Community Growth

by the Summer of Service P-Patch Team 

This is a video of our interview with Dave from Canopy Climber in Seattle, WA. He showed our group how to climb trees with harnesses and ropes!

Tree climbers!

So we have been lax about updating, but here’s what happened: Nate Moxley, coordinator for Seattle’s P-Patch program as well as a mentor at Ground Up Organics, suggested that we walk around and interview the people living at Yesler Terrace about their gardens. We all thought this was such a good idea, we decided to expand it into our summer service project. We had to choose something to finish up our time together, and a mini-documentary about urban gardening seemed to fit right into our group’s theme! So we’ve been dropping in and interviewing people all over Seattle about urban gardening and urban farming. We talked with several people at Yesler Terrace, and we discovered that most of the really phenomenal vegetable gardens were being grown by Vietnamese families and so were unable to participate in the interview due to language barriers which was too bad. We kept wishing we had a translator because their gardens were so beautiful. 

We have also interviewed a Garden Steward with Seattle Tilth, an urban farmer with City Grown, the head of Tilth’s Just Garden Project, the head of the Produce Department at Madison Market, Jake with Stone Soup Gardens, members of Ground Up Organics, and some people we just happened to find working in their yards around the city! We’ll be posting the video later this week. The kids are hard at work editing it down and making it look awesome.

This week we are working at Yesler Terrace, a p-patch located in the Central District off Broadway and Yesler. 

We weeded the pathways and area around the picnic table. This is Chaja weeding beforrrrre…..

And after!

Michael and Ariel after most of the weeds have magically disappeared.

Neinie, Katie, and Ben weeding. 

Another after photo showcasing everyone’s fantastic gardening skills.

Ariel typically wears her heart on her sleeve. Ba-dum-dum.

Okay, one of me. I was avoiding it. We joke a lot about how everyone in Seattle says, “Oh, it’s going to burn off.” in reference to the clouds. It didn’t burn off yesterday.

Today, we went around to the houses in Yesler Terrace interviewing families about their relationship to gardening and growing food. We plan to turn our video footage into a mini-documentary about gardening. The majority of the families in this area that seemed to have vegetables growing in their gardens did not speak enough English for us to speak with them extensively about gardening unfortunately. We did get to interview a few people though. One woman only grows flowers, but she seemed really happy to talk with us anyway and discuss why she gardens. She ended up giving our group three flats of petunias she had extra and didn’t know what to do with. We had met a woman earlier in the day who loved gardening but could no longer do so due to her health. Our plan is to go over tomorrow morning and plant the petunias for her. Everyone seemed excited about doing this for her!

And now for a few photos from the Barton P-Patch that never got posted but are so cute.

Marianne let the girls help her harvest beets.

I told them I would use this as inspiration for my wedding bouquet. So much more practical AND delicious!

Today we were at a beautiful p-patch in Beacon Hill. Our task was to remove weeds and other invasive plants like morning glory from the pathways and common areas. Once they were all removed, we put down fresh mulch. Unfortunately, we were unable to take a lot of pictures today.  

We spent another wonderful day at the Barton P-Patch on Tuesday. 

Ariel: Today we dug holes and tunnels and did the same thing as yesterday, which was covering beds in the garden for others to plant things in. We also helped Maryann compose the greens and cut them up. I will miss this Barton P-Patch. Thank you for including us. 

Here is Maryann telling us more about composting.

Erwin: Today was fun. We dug a huge tunnel and Ben tore it down and it was fun. 

Chaja: We worked really hard moving dirt to the different gardens. We also worked on harvesting potatoes, beats, and green beans. I think that harvesting the potatoes was the most fun. I also got to come home with a bag of veggies which was really amazing. We also worked on deciding our service project, but we still need to work some more on it. 

This is our friend, James. He is an intern with the P-Patch program and has been helping us out every day. We are so thankful to have him! 

The P-Patch team after a great day of work!

We started off our week at Barton P-Patch in West Seattle. It is fairly new, but members of the community have been working hard to make it a beautiful garden. This p-patch is designed like a spider’s web with a tree and their very own spider in the center.

Here is our site leader, Kate, standing next to the spider.

Our task for the day was to move this giant pile of soil to different parts of the garden in order to fill all of the empty beds.

It was a very large pile, but we weren’t intimidated! Ariel stands at the top as Ben races to climb the mound. 

We moved a lot of soil today. Here is Erwin looking like a professional. 

Michael, Elias, and Ben working hard. 

We also created some pretty amazing tunnels as we were moving the soil.

This is what the garden looked like at the end of the day. Now a lot more people are able to use this p-patch. 

Today we learned a lot about teamwork. It would have taken one or two people a very long time to move that large pile of soil, but together as a team we were able to move that entire pile in one day.

We will be spending Tuesday at the Barton P-Patch as well. 

Our site for the last two days was the Mad P P-Patch in Madison Valley. Liz was our site supervisor. 

This is Liz!

Our tasks were to clear invasive species such as blackberries, morning glory, buttercup, and english ivy. 

Before:

Middle: (that’s Laura posing)

After:

We then covered the areas we cleared with burlap sacks to help keep the weeds down.

Another task we accomplished was planting cucumber plants in one of the beds we weeded. We learned how to dig the hole for the plant, add fertilizer to the soil, add seed starting mix to the soil, and water the plant in. They use organic fish fertilizer instead of chemical-based fertilizers which helps keep the soil and our bodies chemical free.

Today we helped Liz weed the front boxes of the p-patch. We pulled up grass, morning glory, and buttercups. 

We also found a lot of snails. I know they’re bad for gardens because of their voracious vegetable appetites, but I think they are so cute. I have a hard time killing them. Ariel is holding this one. She helped me quarantine them.

Chaja wedding away.

Laura, Elias, and Ben taking a tarp filled with weeds to the compost area. We learned that the weeds are composted separately so that the weed seeds do not get returned to the garden. 

Erwin and Ariel helped weed the other side of the fence.

James and Katie carting away branches of the above trees. The beds below do not get very much sunlight, so we also had to do some pruning in order to be able to expose the beds to more light.

And, of course, we played basketball. 

Our next site is Barton P-Patch in West Seattle.

We spent our last day at West Howe Park removing ivy, clearing more blackberries, and picking up trash around the site.The picture above is of our team standing where the 8 foot by 4 foot patch of blackberries once stood. It was wonderful having members of the community stop by and thank us for all of our hard work. 

In addition to working at our site, we have also been taking the time to share our experiences and look for patterns in our community. This morning we had a discussion about racism. We worked together to create our own definition of racism and compared it to other definitions that have been listed elsewhere. We continued to discuss our experiences in order to build an awareness of how racism has affected our lives.

Chaja and Ariel wanted to share their journal entries from today. 

Chaja: Today, we were still working at the Queen Anne Greenbelt. I liked the racism talk this morning, because usually, no one wants to talk about it. I think that everyone had really good and thoughtful things to share, which was nice. Also, everyone was really serious, so that made the conversation open and not uncomfortable.

Today was the last day we saw Howard, so he brought in pizza, which was really thoughtful of him. Everyday, for the past week, Howard has brought in pastries for us, which made the mornings that much more cheerful.

The weather this morning was actually pretty bad, with the fog and the rain, but right now, it’s beautiful, with a cloudless blue sky and the sun shining. Seattle summers rock! 

Ariel: Today we talked about racism and what it means to us. Also we talked about how we are and where we come from (Samoa). We were rewarded 5 boxes of pizza, chocolate, and apples. Today we worked in small groups and worked very hard and never gave up. 

Ben, Erwin, and Ariel standing with all of the trash they picked up around the site.

We are so thankful to have had the opportunity to work with Howard on this project. The rest of the week will be working at Madison Valley P-Patch.