WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 [Caroline Lonneman] Hi, I'm Caroline Lonneman. I'm one of UTD's Eco Reps. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 For today's Digital Earth Day video, 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000 I'm going to be talking about the community garden that we have on campus. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:12.000 It's a volunteer-run thing by students organized by the OSV, 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000 which is our Office of of Student Volunteerism, 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:18.000 and it's done almost entirely by staff and students, 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:20.000 and it's a pretty neat organization. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:22.000 Most of what I'm going to be talking about today 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.000 is how we run things, how we organize things, 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:25.000 why we do some of the things that we do, 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:27.000 some of the gardening practices, 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 and a lot of how we get students involved, 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:33.000 and particularly how that relates to UN Development Goal 11, which is Sustainable Communities. 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:36.000 ...with our lovely greenhouse, because this is one of the first ways 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:38.000 that we start to get students involved. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:41.000 The greenhouse is one of the smaller but most important parts of our garden 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.500 because it's one of the first things that gardeners get to experience 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:45.000 whenever they volunteer. 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:47.000 We have two different types of volunteers at the community garden. 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:51.000 We have regular garden helpers and they're people who come just once a month. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:55.000 It's much more casual thing and they just help out wherever we need them to. 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:57.000 And then we have people who actually own plots, 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.000 and I'll show the plots in a little bit. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 Plots are designated parts of land 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:02.000 where people can grow whatever they want. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:05.000 And in the greenhouse people can come. 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:08.000 --you can see these are Eric seedlings-- and plant seedlings in here, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.500 but the garden helpers also get to help with that. 00:01:10.500 --> 00:01:15.000 Seedlings are certainly one of the more interesting and easy-to-do parts of gardening, 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 and so it's a really good way to get a lot of students involved 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.000 in something that's very exciting, very rewarding, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:21.500 because they sprout super-quickly. 00:01:21.500 --> 00:01:27.000 They can come back in a month and see how big their tomatoes seedlings have gotten --very quickly. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.000 This is how I got started in the garden too. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:31.000 About a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I think, 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:34.000 I came to one of the volunteer workdays 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:38.000 and helped a more experienced gardener plant their seedlings, 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:42.000 and now I have all these guys --marked with the "BB"-- 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:43.000 because they're part of a different project. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:46.000 That's why they're not marked with my name, but they're mine. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:49.000 I know how these guys are growing and other garden volunteers helped me 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.500 and now some of them such as ... I think this guy down here ... 00:01:53.500 --> 00:01:56.000 I'm not really sure ... now have their own plots as well. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000 One of the most frightening things about learning to garden 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:02.000 whenever you don't know anything is that it's just so much information 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.000 and it's really hard to figure out what to do. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.000 So we make sure to keep posted information. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 about when to plant what, 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.000 what kind of companion plants to use in our community garden. 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:15.500 And if anybody's thinking about doing something like this or running a community garden, 00:02:15.500 --> 00:02:17.000 this is something that's been really helpful for us 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:20.000 because experienced gardeners are always very helpful 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:22.000 and it's very good to have them around, 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:23.500 but whenever people come here by themselves 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:27.000 or whenever they just need to figure out when they need to transplant their tomatoes, 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:30.000 it's really good to just have that information available for them. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 Now we're going to go to our more exciting stuff, which are actual plots. 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:38.000 The bed that we use is the French raised bed. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 As you can see the wood piece on the bottom comes up about... 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.000 ... I think that's about 8 inches ... 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:49.000 and we have these pipes going over the top, and then we just fill that soil in. 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.000 The reason that we use this particular style of raised bed 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:54.000 is it makes it very easy to add extra compost, 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.000 extra soil amendments, anything that you want to do to make the soil better 00:02:57.000 --> 00:02:59.000 without actually digging up a lot of the dirt 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:00.000 or a lot of the compost. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000 And that's a big problem whenever you are working on a college campus, 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:06.000 or something, and you can't disrupt a lot of the soil. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.000 So doing raised beds really sections it out very well. 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:13.000 "Who Houses" as we call them, the PVC pipes around our plots. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 and also bird netting, for any of you guys who garden a little bit, 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:17.500 you may know what these are for, 00:03:17.500 --> 00:03:20.000 but it's just to add structure to keep rabbits out 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:23.000 because it's a really big problem on our campus, especially --and birds. 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:27.000 But as you can see they might also cause problems 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 because some of our plants get quite a bit bigger. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:33.000 Once a gardener has been volunteering here for a while --it's about three months-- 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:37.000 they can move up to a plot instead of just helping out in the greenhouse, 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.000 and they can actually have a plot of land. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:41.000 As you can see, our plots are pretty big, 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:42.500 so we actually start out giving them half at a time. 00:03:42.500 --> 00:03:45.000 So they'd start about that middle hoop all the way to the end, 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:49.500 and this other half would belong to somebody else, 00:03:49.500 --> 00:03:50.000 and if they've been good stewards of their plot 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.000 --like as you can see, this artichoke is huge-- 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.000 they can actually move up and eventually get a full plot of land. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:58.000 ... and this one is our herb garden. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:01.000 The plants grow really fast and people that usually don't need very many, 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:03.000 so any gardener can come and take whatever they want. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:05.000 To keep the garden healthy, we do have to limit what people can grow. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:08.000 For example, mint will choke out anything that it grows with. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:11.000 So we have a couple of these smaller containers where people can grow mint 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.000 and take it, as long as they don't plant it in their plots. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.500 It helps keep the garden sustainable and help us from being overrun. 00:04:16.500 --> 00:04:21.000 Garden workdays are really where most of the actual events start happening 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:23.000 --the harvesting and the planting and everything-- 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:24.000 and those are days once a month. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:28.000 --I think I mentioned that earlier-- where all the volunteers, including the plot holders, 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.000 all come out and we do things like harvesting, 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.000 we mulch, we take some of this stuff, 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:35.000 we help spread it out, we got our pile of compost, 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:40.000 and we also make sure to weigh all of the produce that we've harvested. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:44.000 So for example, if I'm harvesting this broccoli, I would weigh it. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:48.000 I would categorize it, I'd write it down and record it 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.000 because part of having a sustainable community 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:52.000 is making sure that we're actually producing food 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:53.000 and we all take home everything that we want, 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000 and anything that we don't, we leave for other people to take. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:57.000 That way, no food is wasted. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:00.000 It all started pretty small. In fact, it had to be moved two times. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.000 This is actually the third iteration. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:04.000 We can see it's gotten pretty expansive. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.000 We have, I think, about 30-40 plots. 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:10.500 We have other organizations who are helping us out now. 00:05:10.500 --> 00:05:13.000 You can see we've got our greenhouse and our shed 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.000 and this mural was done by another organization on campus 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:20.000 We have 20 to 30 people show up for our workdays 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:23.000 who are all getting educated about sustainability and growing things. 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.000 Not to mention the people who show up regularly 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.000 and all the people who just revolve in and out, or stop by to help out. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.000 Anyway, I'd really encourage you ... other campuses, other places ... 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:38.000 if you've got the time, the space -- community garden. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000 We're in a parking lot. We we made it work. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.000 It's been it's been a great time, great experience. I've had a blast. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:46.000 I know a lot of other people have really enjoyed their experience at the community garden, 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:49.000 and it's a good time all-around. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:50.000 A lot of people really learn a lot 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.000 and they get a lot of good food to eat and to make things with. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:56.000 So, Happy Earth Week, everybody!