Monday, June 13, 2016

Updated Description of the NPK Project

For anyone who would like to know more about the NPKs - Neighborhood Planters Kiosks

The NPK project is being pioneered by volunteers from multiple organizations to reach more people with gardening information and build community within neighborhoods.  We hope that it will let more people know about how Benton County Master Gardeners, the Corvallis Evening Garden Club, the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, and the City of Corvallis Civic Beauty and Urban Forestry Group support our community and gardening efforts.  We also want to encourage neighbors to talk and share not only the information that we are sending out, but their own ideas and enthusiasm.  The gardeners hosting the kiosks will be able to point their neighbors in the right direction to use community resources and to garden more effectively.  The posts and their hosts will become a focal point where people can go to share knowledge, plants, seeds, stories, and extra produce.

The NPK will bring seasonally appropriate, sustainable gardening information and notices about related community events right into our streets in a friendly, colorful venue that we will install in front yards, community gardens, and other areas highly visible to pedestrian traffic.  We’ll put research based information and answers directly into neighborhoods all over town, reaching a slightly different demographic than has been done before.  This information will rotate weekly and be provided by our four collaborators.  We will be able to keep tabs on what garden problems are showing up in our community on a daily basis, by tracking the questions that come in to the Master Gardener Help Desk.  We can then get information about those very current, specific problems and their solutions out to gardeners who may be experiencing the same problem and wondering what to do about it.  

We will also share up to the minute news, gardening articles, photos of community projects, and all of the past posts from the NPK on our blog, a venue that is accessible for anyone near or far from an NPK. 

Friday, June 10, 2016

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!


The first round of NPKs are almost ready to install!  



Field trip to Shady Grove Farm




Loads of great garden ideas were shared by our host, Susi Palmrose, a former Master Gardener.  She's started up a beautiful vegetable garden complete with a small orchard, large raspberry hedge, goat and sheep pasture, bee hives, mason bee house, and plenty of beautiful flowering perennials to keep the pollinators happy.  She showed us her root cellar where she also keeps her freshly made goat cheese.




She grows hops on a trellis that can be easily lowered with a winch for harvest.


There was also a solar dehydrator made from a kit.  That will be very handy come harvest season!



She had planted a strawberry patch on a hugelkultur bed.  This is a great way to put woody debris to work for your garden.  If you're not familiar with the practice, this is the basics of how it is done:  first a trench is dug then logs or other woody debris is laid down.  Compostable materials such as leaves, kitchen scraps, and grass clippings can be added next.  Then cover all of that with the reserved soil from your trench.  Water well and you have a new planting bed!  Plenty of mulch is always a good idea, but especially with taller hugelkultur beds, to prevent erosion of all your hard work.  As the woody debris decomposes, it releases nutrients and moisture, with larger logs releasing it more slowly.  Be aware that initially, all that woody material could encourage soil microbes to tie up bit of nitrogen, so a little composted manure or other fairly high nitrogen amendments would be very helpful for your first planting. Susi says if she were to do it again, she'd dig a deeper trench first, so that she had more soil to put over the top.