with no more tools than a pair of gloves, a hammer and nails, and a shovel. If you are interested by this entrepreneurial aspect, please contact us, and we will forward your inquiry.]


But in truth, why not do it yourself? Gardening is so simple, once you understand the basics: Soil is the primary key, light, water, air, temperature and location the other ones. It's as simple as that. To the contrary of what most people believe, the soil, even if it is the most fundamental consideration of all, being that air and light are a given, and that everyone understand that plants need some water to grow, contributes usually less than 10% to the weight of the harvested plant material, and often, less than 5%. The rest comes from water and the air, in the endless natural combinations of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen that constitute the foods that nourish us.


The only time when you really need expert input or advice is when establishing a new garden. If that part is done right, maintaining it is little work. Again, IF that part is done right... Otherwise, things might turn very differently! Just ask traditional Sunday gardeners about weeding...

So, why not team up locally? Pool knowledge together! Create crews that will install gardens on a rotational basis: It is a fact that if 10 people each pledge 10 hours to set up ten or more 4' x 8' raised beds, and do this as teams of 4 or 5, they will get 2 times and often 3-4 times more accomplished than if one person puts 10 hours of his own in his or her own project.


Feel free to use all the material on optimalgardens.blogspot.com to start your own local grass-roots movement. However, remember – do not modify it in anyway, particularly, do not alter the copyright notices that are also licenses to you and anyone else who so wishes to do so to use this material lawfully, and the “permalink” address of this page, which allows people to find the original material, so they can use it non-commercially as they see fit. Modified material is no more licensed, and thus, a copyright violation.

The easiest is for you to start your own local community blog, it's free on Blogger, Wordpress, etc. Create your own material addressing your own local issue (group forming, teaming-up for a buying co-op or to create a garden, etc), and for the rest, just link to the pages on the present blog and website, or reproduce them as is.

See more at :
http://optimalgardens.blogspot.com/
For more information, please email us with your questions!

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Typical Reply to a "Community Ad” inquiry" received in answer to an ad such as the one above:

Hello,

Thanks for answering our recent ad. We are trying to team up together locally so to help each other with gardening, gardening projects, access to land, sharing knowledge and how to, as well as organic seeds and plants, etc.

First, in any event, when it comes to why we should all “eat right” and how to garden your way to sustainable health, we'd advise you to begin with looking at the material which can be found at:
http://optimalgardens.blogspot.com/

More of it is constantly added, sometimes on a daily basis. This right now has been done in the form of a blog. At some time and as soon as possible, this material will be transformed into a portal / CMS (Content Management System), as soon as we can, making things easier to find. You will find a list of the currently available material at the end of this email.


Second, the Optimal Gardens Trust, the not-for-profit group which makes this material available to us, is still in the process of trying to devise a computerized system allowing people to team up locally for gardening and sharing gardens and their production without having to start their own local community effort. But for now, we have to do this manually, and we will also try to use a Google Group for it soon.

If you are in Southern California, feel free to send them a nickname or “handle', a ZIP code and a short description of what you'd be interested in. One of the approaches they consider would be to publish General Listing Ads, listing what people are looking for and where. If you wish to be in one of the tentative first issues, just send a nickname or handle of your choice, maybe a gender and age or age range (like, for example, 34 or 30's), and a short description of what you are looking for. They will forward tio you any contact information they might get. Their email is SENDTOoptimalgarden@gmail.com [Delete the words SENDTO from the address before sending your mail – this is an anti-spam measure.]

[If applicable] We are trying to emulate their effort locally here in ... If you are interested in joining us, please email us at [create a specialized email for this on gmail at www.gmail.com] This "matchmaking" function might be computerized in the future, if there is enough interest for it.

As a general information, please note that, in fact, 96 to 128 square feet, that is, three or four 4' x 8' raised beds, are definitely enough to produce vegetables for one person all year long in coastal Southern California, AS LONG AS everything has been prepared optimally, and receives adequate watering and a minimum of attention.

In other climate zones, yearlong production can obviously only be done in greenhouses or hothouses. These can sometimes be installed at relatively low costs, if one has access to surplus glass (usually tempered glass panels that can not be recut, and are often available for free if one looks for them).

These gardens can be created on your own, if you study and follow the material optimalgardens.blogspot.com is in the process of publishing on "How To" issues, or find an experienced local gardener ready to give you directions and tips..

Another approach is to have someone experienced do it for you for a consideration or in some sort of barter arrangement. This, depending on factors such as: 1/ Where you are. 2/ The materials you'd wish to use. 3/ How many 32 sqFt units you'd want 4/ How simply or thoroughly you'd want the things done. 5/ How much (if any) of the work to prepare the area you can or are willing to do yourself. 6/ For bigger or on-going projects, if you can host the people who are going to be doing it for you or not. 7/ Etc, etc. Depending on all these factors, this could cost you from a few hundreds to a few thousands. If you are local to Southern California, optimalgardens.blogspot.com can put you in contact with trusted and experienced people. And some of their people are currently looking at the issue of creating "Ready-Made Gardens" as a business venture.

[If applicable] If you are local to ..., we can do the same (assuming you can) or (we can try to team up to ...) [State what you can do, or try to do.]

If there is nothing going on locally for you yet, another solution you might consider is for you to start your own informal group. For this, just copy relevant ads you can find the models for on http://optimalgardens.blogspot.com/ under the heading "ComAd" (from ComAd01 to ComAd??) and publish them yourself on local free classified sites such as craigslist.com or kijiji.com. Or any similar services you might find offered locally.

Another solution which might or might not be applicable to you is that optimalgardens.blogspot.com and the allied non-profit groups working with them, such as Earthday L.A., FROSANE, etc, offer to try to matchmake people for crop-sharing gardening or agricultural deals based on barter.

In such cases, usually, someone from one of these non-profits will be creating and maintaining a garden or an organic sustainable agricultural facility (farm, etc) on your property on an on-going basis in a barter exchange (room and part of the garden or farm production in exchange for their gardening or farming work). This is simply a variation of age-old “crop sharing” agreements. They can and have done such "matchmaking" successfully in the past.

In practice, all depends on how much land and water you have available, , what you want to achieve, what quarters you can offer, for how long, etc. Ideally, for gardening projects, quarters would be independent in-law quarters or a guesthouse, but even just a spare room or even a converted garage might often do.

Feel free to ask optimalgardens.blogspot.com [and, if applicable] or us] any practical questions, and we will try our best to answer them. Actually, a "Frequently Asked Question" file is in the process of being created out of these answers, and will later be made widely available.

I hope this was of help,

X
Local Project Coordinator


Of course, depending on what you want to achieve, and how much time and energy you are willing to put in a local coordination project, you might want to create your own material locally with the help of the people who share your interest in eating right and gardening one's way to sustainable health. Good luck!

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