Canopy and Syracuse Grows present Gardening in Syracuse

Saturday, February 13th, 2010, 10:00 – 1:00pm at the Bob Cecile Center, 1st floor, 174 W Seneca Tpke, Syracuse, NY
Free and open to the public! Refreshments and information tables will be provided at this workshop.

Workshop Sessions:
Managing the Physical Conditions of Soil for Gardening in Syracuse
10-11am
Norm Richards, retired professor in forestry at SUNY-ESF and a long-time home gardener in Syracuse, will present a
‘dirty hands’ lecture-demonstration focusing on recognizing soil texture and structure, and discussing their modification and management for gardening in Syracuse. This will include functions of added organic matter, tilling vs. spading in seasonal soil preparation, “Don’t tread on me,” and the values of modestly raised beds.

The Dirt on Your Dirt : Soil Toxicity & the Health Risks of Gardening in Contaminated Soil
11am-12pm
Before you plant a garden, it’s important to know about toxic chemicals that may have contaminated your soil, and
how they can affect your plants and your health. Jonnell Robinson will review the health risks associated with common
toxins, how to obtain reliable soil testing, and how to make sense of your soil test results. Methods to reduce toxins
in contaminated soil and ways to enjoy a plentiful bounty in spite of contaminated soil will also be discussed.

Successful Vegetable Gardening in Syracuse
12-1pm
This panel discussion featuring Mable Wilson, John Allen, and Dick de Graff  from Grindstone Farm will provide new
and experienced gardeners with information about what vegetables grow well in Syracuse. Hear veteran vegetable
growers discuss the benefits and challenges of different plants and learn tips on how to reap a bountiful harvest.

Contact Lee Gechas at 446-5319 or lgechas@twcny.rr.com if your group would like to host an information table at this event.

2nd Annual Canning Workshop

Jars provided, bring your own veggies, no experience necessary, Sunday, November 23, 2008, 3:00 – 6:00 pm.  Space is limited. Fee: sliding scale $2 – $5. Contact Jessi Lyons (315) 420-4521 jel264@cornell.edu.

Syracuse Grows Canning Workshop:
Come learn the art of canning. No experience or supplies needed. Syracuse Grows is a grassroots network cultivating a just foodscape in the City of Syracuse. We provide programming, education, and teaching .Kitchen is at Lyman Hall, Rm 229 College Place, Syracuse University.

Directions:
Lyman Hall is on College Place, near the intersection with University Place. There is a Centro stop on College Place and
parking is available is the Ostrom Parking Lot on the corner of Ostrom and University Place (across from The Thornden Park Rose Garden). From the parking lot, walk down University Place to College Place, Lyman Hall is on the right.

2nd Annual Harvest Dinner

You are invited to join Syracuse Grows and Slow Food CNY at a Potluck Dinner on Sunday, October 18, 3–6 p.m.
The Assumption Church Parish Center, 800 N. Salina Street, Syracuse. Enter green doors on Catawba Street
Please RSVP to Paul Mercurio 845-216-8586 or earthscape@gmail.com.

Bring a homemade dish to share. Try using local ingredients from the farmers’ market, your garden, or your CSA!
Share recipes. Learn gardening techniques. Hear about Syracuse Grows and Slow Food CNY activities. Get involved.
For more information about Syracuse Grows, visit www.syracusegrows.org. To learn more about Slow Food CNY, visit www.slowfoodcny.org

Upcoming CNY Speaks Forum

It gives me great pleasure to announce our next forum — 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 27, at Sophistications Jazz Cafe, 441 S. Salina St., in the heart of Downtown Syracuse. All three remaining candidates for mayor of Syracuse have agreed to participate. The venue is a bit smaller than our previous locations, and we expect a big turnout, so please register now to ensure yourself a spot and to help us adequately plan for the event.

Register by responding to this email with your name and the names of others that will be attending with you. Or, you can call me at 315-730-4621. You can also email CNYSpeaks directly at cnyspeaks@maxwell.syr.edu. As always, the event is free and open to all. Please help spread the word.

The October 27 event will be CNYSpeaks seventh forum on the topic of improving Downtown Syracuse, and it will continue to utilize the CNYSpeaks’ technique of facilitated, small-group discussions. Yet the forum will be quite different in both format and substance from our previous events. CNYSpeaks spent more than a year focused on identifying problems Downtown must overcome, as well as strategies for improving the city center. That conversation unfolded at our first five forums and on the CNYSpeaks blog. It also was informed by research from the Maxwell and Newhouse schools, journalistic articles in The Post-Standard, and a series of public surveys.

On Aug. 30, CNYSpeaks published the Citizens’ Agenda for Downtown Syracuse, a distillation of the conversation meant to guide policy makers working to improve our urban core.

On Sept. 8, nearly 200 citizens packed the Hotel Syracuse’s Persian Terrace and spent an hour discussing the Agenda in small, facilitated groups, with a focus on forming questions to ask the six candidates for mayor. The mayoral candidates then joined the discussion, fielding questions from citizens for two hours. The idea was to help familiarize citizens and candidates with the Agenda, to keep the improvement of Downtown as an issue in the campaign, and to begin to see how the candidates differed in their approach to bettering the city center.

Now we’re down to three candidates who will face off against each other in the General Election on Nov. 3. One will emerge as our next mayor. As such, the time has come to make direct comparisons between the candidates on how they will work to improve Downtown.  That will be the focus of the Oct. 27 event, which starts promptly at 6:30 p.m., with the doors opening at 6.

Instead of deliberating in small groups first as we have done in the past, we’ll start with the candidates, letting them talk about their strategies for improving Downtown, and following up with questions from citizens and from Maxwell Political Science Professor Grant Reeher, co-director of CNYSpeaks. After we’ve heard from the candidates and they have answered your questions, participants will then begin the deliberative part of the forum. You’ll work in groups to identify how the candidates differed in their approach to improving Downtown, exploring which is most effective.

It’s a format that should distinguish this CNYSpeaks’ forum from the others, while continuing to build on the work done by citizens at past CNYSpeaks’ events. Please participate and help us spread the word. The event is free and open to all — past participants and new ones, city residents and suburbanites.

Light refreshments will be served. There is ample free parking on the street that time of night. The Galleries Garage, located right next to Sophistications (http://www.sophisticationscafe.com) will be open as well. The cost is $6 a car.

Please register now, and don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions. I can be reached at gregmunno@msn.com, cnyspeaks@maxwell.syr.edu and at 315-730-4621.

For more information, you can also visit http://blog.syracuse.com/cny-speaks. This entry — http://blog.syracuse.com/cny-speaks/2009/09/now_it_gets_serious.html — gives you a little more information on the Oct. 27 event, as well as links to the Citizens’ Agenda, the candidates’ Web sites, and information on our previous events.

Free showing of Robert McFalls documentary HOMEGROWN

Documentary film HOMEGROWN – Free Admission – will be shown for free on October 3rd at the Westcott Community Center,  826 Euclid Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13210. Playtimes will be at 10:30 am and again, at 12:30 pm. Film running time is approximately 50 minutes.

A Documentary About Modern Day Urban Homesteaders
HOMEGROWN (2008) follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California.  While living off the grid, they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it’s like to live like Little House on the Prairie in the 21st Century.  For more, see www.homegrown-film.com

The free showing of HOMEGROWN is part of the 7th Annual Westcott Bulb Project Give-Away / Garden Extravaganza.  Saturday Oct 3 – 10:00 am – 2:00 pm at the Westcott Community Center (Co-Partner of the Project) on the corner of Euclid and Westcott St.  Free film screening co-sponsored by the Westcott Bulb Project and The Alchemical Nursery.  Read more

CNY Speaks and Downtown Living Tour

We’d love to have you attend one of the CNYSpeaks forums this week. Where the October forums sought to identify the problems Downtown needs to overcome, this week’s forums will focus on finding solutions to those problems, and formulating those solutions into effective agenda items.

The forums are:

* From 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday (May 13) at the Creative Corner, located on the 4th floor of the SU Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St.

* From 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday (May 16) at The Post-Standard, 1 Clinton Square. (Use the Clinton Street entrance). Read more

Syracuse Grows community garden event

Help Grow Community Gardening in Syracuse by joining us this Saturday, April 25th, 2009.
Resource Drive: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m and Garden Cleanup 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Bring donations to Lipe Art Park, W Fayette St., near S Geddes St. All new and gently used gardening tools are greatly appreciated. Donations should be clean and in good working order. Monetary donations are also welcome! Make checks payable to Syracuse Grows.

We hope to see you on Saturday with what is shaping up to be the largest community gardening event Syracuse has ever seen!

Needed
Tools and equipment…
Shovels, pitch forks, hoes, trowels, metal and plasti c rakes, pruners, scissors, loppers, hedge clippers, wheelbarrows, rototi llers, push mowers, hammers, nails, screws, nuts, bolts, handsaws, and childrens Read more

The Alchemical Nursery Trash Project

Zero Waste One Year Later:

February 19, 2009 will mark the one year anniversary of The Alchemical Nursery Project founder Elizabeth Slate’s crazy project to save her trash and stop putting it to the curb – recyclables included.

What got Liz to declare “I pledge to not send one thing to the incinerator/land fill/what have you”?

Last winter on Feb. 19, 2008, while walking past the Rose Garden in Thornden Park, Liz noticed a number of plastic bags stuck on the rose bushes. When she went to pick them up she noticed other bits of garbage: broken plastic cups and packaging, styrofoam,  McD’s fry containers, assorted papers and paper towels, a couple beer cans, a plastic water bottle, a cardboard box, even a bunch of partially deflated balloons. It didn’t look pretty.

But the thing that bothered Liz most of all was that although it may have looked bad, it exposed the reality of a throw-away culture where the not so pretty garbage is typically carted away – out of sight and out of mind.

It got Liz to thinking about the subject of waste: where it comes from, where it goes, and how to approach a zero waste ideal as an individual. This contemplation resulted in her decision later that day to begin her project. Read more

Love and patience

Orange Line Gallery would like to announce the opening of their new show, “Love & Patience”, on Thursday February 19, 2009. A special Th3 event, “Flight 305 to Montgomery, courtesy of Orange Line Airways”, on the 19th from 5pm-10pm, will kick off the show. The event is free and open to the public. Complimentary snacks and tasty beverages shall be provided. “Love & Patience” runs through March 28, 2009.

WHERE: 305 Montgomery Street Syracuse, NY  13202
CONTACT: 315.263.4780, www.orangelinegallery.com

Join the magical journey and celebrate new OL artwork by artists: Read more

Toddler Cafe’

Hi Everyone!

One of my best friend’s from High School, Jennifer Carden, wrote this great nutritious cook book for parents and kids: Toddler Café: Fast, Healthy, and Fun Ways to Feed Even the Pickiest Eater.  Thought I’d share it with the moms and dads in our network.  She also has a great blog as well. Enjoy!

Jenny Skates
E-mail me

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