Milagro Allegro

• August 22 – Organic Sundays, 4-5pm “Planning Your Fall Organic Edible Garden”
•  August 28  Fresh from the Garden, 4-5pm  This month’s topic: “Tomatoes”
•  August 29 – Garden Swap, 5-6:30pm
• Metalworked fence & gates –  Keep America Beautiful Grant update!

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•  August 22 – Organic Sundays, 4-5pm “Planning Your Fall Organic Edible Garden”  (English), 5:30 – 6:30pm (Espanol)

Eating locally and organically is important, and in Los Angeles we are fortunate to be able to grow delicious, nutritious and organic fresh food year-round.

Join us for “Organic Sundays” – an incredible and stimulating series of organic edible garden workshops every third Sunday of the month held at Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Highland Park.
With Fall fast approaching, this month’s class will focus on planning for your Fall edible garden! Master Gardener Milli Macen-Moore will teach you how to rejuvenate your soil organically and plan your fall raised beds – all while getting DIRTY!  (Please remember to bring your gloves!) Milli will also be available one hour before class to answer your gardening questions.

Join us for this month’s Organic Sundays class “Planning Your Fall Organic Edible Garden”

Sunday, August 22, 2010, 4:00-5:00pm (English), 5:30 – 6:30pm (Espanol)

Suggested donation $10, no one turned away for funds

For more information check out  Organic Sundays flyer Aug 2010 in English or Organic Sundays 8/2010 Flyer in Spanish

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• August 28 – Fresh from the Garden, 4-5pm  This month’s topic: “Tomatoes”

We invite you and your family to take part in “Fresh from the Garden” – free nutrition workshops and cooking demonstrations being held every fourth Saturday of the month at Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Highland Park.

This month we will discuss the health benefits of eating fresh tomatoes, how to properly harvest them, store them and how to healthfully prepare them. Take home a delicious healthy recipe to share with your family and friends!

Join us for August’s “Fresh from the Garden” focus on Tomatoes

Saturday, August 28, 2010, 4:00-5:00pm

Download our informational flyers:  Fresh from the Garden August 2010 Flyer, Fresh Garden Flyer August 2010 in Spanish

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• August 29 – Garden Swap, 5-6:30pm

Do you have a surplus of fresh veggies, seedlings, or garden tools? Have you ever thought of swapping your goods for something you need?  Now’s our chance! Let’s gather our goods and exchange for FREE! Seeds, worms, compost, plants, fresh vegetables, innovative gardening ideas, food recipes, worm tea, tools, magazines, and books, are welcome. Master Gardener, Milli Macen-Moore will also be onsite and happy to answer all of your gardening questions.

Monthly Garden Swap

Sunday, August 29th, 5pm-6:30pm

Swapping begins at 5:30pm! Don’t be late!

RSVP: milli@modern-sustainability.com

Click here for our informational flyers  August 2010 Garden Swap Flyer   Garden Swap 8/2010 Flyer – Spanish

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• Metalworked fence & gates – Keep America Beautiful Grant update!

Last year, in partnership with Keep Los Angeles Beautiful, Milagro Allegro was awarded a $10,000 Keep America Beautiful Grant which we are using to replace our existing chain link fence with a beautiful and artistic metalworked fence and gates.

Keep Los Angeles Beautiful, a local affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, brings public attention to litter prevention, waste reduction and beautification. Keep LA Beautiful aims to promote volunteer cleanup action and beautification to support the Mayor’s goal of making Los Angeles the cleanest and greenest big city in America.

Keep America Beautiful, the nation’s largest community improvement program, involves an estimated 3 million volunteers and attendees who donated more than 6.7 million hours in 2008 to clean, beautify and improve more than 17,000 communities during more than 30,000 events in all 50 states and beyond.

The installation of the fence and gates has started and we invite you to come check out our progress!

Milagro Allegro learned about this upcoming forum that you may want to participate in:

The Network for a Healthy California—Los Angeles Region and the University of California Cooperative Extension invite you to join them for an exciting sharing forum designed to help you make your school or community garden a center for nutrition education.  Or, get ideas for starting a school or community garden that will help improve health in your community!

Event:              Planting the Seeds of Success for your Community or School Garden

Date/Time:       August 25th, 8:30 am to 4 pm.

Location:         The Huntington Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108

Highlights of the day will include speakers on:

-  Victory Gardens, Then and Now

-  Garden Research Findings: How Gardens Promote Good Nutrition and Improve Food Security

-  Best practices & Resource Sharing

Break out sessions will be offered for:

-  School Gardens

-  Community Gardens

-  Gardening 101

-  Physical Activity in the Garden

-  Nutrition in the Garden

-  Evaluating Your Garden

Plus, tour the botanical gardens of The Hungtinton!

Registration costs $15 ($30 if you would like to include lunch from Home Girl Cafe) and is available on-line at:

http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=5094

For more information, please check out the UCCE Network for Healthy CA Forum Flyer

Folks mingle and eat at the Potluck

Milagro Allegro hosted a potluck Monday night. It was well-attended with a great mixture of gardeners, community members as well as several employees from Good Girl Dinette. The Good Girl folks have been contributing to the garden’s compost by adding cuttings from the restaurant and turning the compost pile.

The food was delicious and several gardeners made dishes using vegetables and herbs from their plots. Hopefully this is the start of an ongoing tradition!

  July 31, 2010 – About 30 Milagro Allegro gardeners and community members joined together to participate in Milagro’s July garden swap, organized by resident Master Gardener, Milli Macen-Moore.   Participants brought a wide assortment of items to barter including home-grown lemons, plums, eggplant, tomatoes, chard, sorrel, herbs, corn, zucchini as well as home-made jams worm castings, worm tea, seeds, tools and artwork.  The swap, which Milagro hopes to continue with as a monthly community event, was a great way to turn one’s bounty of an item (for example, a prolific tomato crop) into a fun and cost-effective way to take home a diverse variety of other items at the end of an enjoyable afternoon of meeting neighbors.

The swap was inspired by the work of Yvonne Savio at the University of California Cooperative Extension, who integrates a similar practice  into her Master Gardener class each year.   Thanks to all who participated in our swap and we hope to see you at our next one.

tomato plant

lemons!

To read some additional press this swap received, check out

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-56840-LA-Gardening-Examiner~y2010m8d6-Highland-Park-Community-Garden-Swap-success-morphs-into-monthly-event?cid=sharing_facebook%3A56840

http://www.bargainbabe.com/2010/08/03/swapping-garden-goods-to-save-money/

bounty at the end of the day!

On Saturday, July 23, 2010, the American Horticultural Society’s    National Youth Garden Symposium participants toured through Milagro Allegro as part of the “garden exploration” portion of the symposium to learn more about our LA Sprouts afterschool program. We received numerous compliments both about the garden and the LA Sprouts program throughout the weekend at the symposium, as well as particular words of recognition from Roger Swain, the symposium’s closing keynote speaker (Alice Waters was the opening keynote) who is best known for hosting a PBC show on victory gardens.

symposium participants listen to LA Sprouts presentation at Milagro

pictured r to l: Rosa Romero, Yvonne Savio, Milli Macen-Moore, Nicole Gatto, Lauren Cook, Matt Mihm

Yvonne Savio (r) and Milli Macen-Moore (l) slice up some watermelon

Thanks to all gardeners and community members who came out despite the heat for our July 18th garden workday!  With everyone’s help, we accomplished a LOT!

FREE “Garden Swap”

Everyone Welcome

Saturday, July 31st 6pm-8pm

at

Milagro Allegro Community Garden

115 S. Avenue 56, Los Angeles, CA 90042

1 block SE of Figueroa, behind the Highland Theater

Early Birds Learning About Worms

We had a great turn-out for our Smart Gardening Workshop on June 26th!  Over 30 folks got up early and traveled to Highland Park (from as far away as Gardena) - for a 9 a.m. Saturday start time, mind you!  We learned about water-wise gardening, composting, worm composting and other fun topics.

We raffled off a standard compost bin as well as a worm compost bin.  All participants were winners, though – they walked away with arms full of giveaways, minds full of information, and hearts set on gardening. 

A BIG THANKS goes out to the Los Angeles County Smart Gardening Program for providing the workshop and for selling the compost and worm compost bins afterward.  Our instructor, Jesus Soto, and his assistant, Sandy Sardo, are the best!!

Hope to see you all at the next workshop!

One block SE of Figueroa, behind the Highland Theater 

Milagro Allegro is honored to announce that we have been awarded a grant by Farmlab, a project of the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation under the direction of Artist and Foundation Director Lauren Bon.  Farmlab is dedicated to the preservation and perpetuity of all living things.  Milagro will apply the grant funding to support our education programming as well as to structural improvements at the garden. A huge thank you to Farmlab for their recognition!