Ballona Institute, August 4

BALLONA WETLANDS

...an environmental treasure in our own back yard 

Photo of Great Horned Owl by Jonathan Coffin

You may have heard about the 600+ acres of the Ballona Wetlands just to the south and west of Mar Vista. But have you visited this wild habitat where coyote and the beautiful and rare White Tailed Kite hunt?

Drop by the Green Tent on Sunday, August 4, to learn more about these fragile and beautiful wetlands, which are a mosaic of different habitats: seasonal ponds, wet meadows, salt pannes, sand dunes, prairie grassland and more!

Photo of Coyote by Jonathan Coffin

 Biologist Roy Van de Hoek (perhaps you know him from the Feathers & Foliage walks in Mar Vista or have seen his Blue Bird houses in our trees) and and Marcia Hanscom, Executive Director of the Ballona Institute will be on hand to talk with you. Ballona Institute is known as "The Voice for nature on the Los Angeles Coast."

Learn about Ballona Institute's nature walks and community-engaged restoration opportunities. Ballona Wetlands presents a great chance to show your kids what all our green efforts are working to save in their own backyard.

Photo of one of the historical sloughs at 
Ballona Wetlands by Marcia Hanscom

Watch this video to see what treasures this area protects:
http://www.celebrateballona.com/.

Master Gardeners, July 28

The UC/Cooperative Extension LA County Master Gardeners return to the Green Tent with seeds and plants on Sunday July 28. Find out more about theirr Grow LA Victory Garden classes, a series of four Saturdays teaching you the basics of gardening -- and, hopefully, helping to create new friends and community in the bargain (which these classes are)! Take one or all.

Our cooler weather has impacted the germination rates of some of the seeds the Master Gardeners planted, so they'll bring along those that have come up as well as some additional veggies from Merrihew's  Sunset Gardens Nursery. Here's what they succeeded in growing:

 

Heirloom Lemon Cucumber. Great fresh or pickled. Easy to grow. A true heirloom whose vigorous vines bear abundant crunchy cukes the size and shape of lemons. Flavor is mild and sweet.

Sugar Baby Watermelon. Big yields in less space.  Harvest in 73 days. Compact vines bear extra sweet 6-8 inch melons up to 10 lbs. Very early. Incredibly sweet! Small seeds.

Delicata Honey Boat Winter Squash. Sweet as honey. Perfect size for 1 or 2 servings. Rich, dark orange flesh.  Winter squash stores well for several months.  What better way to enjoy summer sunshine in the depths of winter.

Quinoa (pronounced “keen-wa”). An ancient, nutritious food native to the mountains of South America. Seeds have a nutty flavor and can be cooked, roasted or ground into flour.  Young leaves are edible too. Grows best in climates with warm days and cool nights.  That’s us!

Remember to bring your empty six-packs if you have any you don't  need. Master Gardeners will use them to grow seedlings for us.  A great way to recycle/reuse/reduce!

Compost Teana, July 14

WHAT'S AERATED COMPOST TEA? 

Come learn when Compost Teana visits the Green Tent on Sunday, July 14th.

Compost is your soil's best friend. It's easy to make and it is a gardener's gold. Aerated compost tea is a way to increase and disseminate the beneficial biology found in compost. It's a powerful tool in the organic gardener's toolbox which can 

• Reduce compaction and increase fertility in the soil
• Break up thatch in turf grass
• Enhance disease suppression on plants
• Increase fruit production

Compost Teana will bring a couple of different consumer model compost tea brewers for people to see. 

Compost Teana's Organic Landscapes has a compost tea service, as well as sustainability consultations, landscape design and composting workshops. 

Seed Library of Los Angeles, July 7

Safeguarding Our Seeds

The Seed Library of Los Angeles facilitates growing open-pollinated seeds among Los Angeles residents. It is building a library of these seeds and educating all gardeners how to save seeds while creating a community of seed-saving gardeners.

Purple Maize

In doing this, it is preserving a genetic treasure, traditionally passed from generation to generation, and ensuring that multinational corporations do not gain a monopoly on our food supply and destroy this vital resource against hunger. It is safeguarding these seeds as viable alternatives against genetically engineered food, making certain that a portion of our food supply is wholesome and GMO free.

  

The Seed Library is the continuation of the sacred trust passed from parent to child to grandchild of these seeds and its members understand their role in this pan-generational dance. Learn how to be a part of this wonderful and vital enterprise that allows an individual to fight back against the untested technology of GMOs.

Corn Pollination

David King is the Founding Chair of the Seed Library of Los Angeles, a three year old organization that already has over 600 members and a library of over 300 varieties of seed and is the Gardenmaster of The Learning Garden on the grounds of Venice High School, one of our neighborhood's best source for horticultural information.

Plastic Bag Ban Celebration, June 30

LA Passed a Plastic Bag Ban...

...and we're celebrating

On Tuesday, June 25, the Los Angeles City Council gave final approval to a Plastic Bag Ban. It applies to those "t-shirt" bags used for groceries. It's a hard-fought victory for the environment, and the Mar Vista community helped make it happen.

Los Angeles joins 76 other California cities and counties that already have plastic bag bans and becomes the biggest city in the country to ban free plastic grocery bags.

How do you remember to bring your reusable bags? What do you do when you forget? Share your ideas at the Green Tent and get a nifty  MVCC reusable bag. 

Do you have excess reusable bags? Please bring them for the Mar Vista Farmers' Market bag-sharing bin.

Wondering how to cope without the free plastic bags? Stop by the Green Tent. We can help.

Just want to celebrate and talk about what's next? Please stop by. We'd love to chat.

UCCE Master Gardeners, June 23

Seeds, Seedlings and Advice

The UC/Cooperative Extension LA County Master Gardeners are back at The Green Tent to answer your questions, sympathize with your failures and encourage further successes -- and to help you with that, they'll let you take a free plant and some free packets of seeds. As always they need six packs to plant more for you each month -- please drop them by if you've just planted up a storm and no longer need them.  A great way to recycle/reuse/reduce!

Here's what they're bringing this month:

A Garden Bean two pack which (if both came up) includes:

1. Yellow Wax Bush Bean, buttery smooth flavor. Use fresh or freeze. Hardy, prolific plants.  Harvest in 55 days!

2.  French Filet Bush Green Bean, truly gourmet beans of delicate flavor and superb quality.  Harvest in 54 says!

Armenian Burpless Cucumber. Gorgeous light green, thin skin, never bitter and more heat tolerant than most cucumbers! Nearly seedless.

Pickle Cucumber. The best cucumber available for pickles. Solid, crisp, interior is perfect for 1 ½ “ to 5” pickles. Of course great for salads too. 

Early Summer Yellow Crookneck Squash. High yielding and easy to grow. Eat fresh in salads or sauté, bake or freeze. Pick at 4” to 6” long. Harvest in 50 days! Harvest often to keeps plants producing.

Waltham Butternut Winter Squash. Hard shelled, stores well. Golden-orange and meaty inside with few seeds. Ideal for baking, boiling, mashing or stuffing.  Harvest in 90 days. If you plan to store this squash into the Fall, cut with 2” of stem. Store in a cool, dry location.

Local Artist James Sullivan, June 16

USING RECYCLED MATERIALS TO CREATE ART & AWARENESS

Kids and adults are invited to make handmade paper at the Green Tent this Sunday. 

It will be wet and messy and fun! A great way to celebrate Fathers Day.

Artist James Sullivan is bringing tubs of homemade pulp, made from old junk mail, wrapping paper, lint, leaves & flower petals, seeds, and other odds and ends. You'll dip small screens into it and press the pulp into wonderful, one-of-a-kind sheets of paper.

The focus is on repurposing and reusing any local items close at hand. You don't need to buy things to be creative & have fun! 

Come early. James needs to leave around 12:30.

James is primarily an abstract painter. He's done a lot of printmaking as well as craft and building projects that recycle/repurpose. Click here to see more examples of his work.

What's Happening June 9

Triple Header at the Green & MVCC Tents

Be sure to stop by the Green Tent and our next-door-neighbor, the Mar Vista Community Council Tent, this Sunday, June 9, at the Mar Vista Farmers' Market. We have THREE guests! Scroll down for details.

Andy Shrader visits the Green Tent to talk about a proposed Plastic Bag Ban. Click here for more information.

LA Metro visits the MVCC Tent with lots information about riding those big red buses around Los Angeles, plus give-aways. Click here for more information.

An EXPO Line rep at the MVCC Tent has all the answers on the EXPO Line extension and how to ride the Metro. Click here for more information.

Andy Shrader, June 9

Banning the Bag in LA

Andy Shrader shares his knowledge about the environmental costs of plastic bags and the proposed City of Los Angeles plastic bag ban at the Green Tent.

Every year, 6 million plastic bags are wasted in Los Angeles. They end up in our land fills or - even worse - floating around our environment.

One ton of plastic bags = 11 barrels of oil. Animals often mistakenly ingest plastic bags, which clog their intestines and result in death by starvation. Fish and birds frequently get entangles in plastic bags, become incapacitated and die.

The Los Angeles CIty Council considers the ban on Wednesday, June 18. Highly-paid plastics industry lobbyists are trying to defeat it. Stop by the Green Ten and learn what you can do to help it pass. Click here for more information. And if you have some surplus reusable bags, please bring them for the MVCC Leave a Bag/Take a Bag exchange.

Skanska-Rados, June 9

EXPO Line

When will the EXPO Line extension to Santa Monica be completed? Where will the stations be? Will there be parking? How do I ride the Metro? Can I use cash? What's a TAP card - and how do I get one? Is there a discounted rate for seniors - and how do I apply?

Get answers to these questions and more when a Skanska-Rados rep visits the Mar Vista Community Council Tent. 

Skanska-Rados Joint Venture (SRJV) is the the design-build contractor for Expo Line Project construction.