Compost Is Heating Up!

Organic gardening and farming are based on the notion that when we build our soil’s natural fertility through composting we strengthen our environment and grow the land’s capacity to provide us with health. It’s a pretty good system when you think of it. We throw out scraps, and the scraps become our food. So simple, so elegant, so effective. At Giving Tree Gardens, we’re such big fans of compost because we’ve seen it’s powerful results. Our gardens and lawns have all quickly filled in and grown with health and beauty using nothing but good healthy compost for fertility.  Last spring Giving Tree Gardens began working with farm partners to build Grow! Twin Cities Urban Farm. At this 12 acre city farm growers with various talents...

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Gardening At School, Growing Healthy Kids

Whenever a young person learns to garden, the future grows a little more green and healthy.    When and entire school learns to garden together, sustainability sprouts in the imaginations of tomorrows community.  This spring, Giving Tree Gardens worked with the Anoka-Hennepin School District to teach some of the basics of Earth- friendly food gardening to students at two schools in the district.  We had so much fun working with students and staff that we’ve just got to share the good times with the rest of the world.  Imagine what our communities would look like today, if all of us as kids had the opportunity to learn to grow our own food at school.  Instead of learning to grow food, the daily...

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Grow! Twin Cities, New Urban Farm

Prayers can come true if you live them.  A Lakota Sioux elder once told a group of folks I was sitting with that if you want to see your prayers come true you have to live them.  What he said struck a chord with me.  If I pray for a healthy environment then I need to work for health in the environment.  By this way of living I am empowered to work for a miracle.  I like that because life on this planet seems like it needs a miracle right now.  From a grower's point of view, we can start living our prayers for healthy food, clean water, and a clean environment when we pick up a shovel and begin digging in to the work of transforming our food system, one steaming scoop of compost at a time.  We've got...

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Food Is The Second Medicine

The following is an excerpt from an interview that Russ Henry did with Growing Power as a part of Growing Power's series of interviews about race, justice, and the food system.       Food is the second medicine.My wife Shaunna tells me that water is the first medicine and food is the second.  Shaunna is a beautiful Lakota Sioux woman who knows her heritage.  Her grandparents taught her that water and food are medicine.  What keeps us healthy and helps us most when we are sick are clean water and good food.   We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.  When our feelings are hurt or we’re down we might say our spirits are low.  When we feel great we say we’re in high spirits. ...

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Growing A Sustainable City

  The city that gardens together grows sustainably together.  Gardening is perhaps the greatest tool for building sustainability that we can all share. Gardens can improve water quality, air quality, access to food, and personal health.  Cities that actively nurture the gardening and urban farming efforts of their citizens reap the benefits of healthy communities.  The nurturing of sustainable cities starts with the roots of the community.  Wherever there is a strong activist gardener population, you will find wonderful green ideas and initiatives sprouting up all over!Rain gardens capture and filter rainwater run-off, community gardens and urban farms grow healthy food for people, locally grown food requires less trucking...

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Photo contest winner!

This ant visiting a forsythia picture took a second place in the Men's Garden Club of Minneapolis Photo Sho...

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Magnolia in the Breeze

Best in Show!  This picture I snapped last spring of a magnolia in the breeze was awarded a prize by The Men's Garden Club of Minneapolis. ...

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