Category Archives: Posts

Our fund raiser raised over $1500 donated from around 100 participants. The ICG wants to thank Chloe, Cynthia, Marie and many others for their hard word in making the fund raiser a success.

The ICG (a storm water education partner) invites you to attend a Stormwater Education Workshop on Friday, March 13 at the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex on the campus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

On Sept. 20 and 27, IUP students, ICG members and others planted several cover crops including winter rye, oats, forager radishes, Austrian Winter Peas as part of our efforts to add nitrogen and other minerals to the soil. Today the crops are all growing nicely and give the garden a nice late fall look.

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Master Gardeners harvested, arranged and distributed produce from the ICG garden
at the Food Bank on 10/22/2014.

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Mastergardeners Kay Snyder and Lisa Mccann orient American Language Institute Students to the ICG.
Students harvested carrots and other crops for the food bank, added organic matter and planted cover crops on some community beds..

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Over 50 IUP students, friends of the ICG, Master Gardeners, and others met at the ICG today to
harvest, pull up harvested plants, loosen the soil, add manure and compost, add sulfur to bring the PH level of plot soil down, pull weeds, and plant winter cover crops such as oats, rye, and others. The ICG staff want to thank everyone for participating. The final slide in the series shows the rapid growth of the cover crops one month after!

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Our calendar has now repeating meetings every third and forth Thursday once a month. We do not have two meetings a month. Meetings are every 3rd Thursday in a Month. We had some confusion because typically the 3rd Thursday is the second to the last Thursday in a month, but not always!

We will be doing fall clean-up and soil building at the Indiana Community Garden the next two Saturdays, September 20 and 27, from 9 to 12 noon. We will clean up the beds, amend soil, add compost, spread mulch, and plant cover crops. We also need tools (labeled with your name): a mantis tiller, wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, and assorted hand tools for working up the soil, weeding, removing spent plant material, etc.

Different activities of the very busy MasterGareners, and members of the IUP Food and Nutrition Department.

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The Taste and Tour sponsored by the Friends of the Parks at the ICG was again a success. Master Gardeners and other members of the ICG provided demonstrations on bats and building a bat house, rain barrels and water conservation, seed preservation and creating seed balls, vermi and regular composting, native plants, and many other topics. Jason again provided attendees with delicious treats prepared from ICG harvests.

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Taste the Four Seasons of the Home Garden, 8/09/2014 at the ICG.
Tour the four seasons with your taste buds at the Indiana Community Garden. Learn the key times to plant, pick and preserve produce while sampling nutritious recipes for a healthy lifestyle. Pre-register at 724-463-8636.

About 50 Students visited the Indiana Community for lessons on bats, the roles of worms in composting, how to water and plant properly, and how a rain gauge works. The students also enjoyed a scavenger hunt. Several Master Gardeners and other ICG staff helped with the programs.

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Please join us for soil Prep Days on May 26 (Monday) from 11 to 1 or Wednesday, May 28 rom 4:30-6:30. We will have a Mantis mini tiller available in the garden. You can use it to cultivate the soil in your plot or help prepare the community plots for planting. We will also have some long-handled cultivator tools available. Plots will then be ready for application of a 6 inch layer of compost on top.

The compost piles are on the paved walkway near the Mack Park entrance. there is a wheelbarrow in the garden pavilion for hauling. Hope to see you on Planting Day, even if you are not able to come earlier.

Planting Day is on May 31. See the flyer below.

[gview file=”http://indianacommunitygardens.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/plantday.pdf”]

Master Gardener, ICG blogger, photographer, and historian Lisa McCann received the Anthropology Chairperson’s award for distinguished service to the community during commencement on May 10, 2014. Among Lisa’s many projects was organizing activities for the “Day of the Dead” festivities at IUP. (see a previous post).

Master Gardeners, our local Penn State Extension Agent, and IUP students worked together to install our first bat house. The house was purchased from the Organization for Bat Conservation. It is designed to absorb heat, provide proper ventilation and house up to 300 bats. Bats help humans by eating mosquitoes, destroying insects that eat crops, and pollinating fruits and nuts. They also help spread seeds in the rain forest in tropical climates.

This bat house can hold up to 300 insect-eating bats!

5 things to know about bats

Bats eat lots of bugs.
Bats control populations of beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other crop and garden pests. The bats in a single bat house can prevent more than 33 million rootworm infestations over the course of a single summer. The agricultural pest control services provided by bats in the USA has been estimated at 4 and 50 billion dollars a year.

Bats are not dangerous
There are many myths about bats. They are not aggressive and do not get tangled in hair. Like all mammals, bats can contract rabies. Never touch a bat. Although rabies is rare in bats, if you see a bat up close- do not touch it!

Bats are diverse
There are 1,200+ species of bats, making up about 25% of all mammals. Pennsylvania has 11 species, which all eat insect pests. The largest bat in PA is the Hoary Bat, which weighs up to 1.5 ounces and has beautiful multi-colored fur. The small tricolored bat (seen above) weighs only a bit more than a nickel. The red bat is bright orange and migrates south for the winter.

Bats are fascinating
Bats are social and intelligent animals. All Pennsylvania bats use sophisticated biosonar to find insects in the dark. Most bats eat insects, but other bats around the world feed on fruit, nectar, and even other animals like fish. Bats are important pollinators and seed dispersers.

Bats are in trouble
Bats are being extirpated from Eastern North America by an invasive fungus called White-nose Syndrome that first appeared in the USA in 2007. The epidemic is considered the worst wildlife disease outbreak in North American history. The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates a “99% decline overall” in bat populations because of the disease.

For more information:
Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org)
Organization for Bat Conservation (www.batconservation.org)
Bat Conservation and Management (www.batmanagement.com)

Slideshow for pictures of the installation of the bat house

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Indiana, PA :: News from Indiana Gazette:: Indiana County News :: Students Get Early Start In Community Garden

by JAMES J. NESTOR on May 05, 2014 10:50 AM
Members of Caring About Latino Student Achievement worked on a plot at the Community Garden at Mack Park on Sunday.

From left are Nancy Lopez-Sosa, a freshman anthropology major, and Guadalupe Ortiz-Cortez, a freshman political science major, both of Kennett Square; and Matt Albolino, a freshman international relations major from Pittsburgh.

They were planting lettuce, broccoli and celery, and plan to add more to the plot as the weather improves. (James J. Nestor/Gazette photo)

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On April 28, several Master Gardeners and ICG volunteers distributed vegetable seeds, tomato and pepper plants, onion sets, and seed potatoes for the Seedling Project at Zion Lutheran Church. This project is a partnership between the Indiana County Community Action Program, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and Zion Lutheran Church. This project seeks to encourage people to grow their own food and supplement foods from the Food Bank with fresh home grown product. We distributed instructions on how to grow and tend several plants and buckets with soil for recipients who do not have space for a garden.

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We want to thank the nearly 130 volunteers that made our Spring Cleanup and Construction on Sunday April 13 and Saturday April 26 a success. We accomplished many things– we topped all the raised beds with new soil, mulched our apple trees, build new raised beds around the gas well fence for climbing plants, and finished many other tasks.

Here is our website for the latest information on the garden. You will see under the volunteer tab, all sorts of volunteer opportunities if you would like to be involved in the garden on a more regular basis.

www.indianacommunitygardens.org

Thank you so much for you interest and support.
Marie and the ICG team

The Pennsylvania Horticulure Society Awarded the Indiana Community Garden a Community Greening Award on November 7, 2013. This award recognizes regional sites where greening and beautification efforts take place in public spaces. The Society evaluates sites based on plant variety, design, use of space and horticultural practices. See the Thursday, Dec. 12 issue, page 8 for the Gazette article about the ICG.

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