GYSD Spring Clean Up & Garden Event

We will kick off our community garden season with a Global Youth Service Day activity. In Michigan it is too early to plant seeds and seedlings in April. Therefore, we will be constructing 2 coldframe boxes that will allow us to extend the growing season by keeping young seeds/seedlings protected from the cold air of early spring. This will allow us to have fresh produce as early as mid May. One of these cold frames will be installed at our Washington St Educational Garden where we will plant various types of produce that can be used to make a "Community Salad". We plan to continue this garden throughout the summer offering a "Community Salad" on the 2nd Thursday of each month. Along with constructing the coldframe, we will be hosting a Seed Starting class and preparing the ground for planting in 2 community gardens in our downtown area. Last year we received enough produce from these gardens to not only feed the families of our club members, but also feed a few local homeless people who visited our gardens each week. And this is all made possible from donated materials and funds to keep 2 small educational gardens going. In 2010 our club also volunteered over 300 hours in larger community gardens within the Ionia County Community Food Network which sent fresh produce to more then 14 local food pantries. Global Youth Service Day is just the start of this project that will make a difference to our community thanks to the support and donations we recieve.