Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs

Seeds Balls, Watering Cans and Native Bees

My, oh my! We are a busy bunch of gardeners and ecologists at the Kavanah Garden. Last week, students and teachers from Robbins Hebrew Academy (Bayview) and Netivot HaTorah came out to help make seed balls, tend to our native bees, weed unwanted plants and of course, water the emerging seedlings.

Enjoy this wonderful photo journey of these awesome students working joyfully with nature at the Garden.

The Garden of Sages features sage plants from around the world with quotes from various sages.

Seed Balls are awesome!

We love getting our hands dirty!

Planting is fun!

Learning about native pollinators at the Kavanah Garden's Pollinator Garden.

Planting seeds.

Watering is the best!

Vermicomposting with Shoresh's lead Environmental Educator, Kyla.

JKs love the garden.

Precious.

Worms + Seeds + Soil= Awesome

"This was by far and away the best field trip I have ever gone on."

-Day school teacher

It takes a community to prepare a garden

Over the past few weeks, Shoresh's Kavanah Garden has been visited by many. Humans, mining bees, hawks, turkey vultures, an American Toad, a Leopard Frog, a Garder snake and many more species have come out to enjoy the beautiful garden. One of the many lessons we have learned over this time has been that it takes a community to plant and prepare a garden. People are the key actors in community gardens and we are so grateful for our ever growing team of volunteers who are helping to develop and grow the Kavanah Garden.

Jewish Environmental Educators Training

The humans have been particularly helpful. Three weeks ago we ran our first Jewish Environmental Educators Training at Shoresh's Kavanah Garden! Eight of us studied, planted, and prepped together for 3 days, learning how to integrating Jewish texts and teachings into garden-based activities and projects!

Philosophizing about the connections between Judaism, agriculture and sustainability.

Shoresh staff, Kyla Landon filling up our new raised beds.

Yoga? Dance? Neither! The Jewish Environmental Educators are spreading native wildflower seeds to help attract native pollinators to the Kavanah Garden with the help of some homemade seed balls!

Lag Ba'Omer

On Sunday May 30th, in honor of Lab Ba'Omer, 30 people came out and helped transform and prepare the garden for the 2011 growing season. Together we finished building 16 raised beds, planted Jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, radishes, nastursiums, lettuces in wheelchairs beds and made deer scares out of old CDS to keep deer from eating our gardens (sorry deer, we love you but we want to enjoy and share the fruits of our labor!).

Wheelchair accessible gardens are ready for planting lettuce and radishes!

Human-power pedaled mowing! There's no electricity at Shoresh's Kavanah Garden...thank goodness we have lots of volunteer muscle power to mow the open areas using our own push lawnmower!

Helping prepare our worm bins for another season of eating and pooping!

Lag Ba'Omer is the only day between Passover and Shavuot when traditionally observant Jews are permitted to cut their hair. So Marc took the opportunity to shave!

Yom Manual Labour

Yesterday we celebrated Yom Manual Labor at the Garden. Twenty eager workers came out to prepare the garden for the season. We assembled ten new raised beds, tilled the soil, pulled out some weeds, picked up garbage, turned the compost, fixed the shed and put up our beautiful new sign!

Ruvena, 2010 Kavanah Garden Intern, helped build our unnamed Scarecrow last year an placed him in the garden yesterday. We are accepting names for him. Cast your vote/suggestion here.

J Scott MacIvor, PhD Candidate at York University is conducting innovative research about native pollinators at the Kavanah Garden. For details on his project, visit http://www.tobee.ca/.

Meet our 2011 Interns: Jenny and Bronwyn. Welcome to the team ladies!

Alice meets a millipede.

Weeding, tilling, preparing, oh my!

Thank you to Transtek Graphic Systems for donating this wonderful sign to the garden!

Preparing last years in ground beds for our new raised beds.

Wind swept through the garden and lifted up our shed!

2010 End of Season Review

Below is our 2010 End of Season Review! It is incredible to reflect on how much we accomplished in just one year! Thank you to our incredible community of volunteers, participants, and supporters!

Shoresh - Looking Back on 2010

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Kavanah Garden Update: Closing up for Winter!

Hello everyone!
Well, it's officially November. Here's a look back on what happened at the Kavanah Garden this fall...

Checking in on the leafcutting bees that have taken up residence in our Pollinator Palace!

Harvesting tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and potatoes! In total this season we harvested over 400 pounds of produce that was donated to Ve'Ahavta. Ve'Ahavta's volunteer chefs will prepare our veggies into delicious soups and stews and distribute it to community members in need.

Bug hunting during our weekly CSA vegetable share pick up in partnership with the Cutting Veg Organic Farm.

Saving seeds from our 10 delicious tomato varieties! Looking forward to enjoying Green Zebra, Yello Pear, and Red Currant tomatoes again next season!

One of our Mammoth Russian Sunflowers - this one grew to be over 8 feet tall!

Grade 4 students from Leo Baeck made an amazing discovery during their fieldtrip to the Kavanah Garden - a praying mantis!

Pickling 101 Workshop in partnership with Makom. Participants each made their own jar of pickled cucumbers and helped make batches of pickled dilly beans and kimchi!

Putting up the walls on our Succah!

Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate the harvest festival of Sukkot! Together we took care of our worms, made a delicious batch of compost tea (delicious for plants, not for people!), decorated our Sukkah, and performed the mitzvah of shaking the lulav and etrog!

Our final harvest! Two of our six beautiful pumpkins!

In the last few weeks we have put a lot of energy into preparing the Kavanah Garden for winter. We added manure and finished compost from our composter to all of the beds (to add nutrients back to the soil which will feed next year's veggies), we mulched all of the beds (to keep the creatures and critters that live in the soil warm over the winter), we cleaned and packed away all of our tools and trellises, we took a deep breath and gave ourselves a pat of the back...what a season! Thank you to the countless community members who made our second season so incredible! There may be frost on the ground now, but before you know it spring will be here and the Kavanah Garden will be open for another season of growth!

Wishing you all a restful and restorative winter!

Kavanah Garden Harvest Underway

Summer is drawing to a close which means we're gearing up for the high holidays and the return of school-groups to the garden! The past couple of months have been extremely hot, but with the help of our dedicated volunteers and countless trips down to the stream, our plants have pushed through! And while Sukkot, the harvest festival, doesn't begin for another few weeks, our harvest is well underway. Here are some photos of what's been growing in our space (plant and critter alike) and what's already been harvested.