The Latest News About Troy Gardens
Grow
Your Own Expertise—FTG Offers New Educational Series
By Marge Pitts
The Friends of Troy Gardens aim for more than providing
an opportunity for people to enjoy healthy food and a beautiful landscape—the
land itself does that for us. FTG is committed to education, so that everyone
from kids to adults can expand their abilities and enhance their appreciation
of what this land has to offer. In this spirit, our staff is offering
an Educational Workshop Series beginning in February
and continuing through the summer.
The series begins Saturday, Feb. 19, with “Nipping It In The Bud,”
a workshop on pruning and grafting fruit trees. As the spring lengthens,
workshops will cover such topics as starting garden plants indoors, spring
planting for the beginning vegetable gardener, and growing healthy vegetables
in your garden organically. In midsummer, FTG’s workshops will teach
you how to plant late season vegetables for an extended harvest, and how
to save seeds to keep your favorite heirloom plants in your garden every
year. Later in the season, we’ll offer workshops on canning and
preserving, and cooking with fresh ingredients.
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Sustainable Agriculture Research at Troy Gardens
by Marge Pitts
The WK
Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Initiative is currently funding
three research projects at Troy Gardens. Under the direction of Agronomy
Professor Bill Tracy, Camilla Vargas has been up to her elbows in ground
cover, soil amendments, and spores at Troy Gardens for two years now.
Camilla is working on two concurrent projects-testing a combination of
organic soil amendments (to increase soil fertility) and ground cover
plants (to reduce weed growth on fallow, or unused, farm land); and growing
huitlacoche, an edible corn fungus much prized in Mexican cuisine, as
a cash crop.
In the soil fertility project, Camilla worked swaths of three different soil amendments into a test plot: compost, wood chips with alfalfa meal, and rotting leaves with alfalfa meal. A fourth swath was left untouched as a control. Perpendicular to the swaths of soil amendments, Camilla planted swaths of two different ground-covering plants: clover and sorghum sudan grass. Both of these species grow up fast and thick, and will choke out weeds. Camilla and Troy Farmer Claire Strader want to find out which does a better job of it. Camilla takes regular soil samples from each of the test areas and is monitoring which combination leads to the best soil fertility plus weed suppression. Farmer Claire has planted some vegetables in last year's test plots, and Camilla is recording harvest data from these as well.
The Interns at Troy Gardens: Hands-on
Learning for UW Students
by Marge Pitts
Fifteen student interns have worked at Troy Gardens over the last three growing seasons. The results of their labor are easier to recognize than their faces for most of us who consider this land part of our home. An herb garden has sprung up, the beginning of an "edible landscape." Prairie nursery beds are blooming with native wildflowers. Troy Farm is prospering and expanding to its full potential. In the Community Gardens, Troy Kids' Garden has found a permanent home; accessible raised-bed plots have been built. And the crucial engine of community outreach continues to chug along. Volunteers have done much of this work, but student interns have provided concentrated effort and focus-not to mention intensive physical labor-that we simply cannot ask or expect from volunteers.
Each of FTG's program areas-Troy Farm, Troy Community Gardens, Troy Kids' Garden, and Troy Natural Areas Restoration-had at least one intern assisting the staff program coordinators this year. Troy Farm, FTG's most ambitious endeavor, had the benefit of three interns this summer-not to mention the valuable addition of an assistant farm manager, Maggie Anderson, who was an intern last year.
Farm
& Field Teens Working, Learning, Earning on the Land at Troy
by Marge Pitts for the Northside News
Ten
teens, recruited from four Northside community centers, Madison East and
Shabazz High Schools, and Common Wealth Development, are learning about
vegetable farming, gardening, prairie planting, and working hard for their
money at Troy Gardens this summer.
The Friends of Troy Gardens' Farm and Field Youth Training Program is back on the land this summer, thanks to support from the W.K. Kellogg Food and Society Initiative and a grant from the Wisconsin Environmental Education Board.
Program Coordinator Fawn Houck is at the helm again. She has organized the youth into two teams. One works two half-days per week at Troy Farm, under the direction of Farmer Claire Strader and Farm Assistant Maggie Anderson.
Partnerships Make Big Things Possible for Friends of Troy Gardens
What do a group of inmates at Oakhill Correctional Institution and children from three Northside community centers have in common? Would it surprise you if the answer were a garden?
Each week, up to five groups of children-from Northport Apartments, Kennedy Heights, and Vera Court Neighborhood Center-are learning the joys and chores of gardening at Troy Kids' Garden. This year the Kids' Program at Troy is featuring its first ever spring session. Getting the kids out earlier will allow them to experience the garden's progress during the entire season, from the last frost in spring to the first frost in fall. Program Coordinator Megan Cain provides instruction, guidance, and a ton of energy-but there would be no garden without plants. And that's where Oakhill comes in.
