Local organic gardens

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Woohoo! Thanks for sending along links to some great local and natural gardens. We got a couple responses from folks whose gardens were recently featured in the press.
Here are two from Rory Bowman’s great online step-by-step square foot gardening showcase. Go to Rory’s SFG page to see the whole process.

And here are a couple from a local unidentified garden, but I think it’s the garden in today’s Columbian Home and Garden section. These folks have a great garden journal that everyone can read. Below is a pic of one of their lasagna gardens, or sheet compost gardens. I have a few of those — and they really work! The pic below is just downright pretty.

Mmmm, lasagna….
J.

Paper Moon

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One of the first businesses we covered in North Bank, Paper Moon in Old Town Battle Ground, is having a fundraiser for this year’s North Clark County Relay for Life. Owner Holly and her husband Dan are on Luke’s Victory Squad in honor of their friend’s son, who is struggling with leukemia.

At the shop, you can purchase a star for $1 in honor or in memory of someone who’s battled cancer. Dan and Holly are both in need of sponsors for the walk, and from now until the relay, they’ll donate 100% of the money received from the shop’s Tuesday make-and-takes. As an added incentive, if you sponsor Holly for $20 or more, she’ll enter your name in a drawing for a $100 gift certificate in the shop, and for every 20 $20 donations, she’ll add another $100 gift certificate.

The 24-hour relay will be from 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 16 to 10 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 17 at Battle Ground District Stadium. Holly wants to hear more about your own stories about cancer, so email her to chat and get more info.

J.

Treecycle

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So GreenFest is coming up on Saturday at the Water Resources Education Center, 4600 SE Columbia Way. But the best part is a free nine-mile guided bicycle tour of some of downtown Vancouver’s “most celebrated trees.” The flat, easy ride begins and ends at Marine Park, winding along the Vancouver Waterfront and through downtown Vancouver, stopping at eight locations to admire historic trees. Urban Forestry staff will discuss the historical and arboricultural significance of each tree.

Registration is preferred, but not required, and riders will meet at the WREC parking lot, taking off at 2 p.m., helmets on.

J.

Turtle Place

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Holy deep green batman, Turtle Place sounds amazing.

Now commonly referred to as “icky,” the former downtown Vancouver Seventh Street Transit Center will soon be a model of sustainability, a temporary park called Turtle Place. A project of Vancouver’s Downtown Association in conjunction with the city and C-Tran, which still owns the land, Turtle Place will be a long term downtown plaza, and showplace of green design.

Some cool details: The first step in the process will be cutting through the concrete and tipping it up to create planter boxes and benches for seating. Discarded materials from Clark Public Utilities, C-Tran and city scrapyards will be incorporated into a sculptural water feature. This commissioned piece of artwork will be the plaza’s centerpiece, and will be a fountain that uses runoff from a neighboring building. A large-scale mural, designed by downtown design team Tribe 2 Studios, will be painted on the south wall of 704 Main. Clark Public Utilities is helping secure energy-efficient LED lighting. And the plaza’s water won’t just be recycled—it will also be filtered by the plaza’s rain gardens and native plants.

A blog documenting the project’s progress, which is slated to be finished up by the end of the summer can be found at lawnchairguy.wordpress.com, along with a video rendering of the new plaza.

And if you want tons more info, email me and I will send you the release.

J.

Blue Key Coffee

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A beautiful new coffeehouse is open on 13th and Jefferson on the west side of downtown Vancouver. Apparently BlueKey Coffee has been up and running in the old firehouse since Easter-ish, but was closed for a bit just recently.

To help keep it economically viable, in the next few weeks, Farmer’s Market stalwart Foody Blues will be moving a smoker onto the premises to offer their comfort food barbecue for lunch.
The space is gorgeous, having been occupied by manager Jamal Sanders for the last year as an art studio. The look and simple menu are modeled after a coffee shop he visited in Amsterdam and it reminds me of places I used to frequent in Minneapolis, with high exposed beams in the ceiling, exposed brick walls and a mismatch of used and new furniture. The patio areas are also lovely, and Forest Grove-based BJs coffee is in the espresso maker.
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When I popped in, it was like a convention of coffee connoisseurs, with the former owner of Bohemian Espresso and the new owner of Paradise Kafe both checking out the "new guy."
Open business hours and Saturdays, this is the perfect place to linger over a drink.

In other food news, I heard that the new Mint Tea, to open in a couple of weeks after issues with flooring are cleared up, will serve both breakfast and lunch. It will be a place where you can just get a little something (organic and local mainly), which is needed in Uptown. The best part — Anna Petruolo of A Dinner Together will be the head chef.

J.

Harvest a Store

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If two things are true about me, they are that I love food and public broadcasting. Harvest A Store, a 12-minute documentary about the Vancouver Food Co-op will air Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on FVTV Channel 11. The documentary was written and produced by John Anderson and it takes an abbreviated look at the organization’s history, culminating in its first annual meeting and first set of candidates to be elected to the board of directors.
I haven’t seen it, so I can’t vouch for the content or quality, but I’m hoping to get a video of it to post here after it airs. Anyone?

J.

P.S.

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Putting up the photo of my new organic garden makes me want to see pics of YOUR organic gardens. Send them along — especially ones that make the best use of space on a small lot or patio or balcony — and we’ll post them. I know I will get jealous with everyone’s 3-foot-high tomatoes staring back at me, but hey I just started!

Let me know where you are gardening and how it’s going, too. For example, all my veggies wilted this weekend in the heat and I had to add a bunch of mulch and compost. Ugly work at 100 degrees.

J.