Junior Urban Land Scouts!

This text comes from the field book of one of the campers this summer.

It is fall-ish now: cooler, crisper skies, shriveled leaves, and more rain. It is a fine time to be an Urban Land Scout-- there's still so much ripening and dropping these days. This week also marks the start of Junior Urban Land Scouts at the Boys and Girls Club. I am thrilled to get to work with them and eager to see what lessons come out of our time together. More on that project as it progresses.

On the subject of progress: one of my goals for the ULS (and now JULS) is to get the levels and actions refined, well documented, and more modular (i.e. in a pdf) so that other groups may confidently start their own Urban Land Scout tribe, junior or otherwise. Likewise, I hope to host a foraging tour in November akin to the earlier "gleaning tours" and "Tour de Plants." Both the Junior Urban Land Scout curriculum and the tours are simple and easily adapted to locale. Would you like to host one in your city? Send me a message and I'll set you up with all you need...which is not much at all once you have the dee-sire.

Seeds, Glorious Seeds

Hallelujah, it's cooled off a little. If August is the month when novice gardeners fall off the wagon and let things go to seed, wither, and generally get out of control, let September be our month to creep back, prune, remove, and restore. It's also a good time to save seeds.

Since most seeds need three things to grow (water, soil, sunlight/warmth) you'll want to store them in such a way as to avoid those conditions. That is somewhere dry, clean, and dark. Make sure your seeds are totally dry before you tuck them away in a drawer. Similarly, if you're going to store seeds in the freezer, be sure they're dry beforehand. Otherwise they might rot and lose viability. I like to dry goopy seeds like melon or tomato seeds on a sheet of newspaper on the porch. It's outside, but out of direct sunlight. Give the seeds a couple of stirs to separate them from the newsprint as they dry and pick of the dried bits of vegetable or fruit pulp before you store them.

Saving seeds is the first half of the chore. The second half is labeling them and storing them and knowing what you've got so you can use them next spring and summer. I like to label my seeds with the plant name, the year the seeds were harvested, and any other information like "From Gerry Moll" or "Did well in partial shade." Tracking provenance points towards the generations before us who "genetically modified" through careful selection year after year.

John shows "leather britches" to Urban Land Scouts in the Beardsley greenhouse.

As famed bean collector and garden master John Coykendall said when he visited Beardsley Farm last year, "[We are] going to be the future of seed saving...people like [us]. People with such interests." (Thanks to Kat for her notes.) Like so many things, the success of seed saving is not grand or sexy, but rather incremental and ordinary. A good metaphor to carry into fall.

Plants in Portland

These are photos of plants in a wooded park in Portland, OR. I had the privilege to walk there with an intrepid land scout, Romana Cohen, who introduced me to many new plants. Romana tells me the second and third photo are of Thimble Berry, which has a rich woody taste. Does anyone recognize the other plants shown here?

Kat - Levels 8 & 9

Congratulations to Kat for earning her level 8 & 9 badges. Shown below are an image from her worm composter (started at one of our workshops at Beardsley Farm).

These photos show Kat's perennial, horseradish, growing in two seasons in small raised beds in her yard. Well done Kat. Congratulations.

Urban Land Scout Camp and Mobile Loaves and Fishes

Last week we wrapped up a four-day run of Urban Land Scout camp at Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a national food justice program with a branch in Nashville, TN. We had a great group of campers and counselors. Highlights included making lunch every day in MLF's beautifully equipped kitchen, starting seeds, and playing many many rounds of WAH!. We were especially grateful to have an air conditioned space in which to work as the temperatures topped 100 degrees F for several days.

Special thanks go to Tallu Schuyler, MLF's director, Brooke Gillon, the MLF garden coordinator, Jena Robinson, MLF garden intern, and Sarah Morgan and Dana Richards, two AmeriCorps members from the Martha O'Bryan Center. It was a great team and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working with everyone. 

You can see more photos from the camp here.

Liz - Level 3

Look what Liz grew from a seed ball in her yard! In the fall, Liz can save some of the seeds from the pumpkin to earn her Level 7 badge. Way to go.

Beardsley Camp Overview

Urban Land Scout campers working on their books and buttons

Hello, hello,

Thanks to all our friends and sponsors for your generous support of Urban Land Scout camp. We met and surpassed our fundraising goal. Hooray! Not only were we able to offer camp for free to campers and parents, but we have enough money left over that we’ll be looking into similar fall programming as well.

We had eight campers from all corners of Knoxville. As you may or may not know, our original plan was to offer the camp to students at nearby Title I schools (where a high percentage of students receive free and reduced lunches). I had naively assumed that if we created a quality program and made it free, people would come running. Not so. Additionally, we were late getting our application materials into Knox County schools. As a result, our initial enrollment numbers were very low. In order to find more campers, we opened up the application process to any rising 5th, 6th, or 7th grader in Knox County. The children and parents who found us were great and we had a wonderful time. We were also blessed with great leadership in the form of my co-counselor, Kat Raese and our super-volunteer Brian Sohn.

Brian and Luke play a balancing game

Each morning we had breakfast (provided by Knox County) and then morning circle where we talked about the upcoming day and played games. Following morning circle, we helped out with some of the easier farm chores at Beardsley. Favorite chores included harvesting produce for Beardsley to donate and checking under the chickens to see if there were any eggs.

After chores, we got down to the business of earning our Urban Land Scout badges. During the course of the week we explored the park, mapped our homes, oriented ourselves with compasses, made and threw seed balls, collected wild edible plants, transplanted Holy Basil, made herb and lemonade popsicles, took herb clippings to root, and started seeds in the greenhouse. Most campers cited “learning about edible and useful plants” as their favorite activity. Seed collection was also a big hit. Thanks to a partnership with Community Television Knoxville, we were able to borrow flip video cameras for peer interviews. I hope to edit this footage together for a piece that will air on CTVK in the future.

Seeds ready for next year's planting

We wrapped up the day with lunches donated by the Tomato Head, a local restaurant known for its fresh and wholesome ingredients. Cruze Dairy Farm provided chocolate milk as a special treat on the last day. It was great to sit down, give thanks, and share a filling meal in the shade of a large oak tree. I think most of us-- counselors and campers -- went home every day and took a short nap. We were lucky in that the intense heat of the summer held off for the first three days. After that we stayed cool with water bottles, sun hats, and the occasional blast from the hose.

As I mentioned above, I hope to partner with area youth groups and communities to offer similar Urban Land Scout programming this coming fall. If you know of any communities in Knox County who might like to host Urban Land Scouts or if you would like to volunteer, please be in touch. Thanks again for your support of this project.

You can see photos from the camp here.