SUMMER OF '08: BUFFELGRASS, MESQUITE, RAINWATER HARVEST, AND THREE SISTERS GARDENS
Sonoran Kitchen Gardens has been working on the buffelgrass problem. Early in 2008 we convened the Sonoran Eco-design Hub to consider ways of turning buffelgrass into useful products and services after it has been harvested. Our full draft report/proposal will be posted on our new buffelgrass page on this website within a day or two. In essence Sonoran Kitchen Gardens and Sonoran Permaculture Guild are offering to manage fields where we carry out educational/practical projects to convert buffelgrass into businesses. Products include: compost, mulch, packaging material, cards, paper, baskets, boxes, and more.
Please watch the new buffelgrass video and forward it to everyone you know. The video can be viewed at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQtIVzSrqZY
For more information about buffelgrass, visit www.buffelgrass.org.
The Green Grannies started Sonoran Kitchen Gardens in early 2008 to make sure every school in the Sonoran bioregion (southern Arizona and northern Mexico) has a drylands kitchen garden linked into our local food economy. Currently most of our food is imported from an average of 1500 miles away, making our region vulnerable to fuel shortages. We aim to make our region food secure.
Mesquite Crop Harvest Right now--July 2008--a bumper crop of mesquite pods is maturing on the mesquite trees of our region, and the harvest is in full swing. Sonoran Kitchen Gardens' prime mission for the summer is to encourage and educate Sonorans on both sides of the border to harvest, process, and store tons of mesquite pods and mesquite meal. We are also connecting community groups with commercial quantities of mesquite flour to markets, and we have just begin to produce delicious mesquite tortillas in association with Foodworks. See our mesquite page for more information about this important and abundant food crop.
Rainwater Harvesting for DrylandsGardens - Ferro-cement cistern workshop Hoping to harvest monsoon rains and winter rains, increasing numbers of Tucsonans are building cisterns to harvest rainwater. For more information, visit rainwaterharvesting.org. A low cost rainwater harvesting cistern can be built from ferro-cement. If you are interested in attending our next workshop on how to build a ferro-cement rainwater harvesting cistern, call 325-8752.
Three Sisters Gardens Should be Ready by Monsoon Rains The three sisters - corn beans and squash - were the survival foods of the native peoples of Sonora. Visit Native Seeds/SEARCH to learn which seeds grow best in the monsoon rains. By early July, your three sisters garden pits should be dug and filled with good compost, seeds should be in the ground waiting for the rains, and you should have straw ready to cover the soil once the seeds have sprouted.
Our Work We are helping to establish drylands kitchen gardens in schools, places of worship, and urban neighborhoods, linked into a local food system from seed to table. Allied with Native Seed/SEARCH, local chefs, and farmers markets, we promote kids snack gardens in day care centers, elementary and middle schools and high schools. When kids grow their own food, they eat healthy snacks like cherry tomatoes, carrots, snow peas, and cucumbers.
We are helping schools develop kitchen garden curricula, including rainwater harvesting, three sisters gardens (corn, squash and beans), teen snack gardens, composting, green portapotties for large public events, neighborhood food storage, groves of food-producing trees like mesquite and citrus, food related cottage industry incubation, and locavore culture.
Sonoran Kitchen Gardens is part of the growing urban agriculture movement. Here are links to two articles, one about the profound effect of fresh vegetables on a student population, and one about urban agriculture:
Mesquite Crop Harvest