Painters Hall-iday Decorations!

In preparation for our neighborhood holiday party, we decided to make all of our decorations from materials used in the Painters Hall or from around the site.

Our tree was especially charming; it was based on a craft project featured in the Nov/Dec 2010 Natural Home Magazine. It's made from days of collected newspaper, two soda cans, and a branch garnered from Paco's Aspen trimmings.

The ornaments are expired cafe coupons and paper scraps from events!

The baskets are full of trimmings and branches collected from around the neighborhood.

Happy Holidays!

Aaron Good's "Thursday Drawings 2"

Last weekend was the opening reception for Aaron Good's "Thursday Drawings 2" in our Painters Hall community center. The show was very successful, with about 80 friends and family members attending. Aaron's work will continue to be on display for the month of December, so be sure to stop in to check out his beautiful drawings. The Painters Hall is open weekdays 9am to 5pm.

Here are a couple photos from the opening:

Twenty-eight year-old Aaron Good has been active as an artist in Salem for the past fifteen years. His art was featured in a one-person show at the Salem Art Association in 2008. Very Special Arts and the National Downs Syndrome Association selected Aaron’s art for use on their holiday cards. Aaron Good has donated a number of his drawings to charity auctions during the past three years.

Light show

Urban Farmer Certification

Our educational objective for the Conservatory is simple: teach people, particularly children and young adults, how to grow their own food. In response, we started the Leslie Middle School Learning Garden to encourage students to explore the connection between the classroom and the natural environment. Now we are excited to debut our newest Conservatory program geared toward people in their 20s and 30s, the Urban Farmer Certification.

Developed in partnership with Friends of Salem Saturday Market and the OSU Master Gardener Program, the Urban Farmer Certification will allow you to learn valuable gardening skills while cultivating your own healthy, organic fruits and vegetables. With a monthly class taught by OSU-Extension Service Master Gardeners and local farmers, the course curriculum will include garden planning, seed starting, beneficial insects, composting, and chicken keeping, among others. Classes will include both a theoretical lesson and a hands-on component that takes place in our greenhouses and community garden. As a participant in the course, you may utilize a portion of the community garden for your own cultivation space. All participants will apply their acquired knowledge in their personal garden space in order to obtain the Urban Farmer Certificate.

Schedule: the last Saturday of the month, January-October 2011

Cost: $60

scholarships available and a 20% discount for FSSM members

Sign ups begin December 1st! Please call 503-315-1055 or email shannon@pringlecreek.com for more details or to sign up!

First snow!

The Leslie Middle School students' cold crops are happy and cozy in the Conservatory, and everything seems brighter with last night's dusting...

Morning walk

A couple photos from my walk in this morning, of the Guest Cottage and Fir Grove. So beautiful!

Chemical-Free Weed Control

Sustainable landscape management is an important value in our community. We were recently recognized as the first residential development to be Salmon-Safe certified, and as part of our commitment to protecting biological diversity we choose to eliminate and control invasive species using manual methods instead of herbicides.

Last weekend a group of Willamette University students participated in a creek restoration work party to tackle the Japanese knotweed growing along our stretch of Pringle Creek. Japanese knotweed is a highly invasive species that devastates natural riparian areas because it spreads rapidly and prevents the propagation of native species. Here's what the site looked like before our work party:

Our strategy for knotweed removal without chemical agents follows the guidelines devised by the King County Noxious Weed Control Program. The students carefully cut the stems close to the ground and dug up as much of the root system as possible.

The plant matter must be quarantined until it completely dies, and then we can compost it. After the students dug up the roots, we covered the site with overlapping thick canvas fabric and several yards of mulch to suppress any new growth. Here's what the site looks like after all their hard work:

We hope that our efforts will demonstrate the feasibility of herbicide-free eradication of invasive species. Japanese knotweed is a particularly resilient weed, and total eradication will likely take years of manual control. However, the hard labor is worth it because it means we will not cause further harm to the creek and surrounding riparian area. It's really easy to use an herbicide and consider the weeds "taken care of", but to consider the long term environmental impacts of weed control is a much more rewarding task.

Thanks to the Willamette University student volunteers! Also thanks to the City of Salem for their generous Watershed Protect and Preservation grant!

Fall photos

Some photos of colors around the neighborhood...

Garden action

Students helped harvest the last of the peppers, tomatoes, and pumpkins -- a little till and Shannon will plant the red clover cover crop before tomorrow's rain. First time operating a rototiller!

Leslie Middle School Learning Garden!

We recently partnered with Leslie Middle School to establish the Leslie Middle School Learning Garden. Led by Leslie teacher Consuelo Kammerer, the students visit the Pringle Creek Conservatory a few times a week to learn useful gardening skills.

Leslie Middle School students plant organic broccoli and cabbage in the Conservatory.

Throughout the fall and winter, the students are cultivating winter greens in a raised bed in one of the greenhouses, and growing garlic outside on a portion of the community garden space. The project is the first aspect of Pringle Creek's new Conservatory objective to teach people, particularly children and young adults, how to grow their own food.

In the Learning Garden students will experience the connection between the classroom curriculum and the garden environment firsthand, giving them a deep understanding of the processes involved in sustainable agriculture. We just got started and we'll post more photos as we go! If you are interested in learning more, contact shannon@pringlecreek.com