Earth Fest!

Saturday, April 18th, Sprout was out in force representing organic agriculture at the annual Earth Fest on Knowlton green. Locals, faculty and students alike were out enjoy the environmental vendors and activities on a blazing spring day. Sprout took orders for our highly-sought after artistic organic cotton t-shirts and sold baked goods and tea from last year's crop. Feastable tickets were also up for sale, but people were not biting! We've got to step up our advertising and get people to invest in tickets for this amazing day of local food, speakers, and creative hands-on activities! Thanks to all who helped table!

be my honeybee

Sprout field trip to Stuart Woronecki's honeybee farm

Sunday, April 29th, Sprout members braved the backroads of Connecticut to be initiated into the world of beekeeping with music professor Stuart Woronecki at his farm in Hanover. We drove in through the old stone wall, greeted by two dogs and a fleet of children. Stuart had just driven up from Georgia the day before with 60,000 bees to replenish his hives. We had the opportunity to help him transfer them from the travel boxes into the hives he had prepared. Everyone (even the more timid members of our group) got a chance to place the queen bee's sugar-capped cage into last year's honeycomb inside the hive, and with a sharp tap to gather the sleepy bees at the bottom of the box, slip off the cover and flip it upside down over the opening into the hive. Bees were swarming around us constantly, buzzing close but rarely making contact. It made a comfortable, low hum in the air while tried to handle the bees as smoothly as Stuart (he learned in his youth from his neighbor, an elderly man born in 1896!). As the day warmed up and more bees started getting active we backed away from the hives and Stuart and his son donned protective suits to keep working. He also showed us the honey room in the barn where the culmination of all this activity is harvested. The details of bees' lives are fascinating-- here are a few facts we learned from Stuart:

*A queen bee's natural life cycle is 3-4 years, while the worker bees only live an average of 2-3 weeks (except in the fall, when the queen bee feeds her workers a different hormone and most of them live through the winter!)

*The queen emits a strong pheremone which quickly permeates the hive and all of the bees within. They can smell her particular odor on each other to know who's family and who's not. If the queen bee dies without a replacement the bees will find a new hive. If the hive gets too large the queen bee will nurture another queen and the hive will split into two.

*The queen only mates once in her life, then stores the semen to fertilize new larvae at will.

*Bees are a very 'hygienic' insect--they will clean their own hives and eject the unwanted debris.

the hives!

*When they collect nectar they mix it with an enzyme before depositing it in the wax honeycomb. It's very liquidy at first and must evaporate until there is almost no water content. The water is evaporated by the heat that the bees produce in the hive, easily reaching temperatures of 110 degrees on warm days.

*Beekeepers know when the honey is ready to be harvested because the bees cover over the comb with a wax seal. Then the honeycomb slats are put in the 'honey-spinner' where the centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) force extracts the honey and it is drizzled into jars.

a honeycomb slate

*100 hives (the number Stuart keeps) can produce six to sevent thousand pounds of honey every summer!

*The reason very young children are warned against eating honey is because it contains trace amounts of botulism.

*Honey is sometimes used as an antibiotic because of its dessicant properties.

We lingered on the lawn, drinking in the sunny day and the exuberant chickens sprinting across the grass. The call of schoolwork sounded distant behind the hum of the honeybees. We reluctantly said our goodbyes.

As soon as the flowers start blooming Stuart will be transporting two hives to the northern border of the Sprout garden! (We finally got the official go-ahead from Ulysses Hammond) so they will be pollinating our garden all summer and producing honey! Zoe will be working with Stuart over the summer to make sure the queens are happy and all is well in the hives.

Sugar Maple Tapping Begins!

It is time. For the second year, Sprout! has begun to tap sugar maple trees on campus in order to make our own, home-collected, maple syrup. This past week, four Sprout! members, Ian Phillips, Stephen Rossiter, Hans Eysenbach, and Eric Dooley-Feldman covered the CC campus scouting out new and old sugar maples to tap. So far five trees have been tapped and we are gathering more supplies to expand our production. After we collect enough sap, we will boil it down to make our very own Sprout! maple syrup. Yum!

Real Food Summit 2009

Wow! What a weekend! February 21st and 22nd marked the second annual Real Food Summit, sponsored by the Real Food Challenge. The Real Food Challenge is a nation-wide campaign and network aimed at offering students the chance to make connections and learn from one another how to increase the amount of fair, local, and organic food on their campuses. This past weekend was full of a variety of workshops and speakers addressing topics such as farm worker rights, food bill policies, sustainable dining systems, recycling of organic waste, and much, much more. Sprout! brought 9 members to the event, one short of the max per school. All of us were extremely excited to meet such passionate, like minded students, and look forward to the event next year!

Nearing The Big Cold

We're making our way through the transition to the cold season. We planted the rest of the garlic and lined the outsides of the coldframes with mulch for added insulation. Unfortunately, we had lost some arugula the week before when a cold snap penetrated the coldframes. Double-layers of plastic are in order, although they would have been too hot earlier in November!
Planning is in action to bring honey-bees to campus, and it's looking promising! On another successful note, we have received approval to sell food at Fiddleheads next fall!
In the interest of celebrating food, hard work and good company, we held a Sprout dinner for our own in Earth House. As you can see by the wide smiles a good time was had by all and we'll be holding another shindig next semester.

Garden Update

This Sunday we ripped out the last of the eggplants and the peppers. We also planted some more mizuna, spinach, and tatsoi (which we were so kindly given the seeds of from Tobacco Road Farm last weekend). We also set up three more cold frames, which are looking better and better each time. Bring on the frost!

Winter Growing Workshop at Tobacco Road Farm

Last Sunday, some of our sprout members had the wonderful opportunity to visit and be given an interactive tour of Tobacco Rd. Farm, which was sponsored by NOFA CT. It was an unbelievably beautiful and inspiring. We were not only given some seeds for our garden, but learned some incredible organic gardening techniques that we can apply to our garden. Below is a brief recap of some of the information we picked up:

• use high quality compost with significant worm activity
• when testing soil, one's best bet is to add nitrogen to the soil to improve its fertility
• tilled beds with mulch filling are best for keeping a successful winter crop
• when covering crops with plastic, use a double layer (if one layer is damaged, the other will protect it) and after it rains, recover and vent the ends
• covering crops with a plastic tunnel can create an atmosphere that is 35 degrees warmer on a sunny day and about 5 degrees warmer in the evening
• even when it snows, the plastic tunnel will survive the elements by becoming a quasi-igloo for the crops
• chickens are wonderful for eating crop residue and providing nutrients for garden soil
• bare soil is not good, it is best to cover it with mulch, greens, or cover crop
• first cut hay has lots of grass seeds and cannot be used with slow growing crops (such as onions or leeks)
• insects and disease are usually a product of the soil
• lettuces are least productive over winter, it is best to seed in early December for a Spring Harvest along with beets and carrots
• dandelion and garlic are great winter crops (low maintenance)
• liquid nutrients include: raw milk, maple syrup, liquid kelp, and molasses
• wasps aid in pest (caterpillar) control by feeding on flowering and killing caterpillars in the spring brassicas
• to curb the flea beetle problem, over-wintered brassicas so they can become more resistant and save the seeds & don't seed when the plant should be flowering or the problem will be perpetuated
• only seed broccoli or cabbage after the summer solstice
• most importantly, keep crops in their natural system

Harvestfest

This past Harvestfest weekend was quite a success for us. We sold Misha's home-made strawberry-rhubarb jam, Sprout! organic cotton t-shirts, tea & herb bundles from the garden, and baked goods to the Connecticut College community, making over $ 1,300! If you weren't able to make it, we will be ordering more t-shirts and selling our tea at the Blue Camel Café. Send us an email at sprout@conncoll.edu if you are interested in ordering a shirt.

BRUMALIA!

October 18th marked the first ever Brumalia, a fall festival organized by a collection of environmentally oriented clubs and organizations on campus, including REC, Spokespeople, SAVE, and SAC. Sprout! organized and prepared a local, organic, and delicious dinner for the event. The meal included soup from New London restaurant Mange Tout, grilled veggies and mashed potatoes from White Gate Farm in East Lyme, a pasta dish from Pauls Pasta in Groton, home-baked goods from Earth house, and hot cider from Clyde's Cider Mill in Mystic. Over 160 people were served at the event!


After the dinner, an amazing evening music, fire-juggling, step-dancing followed. Thanks to everyone who helped make Brumalia such a success!

Preparing for Fall & Winter Crops

This week we cleared the back quadrants of the garden (harvested 20 pounds of remaining potatoes) and planted winter rye for cover crop. We also harvested the tomatoes, which are struggling as fall approaches. The tomatillos are fairing a bit better, and we except to have a few more tomatillo harvests. We also placed Irish Spring Soap on the garden fence and sprayed a concoction egg, spoiled milk, and cinnamon around the garden periphery in hopes to deter curious and hungry deer from entering the garden. 

Garden Update

We had another beautiful day in the garden on Sunday. Things are looking much changed from only a couple weeks ago. We've been pulling out many summer plants and putting in new ones for the Fall and Winter. We are planting many lettuces and cover crops for the colder seasons, expanding on our selection from last year.



Though it may be officially Fall, we are still harvesting Summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, and many others. We've been delivering to Dining Services and also to Catering for events that they have been holding this school year.

We've got many other projects on the horizon. Stay tuned right here for updates.

4th Annual Sproutfest! featured on CC webpage

Click on the title above to see an article about Sproutfest! on the college's webpage. Stephanie Blennerhassett '11 is featured in the article about our event this past Thursday.

The event was a tremendous success. Many faculty and staff attended. It was orchestrated by Steph, a chair of Sprout, and she was aided by many Sprout members eager to help cook.

All attendees greatly enjoyed the hors d'oeuvre offerings, many asking for recipes. After eating, Misha Johnson, Eric Dooley-Feldman, and Steph gathered attendees to tell them about Sprout. And afterward a tour of the garden was given.

September is in full swing!

Greetings. All is well here at the Sprout! In the first two weeks, weeks since the beginning of school we have done a tremendous amount in the garden and are now working on a host of different projects outside of the garden. Students are showing up in larger numbers and with more  interest than ever. We had almost 50 people at our first meeting last week and almost 20 at our workdays, which is tremendous. We are now working to form into subcommittee/work-groups to better tackle all of these projects that we have.

In the garden we've been doing a lot of weeding and harvesting. And now we are going to start pulling plants and putting more emphasis on Fall and Winter crops such as peas and lettuces. Luckily Hurricane Hanna wasn't as bad as predicted this past weekend, so there was no severe damage to crops. The majority of the damage came to the sunflowers.

Workday #1: What a great day!

Today was incredible to say the least. We had a great crew come out for the tour and garden workday. We worked for a couple hours and harvested over 40lbs of vegetables (our largest amount ever), and we were able to weed and organize many other areas of the garden. We did so much in just two hours. It makes a huge difference when we have a large group out there. Great work!

If you weren't able to make this workday, have no fear. We have workdays multiple times every week, and I'm usually out there every day of the week, if you want to stop by. We'll keep you updated through emails about wordays etc.

Back to School Update!

Welcome back Sprout!

The garden is in full swing at the moment. We're harvesting more than ever. Almost every day we've been delivering some assortment of tomatoes, squash, basil, parsley, and cucumbers with MANY MORE fruits on the way! We're still going after the woodchucks, insect pests, and powdery mildew, but the garden looks very happy!

We have many events lined up including one today. A Learning Lunch hosted by Sprout!, Dining Services, and the Health Peer Educators. It is at 12:45 in the 1973 Room in Harris. Come to learn about your resources for food on and off campus as well as tips for eating healthy. There will be more events like this coming up this semester.

The New London Farm-to-City Initiative had its second meeting last week. With another great attendance we were able to keep our momentum going. We have set up a website http://nlfarm2city.weebly.com and now a Google Group to serve as a central point for our information gathering and communication. If you would like to get involved or have questions about this initiative please email sprout@conncoll.edu.

New London Farm-to-City Forum #2

The initiative will be having our second meeting this coming Wednesday at 6pm at the New London Public Library. We had a tremendously successful meeting in July and we're very excited to keep this momentum going into our next meeting.

Click here to check out our newly constructed website for more information about this initiative and our next meeting.

Jiǔcài (Garlic Chives)

On Monday, Aug 4, 2008, I planted Garlic Chives, also known as jiǔcài, Chinese chives, Chinese leek, and ku chai. The scientific name is Allium tuberosum. The plant has straight thin leaves that are some where between garlic and onion leaves. It gives off a very distinct smell, and in its adult hood tends to be very fiberous.

Jiǔcài is used in many chinese dishes, dumplings, soups, chinese pancakes, fish, chive pockets, fried dishes, because of its distinct flavor.

David Wu
Assistant Gardener
Enviromental Sustainability Intern
Goodwin-neiring Center

Week 9 Update

The garden is looking great right now. We finally had strong rains this past weekend. It probably totaled a handful of inches. I haven't had to water all week.

The woodchucks are not gone. I found another one in there yesterday eating the kale, which had been starting to recover. The traps are still set and I also have the surveillance camera still set up to see when the animals come in, and if there are deer.

Vegetables now going to Harris: radishes, turnips, tomatoes, watermelon, peas, beans, cucumbers, summer crookneck squash, zucchini, basil, parsley, and nasturtium flowers. More coming soon!

Clockwise from top left: purple podded peas, a sunflower and potatoes, cherry tomatoes, onion.

The New London Farm-to-City Forum on Wednesday night went very well. We had over 30 people show up from all of the stakeholder groups that we were hoping for. We had very productive discussions and advice from CitySeed as well. We will be posting more information including a video of the meeting soon.