Our celebration on January 5 was a wonderful way to wrap up our 12 years in the garden. Susan wrote a wonderful homage to the garden and the gardeners and I’m sharing it here: Dear Gardeners. I just wanted to thank you all again for the lovely gifts and acknowledgement at our gathering- that was so touching.  And for the food and drinks and for your presence there.  Looking back over what we accomplished was such a good thing to do. Thanks to Debra for chronicling all of our efforts over the years, maintaining the website and leading the charge with clarity and focus. Your steady le ..read more

A photo essay of friendship and accomplishment ..read more

After 12 wonderful years creating and nurturing the garden, our community, and our relationships to each other, the core gardeners at RCG are turning the garden back over to the City of Seattle Urban Food Systems, a division of Seattle Parks and Recreation. We’re really proud of what we did here in the last decade plus, but have lots of other things going on in our lives as well as starting to feel our age (at least some of us). The garden needs some major infrastructure work to make it able to be productive, given the location under the majestic (and very thirsty) poplar trees, and so the Cit ..read more

Starting Wednesday June 8, and through the end of August, we’ll be gardening on Wednesdays from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. Join us and share the harvest ..read more

From March through May we’ll be holding Ravenna Community Garden Work Parties on Sundays from 1-3 PM. We’d love to have neighbors come join us to work together and share the harvest! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY, just come and learn and see how the garden grows. Come when you can, and bring your family and friends! We’ll let folks know about a possible change of time to earlier or later when June rolls around and the days get hotter ..read more

We started our official gardening season (YEAR 12!!!) with a nice day for being at the garden! We transplanted lots of little lettuces and kales that were started late last summer and made it through the winter, and put them in our new poplar-proof growing set up that we worked hard to create in January and February. Hopefully the little ones will thrive! Lots of starts from our too crowded late summer plantings We also thinned out the strawberries, and started turning over the “green manure” cover crop we planted last fall, and made a plan for re-doing our aging irrigation system to deliver t ..read more

It’s been a busy winter! RCG Gardeners were awarded a Small Sparks Neighborhood Matching Grant to experiment with ways to live peacefully with our majestic neighbors, the poplar trees that line NE 68th St. We’re doing two different treatments, one with a tall bed and one with a short bed, with basically the same strategy. The first step was to dig out the soil (and find the huge roots that have filled up the beds), and then fill the bottom layer with crushed rock, packed down tight. TAMPING IS REALLY HARD WORK! Over that we’ve put pond-liner, which is a heavy duty plastic sheeting, with an und ..read more

Kathi, Ellen and I worked in the garden today, and unfortunately discovered considerable poplar roots in bed 11. See the attached photos. It’s the bed that had garlic, and has a bamboo barrier but the poplars are growing right outside of it and have invaded the whole bed. The root Kathi is holding was on the opposite side of the bed as the poplar sprouts are, and we found very dry depleted soil throughout the whole bed.  Nevertheless, we dug out a lot of the roots, turned in a few bags of compost, applied some fertilizer, watered the bed very thoroughly and went ahead and planted some li ..read more

Just a couple of us there this evening, but wanted to let folks know that THE TOMATOES ARE COMING ON! We picked some but there are more that are almost ready – all sizes and varieties – so come and get them over the week!! There are also a lot of eggplants and hot peppers, so those should be scooped up, too. I don’t think the eggplants will be getting much bigger, if at all, so no need to wait. Maybe next week we can see what that enormous pot of potatoes has hidden in there, too! We planted spinach, arugula, lettuce, escarole, radicchio, cress and orach in both the new pots in bed 7, as well ..read more

Starting SEPTEMBER 5 our Work Parties will be SUNDAYS from 11 AM to 1 PM. That’s it, just every SUNDAY starting in SEPTEMBER from 11 AM to 1 PM. Easy to remember, fun to do. Hope to see you there ..read more