Application Deadline: March 9, 2012 by 5 p.m.

Send Applications to: Rebecca McMahon (rmcmahonATksuDOTedu) or 7001 W 21st St N, Wichita, KS 67205 or by fax to 316-722-1432.

Questions: Call Rebecca at 660-0142.

Awards will be announced by April 1, 2012.

Application Forms:

2012 SCEMG Community Garden Grant (PDF)

2012 SCEMG Community Garden Grant Fillable (PDF)

www.KansasCommunityGardens.org

There are two main features of the website right now that may be of interest to you.

Second, there are 6 videos about community gardening that will be beneficial to folks that are trying to get a garden started. The topics are Why Start One?, Choosing a Site, Different Types, Common Features, Typical Costs, and Sources of Funding.

First, there is an application for a community garden grant. (Yes, I put it second because I wanted you to pay attention to what I said about the videos.) The grant is funded through the Kansas Health Foundation and is being administered through K-State Research & Extension. All the application materials and information is available on the website. Priority will be given to new community gardens, and awards can be up to $5,000 per garden. Up to 20 gardens will be funded each year for 3 years. Application deadline is March 1, 2012. Awards will by announced April 1.

When: January 31st and February 7th, 6-7:30 p.m.

Cost: $5, whether you attend both classes or only one

To Register: http://vegclass.eventbrite.com or call 316-660-0100

Growing vegetables in Kansas can be a challenge, especially for a beginner. A series of two basic vegetable gardening classes will be held on Tuesday, January 31 and Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center Sunflower Room at 21^st and Ridge Rd. in Wichita. Both classes run from 6:00-7:30 p.m.

Cost of the classes is $5, whether you attend both or only one. Register online at http://vegclass.eventbrite.com or call 316-660-0100.

The January 31^st class will cover Intro to Vegetable Gardening.

The February 7^th class will cover Raised Bed Gardening and Extending the Garden Season.

When: Saturday, January 21, 2012, 8:30 am-3:00 pm

Cost: $10 per person, due in advance

To Register: springgardening.eventbrite.com or call Angie at 660-0100

The 9^th annual Spring Gardening Workshop will be held at the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center 4-H Hall at 21^st and Ridge in Wichita on Saturday, January 21st.   From 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. there will be three seminars each hour, running at the same time, for a total of 15 seminars to choose from.  The workshop includes educational topics for the home gardener, focused on landscape and ornamental plants. Look forward to a wealth of gardening information all packed into one day.  See schedule below for classes.

Class size is limited and open to all residents in south central Kansas.

In case of inclement weather, check KSN Channel 3, KAKE Channel 10 or KWCH Channel 12 for cancellation.

Workshop Classes Include:

8:30am-9:00am                       Registration/Sign-in

9:00am-9:50am                       Landscaping

or

Growing & Using Herbs

or

Gardening for Butterflies

10:00am-10:50am                   Landscaping cont.

or

Using Natives & Wildflowers in Your Landscape

or

First Time Gardening

11:00am-11:50am                   Growing Transplants from Seed

or

Easy Care Roses

or

Lawn Renovation/Spring Lawn Care

12:00pm-1:00pm                     Lunch on your own

1:00pm-1:50pm                       Container Plants

or

Shade Gardening

or

Water-wise Gardening (Xeriscaping)

2:00pm-2:50pm                       Growing Perennials

or

Selection & Care of Trees

or

Composting

An excerpt:

What Not to Plant.  Each week, a snarky pair of hosts selects a different homeowner who has no design sense whatsoever.  After forcing her to watch black and white videos of her hideous front garden, the hosts visit her home and tell her why all of her plant selections are god-awful.  Even if the homeowner protests (“But my grandmother planted those camellias!”) the merciless hosts whack each plant down one by one with a machete and toss them into a wheelbarrow.  But it’s all really funny because the hosts are super stylish and witty.

1. Have raised beds to plant in – hopefully early enough in the season to be reasonable!

2. Post more vegetable and herb recipes on the blog again. Last year I got away from posting many recipes (probably because there weren’t a lot of vegetables for a chunk of the summer). I’m planning to feature more yummy veggie recipes on the blog.

3. Grow some good tomatoes. Okay, this is probably more dependent on the weather than anything I can do.

4. Do a better job of staying on top of insect and disease problems as they occur – both for blogging purposes and enacting solutions.

5. Do more vertical gardening. We had a pretty successful year with the trellises, and I hope we’re going to try some new things again this year.

6. Think about water conservation – and maybe do something about it too. While conditions aren’t as dry as they were in the fall, we are still in a drought without many signs of it letting up. As we get a new irrigation system in place, I hope we can make it as efficient as possible. Many vegetables have a better flavor with a little bit of deficit irrigation (getting a bit less water than they strictly need), so maybe we can practice a bit more tough love.

7. Get a rain barrel. We’ve been talking about getting a rain barrel put in the Quiet Garden area, and maybe we’ll get that done as part of the renovation. We wouldn’t be using it for the vegetables, but it could be used for flowers and containers.

8. Explore Italian vegetables. Maybe this will happen this year or maybe next year. I have been salivating over the new Seeds from Italy catalog, and dreaming up ways to make fennel, radicchio, cardoon, and other fun things grow in Kansas.

What are you garden plans for the new year?

The tracks are from several weeks ago, when we were working to remove the remaining concrete from the wheelchair garden area. There had been a little bit of rain a few days before, and the bobcat left these ruts. Ugh. Since then, they haven’t drained. Granted, a lot of this water is from yesterday and today. Still…it isn’t even pretending to drain. It’s just sitting there.

The first part of our garden renovation is going to be putting in drain tiles that will help move water away from the garden, especially through our lovely, sticky clay, compacted construction pad. When our building was originally built, this area was compacted like the foundation area. Then a little topsoil was added and proclaimed “ready to garden.” Yeah, not so much. These conditions are why we have always used raised beds and worked hard to develop a high organic matter loam soil in those beds. Even with the added drainage, these conditions are also why we will always use raised beds in our Demonstration Garden and also why we recommend that almost all home gardeners in this area also use raised beds.

Many parts of Sedgwick County naturally have a very heavy clay soil like is below our demonstration garden. If you can dig a hole in your garden or yard and fill it with water, and it takes more than 24 hours to drain, you absolutely need either a different location or a raised bed or berm to make your garden successful.

Why does it matter? Isn’t it just water that the plants can use? Actually, it matters a lot. Plant roots need oxygen as much as we do, and if the soil is full of water, there is no space for air! Water can smother the roots of the plants and increase the ability of some problematic diseases to move around in the soil and infect plants.

It might seem ironic to be talking about drainage as a problem after such a dry year. But if your soil is compacted and poorly drained, even a dry summer doesn’t protect you from problems. If anything, it makes it worse because your soil is either soggy or rock hard.

Improving soil drainage and structure. The reason we recommend raised beds so often is that they are a relatively quick solution to a problem that might otherwise take many years to fix. The way to actually improve your soil as it is will vary with the exact problems, but it would include a combination of deep tine aeration/ripping, incorporating organic matter by the ton, and probably planting some deep rooted cover crops like winter radishes that can break up the soil over several years (and incorporating them for more organic matter). Even then, you will still have a heavy, clay soil, albeit with better organic matter and drainage. Given all that work, raised beds seem like a good choice, don’t they?

I think tomatoes could be a hit as Christmas decorations/gifts if they find that they can be consistently and cheaply grown at this time of year. The real challenge with tomatoes in the winter is that they need lots of light and warmer temperatures. (So maybe not all that different from poinsettias, when you get right down to it.) I’m sure they would take less time on the bench in the greenhouse to reach fruiting stage.

Tomatoes – coming to the holiday store near you!