By Michael Wedgley

Michael Wedgley of Soilogical BioSolutions and Designs previously managed our Solano Gardens program, including overseeing the installation of the community garden at City Church of Fairfield. Here, he reflects on that garden installation and the community surrounding it.

Participants prepare the ground at City Church of Fairfield for the community garden

Putting together community gardens has varying degrees of success, but our recent turnout at City Church of Fairfield blew me away. We had so many volunteers from many different walks of life all come together to support the efforts of growing food for people in the community that might not have access to fresh, organic fruits and vegetables.

Leading these installs with so many people can have its challenges, but it’s because so many things get accomplished so fast, and you have to be moving through the tasks at a very quick pace. It also translates to a very productive day, and it’s so heartwarming to see the connection that everybody is making with the land and the work they’re putting into it.

On Feb. 25, Sustainable Solano along with a group of about 40 volunteers came together to create the community garden at City Church. The garden will be used to provide fresh produce for the residents at City Church who are recovering from addiction, and given away to the local community through the church’s daily food drives.

The volunteers were given safety instructions and split into groups to tackle specific tasks. Some volunteers cleared the area, while others marked out the garden’s boundaries. They worked hard to ensure that the areas where garden beds would be were cleared of woodchips, and dug in-ground swales, which they filled with woodchips. These swales will act as a water catchment basin and store rainwater, allowing it to seep into the soil and provide food for microbes such as fungi. The fungi, in turn, will provide water and nutrients to the plant roots, making the garden more sustainable and resilient to environmental changes.

On March 4, volunteers returned to the site to create growing mounds by adding soil to the prepared beds, and started to lay irrigation. Halfway through the install, we were hit with a huge amount of rain and had to end the day. Although the volunteers were not able to complete the installation we were able to get a lot of work done, and a workday on March 18 finished up the irrigation and put in trees and plants.

Overall, the community garden installations have been a fantastic effort that is promoting community involvement and is encouraging individuals to connect with each other and with nature in profound ways. It was amazing to see everyone come together to make a positive impact and make serenity and nutrition accessible for everyone in their community.

Solano Gardens is funded by Solano Public Health

By Jazzmin Ballou, Solano Gardens Program Coordinator

The Solano Gardens program is recognizing its garden champions this spring — those people who make community gardens a success, paying attention to what makes them thrive. This blog post is from the quarterly newsletter to garden champions, and we wanted to share it with our wider SuSol community as well!

Jazzmin Ballou, Solano Gardens program coordinator, helps set up a new garden bed at Faith Food Fridays’ Learning Garden

Winter speaks in whispers, begging us to slow down, quiet down and listen. One thing I appreciate so much about working with the land is that I can’t ignore this call. Even with my spinach, broccoli and kale in the ground, I rest, enjoying the low maintenance process of winter crops’ maturation. I’m sure many a gardener, farmer, nature-enthusiast, and good Earthly neighbor can relate.

The soft, excited voice of spring beckons us forth out of our solitude and into the warm embrace of the world around us; into community. With more light and more warmth, people all across the Northern Hemisphere find themselves spending glorious time outside, reconnecting with neighbors of all species. We salute the bees, we admire the return of the leaves to the trees, we invite our friends out for coffee at our favorite cafe just so we can sit outside, and we envelop ourselves in our gardens, preparing for the most productive time of the year.

As the spring kicks off, ponder what your community connections look like as a result of the warmer weather and our increased access to natural light. Who are you reaching out to? What plants are you nurturing? What plants are nurturing you? Notice the benefits that are present as a result of connections of all kinds: how happy you feel after reconnecting with a friend over coffee, the fresh smell of your garden bed after you’ve added compost and soil and sowed your first seeds, the unsolicited joy at seeing a group of poppies growing out of the sidewalk.

Community has dimensions, which span from your mailman to the microorganisms in your soil. As gardeners in community gardens, we have the gift of holding, facilitating, and ultimately benefiting from community at all levels. We stand at the center of a network that our ancestors lived with and tapped into in everything they did. Our straying away from this community is the reason we live in a world that is wrought with polarization and violence.

At this point in history, so many of us are choosing to collectively return to this Earth-centered way of life. One that is reminiscent of that of our ancestors, but that is original and being shaped to suit our needs. In so many places, this choice to return is sparked by community gardens. Land access is a privilege, and thus community gardens provide space for those who may not have the space to explore these connections on their own. They also provide a space for knowledge to be shared and spread, setting up newer gardeners for success as they build community with the world around them. This work is revolutionary, evolutionary, and done with pure love for the whole. To all the community gardeners out there, I thank you. The Solano Gardens team is excited to begin this journey together, strengthening our connections to one another and to Mother Earth.

Solano Gardens is funded by Solano Public Health

By Jazzmin Ballou, Solano Gardens Program Coordinator

Update: All available trees have already been reserved. Please check back in the future for other opportunities.

During the winter months fruit-producing trees go dormant. This dormancy helps protect them from freezing in the cold months by stopping them from growing and producing fruit. The good news is that dormant trees can be out of soil for short amounts of time in those winter months without dying, making it easier to transport them. 

That makes it a great time to get trees for the garden! Sustainable Solano will be partnering with three local nurseries in January to give away bare-root trees to the community. We are especially aiming to give these trees to folks who otherwise may not have access to fruit trees. As part of the free giveaway, we will accept donations toward the cost of the trees. Donations will increase our ability to continue giveaways in the future, but are optional so that everyone has a chance to get a tree, regardless of ability to pay.

Photo credit: Mid City Nursery

The giveaways will be

• 10 am-12 pm Jan. 21 at Mid City Nursery in American Canyon
• 10 am-12 pm Jan. 28 at Lemuria Nursery in Dixon
• 10 am-12 pm Feb. 4 at Morningsun Herb Farm in Vacaville

All available trees have already been reserved. Please check back in the future for other opportunities.

By Lauren Gucik and Michael Wedgley, Program Managers

Solano Gardens is growing!

This year, in addition to installing fruit and vegetable gardens, we also have resources to offer such as chickens, chicken coops, beehives and aquaponics kits to our communities. Our goal is to increase communities’ ability to grow food for themselves and their neighbors to improve our mental and physical health and foster abundance and collective power.

We have been supporting community gardens and personal home spaces with food forests and water-saving pollinator gardens for many years and this year we are able to expand our offerings. Our goal is to install 2-3 Hubs around the county. These Hubs would have a large amount of space to demonstrate multiple different growing methods, be able to host educational events and supplies giveaways, and have a kitchen space to prepare some of what is growing for the community as part of education, sharing healthy food, and creating social enterprises.

SuSol will also cutivate a satellite network of home growers, which can be anyone with a home garden. We’d like to provide you with the materials that fit your space, no matter how big or small, and curate classes and circles of knowledge-sharing among the satellites. We hope that everyone in that network can lend support to each other when it comes to growing your own food. We will be providing free plants, trees, chickens, bees, etc. for satellite gardens. Anyone interested in growing food at home can fill out an interest form here.

Solano Gardens will also host two internship tracks focused on sustainable Urban Agriculture and Youth Culinary Arts. Each will provide hands-on activities to practice the skills and concepts related to the topic, in addition to several online portions.

The Urban Agriculture track will focus on multiple ways of growing food and building valuable food production experience. They will learn plant needs, methods of planting and harvesting, crop planning, composting and market gardening. They will gain insight into permaculture, the Soil Food Web and square-foot gardening.

In the Culinary internship students will learn how to prepare fresh local food, explore concepts of food as medicine, and help us pilot a prepared food enterprise in the county. Interns will grow their comfort in the kitchen and learn basic food preparation skills while working together to cook in large batches. Interns will take food home after class to be shared with their families, and students will receive their food handler’s card through our coursework.

Additionally, our team will lead an inquiry throughout the county to see how to link farmers with underutilized agricultural land in the county to increase the amount of food grown locally that stays in Solano County and support young entrepreneurs in creating social enterprises that heal their communities.

The goal is to increase food production in Solano County through empowering communities with resources, materials, and opportunities to share skills and knowledge.