SPRING AWAKENING 2025 Schedule

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  • Parade meet up 11:30 am at El Sol Brillante 522 E. 12th St between A & B
  • Get your costume together
  • Parade kicks off at NOON
  • Parade The parade route will go East on 12th St to Avenue C.
    South on Avenue C to 7th St.
    West on 7th St to Tompkins Square Park, parade through the park and exit on 9th St and Avenue B.
    The parade will feature with the marching band, Batala, stilt walkers and our tree goddess.
  • NOON Tabling on Avenue B between 7th & 9th Sts.
  • Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens (LUNGS)
  • Down To Earth Garden Bokashi Composting
  • East Village Community Coalition
  • Green Thumb
  • NYU Garden Flora & Fauna study information
  • Earth Celebrations
  • Lower East Side Girls Club
  • Seed Giveaway
  • 12:45pm Batalá drumline performance
  • 1pm Interactive Chalk Art
  • 1:30 PONY RIDES
  • 2pm Park Rangers Red Tailed Hawk Watch
  • 2:30 “Tilted Axes” Musical Performance
  • 2:45 Community Garden Tour
  • 3-7 pm LIVE MUSIC SERIES in 11th St Community Garden, 422 E.11th St, between First Ave and Avenue A
  • 3pm Stephanie M. Hall
  • 3:30 Gina Healy & Friends
  • 4pm Captain Ronzo and Heide
  • 5pm Ross Daisomont & Friends
  • 6:30 Kieran Murray

The Bokashi Method to Prep Your Soil 12/14/2024 Sat 1-4pm

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Garden plot 20 at El Sol Brillante from early winter through the start of spring: 12/31/2023, 2/25/2024, 3/10/2024, and 3/24/2024.

Saturday, December 14, 2024 
1 pm – 4 pm 
at Down to Earth Garden, 546 E 12th St (by Ave B) [map] 

We will cover application guidelines on the bokashi method for preparing your soil whether in late fall, during the winter, or early spring. 

We will make Activated EM (i.e., the bokashi microbes, aka bokashi spray) which is one of the main microbial applications to soil and organic matter (including fall leaves, plant clippings, twigs/branches, and food waste). 

Down to Earth Garden (a GreenThumb community garden) has had a combined bokashi composting system with El Sol Brillante since the fall of 2009. 

Co-sponsored by LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens), lungsnyc.org, and El Sol Brillante, elsolbrillante.org.

Non-Food-Waste Bokashi Gardening Workshop 11/23/2024 Sat 1-4pm

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Non-food-waste bokashi composting pile at East Side Outside Community Garden.

Saturday, November 23, 2024 
1 pm – 4 pm 
at Down to Earth Garden, 546 E 12th St (by Ave B) [map] 

How to use the bokashi microbes to improve your soil, as well as, do non-food-waste bokashi composting. 

Bring your own items (bottles and ingredients) and together we’ll make the bokashi ferments (Activated EM and/or EM•5). 
Bottle suggestions (type and size): 
– Type: seltzer water bottles (HDPE) since they are designed to handle the carbonation/gas pressure buildup. (Glass bottles are only recommended if an airlock can be used with it.) 
– Size: either 16.9 fl oz (500 ml), 1 liter (or 1 quart), or 2-liter bottle. 

Ingredients (% of the volume or per volume of the bottle): 
Activated EM: blackstrap molasses (5%), EM•1 Microbial Inoculant (5%), and sea salt (2 tsp/liter). 
EM•5: blackstrap molasses (5%), EM•1 Microbial Inoculant (5%), apple cider vinegar (5%), 40% alcohol (5%) (e.g., vodka, tequila, whiskey), garlic cloves (1 clove/liter), and hot spicy peppers (3 or more/liter, can more different kinds, should be cayenne or hotter peppers). 

We will make Activated EM (i.e., the bokashi microbes, aka bokashi spray) and the EM•5 foliar spray and show how to use them for gardening, plant care, soil improvement, and composting plant clippings, twigs and branches (without food waste). 

Down to Earth Garden (a GreenThumb community garden) has had a combined bokashi composting system with El Sol Brillante since the fall of 2009. 

Co-sponsored by LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens), lungsnyc.org, and El Sol Brillante, elsolbrillante.org. 

POSTER MAKING PARTY!!!

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WE are prepping for the Community Garden Rally on Monday with a poster making party this Friday, October 25 during the LUNGS CSA 4-7pm at DeColores Garden 311 E.8th St Btwn Aves B & C.

Bring your creativity we have canvas and supplies. Open to all!!

We are continue to collect signed petitions please bring any that you have to DeColores on Friday too.

Also there is an online version of the petition at Change.org HERE
 
 REMEMBER the RALLY IS MONDAY, OCTOBER 28 at noon on the steps of City Hall–SAVE THE GARDENS! Share your LOVE! Tell your fellow gardens! Spread the word, we need a good turnout to be heard.

Rally for the Gardens.

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We are standing up to protect our gardens on Monday, October 28 at noon on the steps of City Hall. Please come if you can. We need to be LOUD!LUNGS is coordinating a City-Wide rally with Green Guerillas, the New York Community Garden Coalition and the Elizabeth Street Garden.We are alarmed by the actions and intentions of the City administration in regard to our gardens.Our rally is in response to Mayor Eric Adams’ executive order 43 of August 21 requiring all city agencies to review their city owned and controlled land for potential housing development sites and in response to the Eviction Notice that Elizabeth Street Garden received on October 2.

Our community gardens are an integral to the health and well being of our neighborhoods. They are the glue that strengthens our community by bringing people together and providing a healthy, educational, active environment.In the 1960s and 1970s New York City abandoned low income communities. Buildings were allowed to burn, entire neighborhoods became moonscapes. But people, on their own, volunteering their time, converted the urban blight into community gardens. Creating a community garden is an act of self-determination. In marginalized communities, gardeners challenge one of the most dehumanizing consequences of poverty and unemployment — severely limited resources. In community gardens people experience a sense of liberation and empowerment. And, as community gardeners, we demand respect.

Since 1978, community gardeners and the Department of Parks and Recreation’s GreenThumb Program have enjoyed a fruitful relationship. Gardeners voluntarily give their time, labor, and money to be stewards of the City’s property and natural resources while GreenThumb has provided much needed organizational support.

Yet in 1996 a city-wide struggle ensued when then-Mayor Guiliani tried to sell hundreds of community gardens to developers.

Now we fear history is about to repeat itself.

In a comment on the Mayor’s E.O. 43, Sue Donoghue, Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, said: Adams’ “new executive order is an important step in addressing New York City’s affordable housing crisis. This effort ensures that we can carefully balance the need for housing with the thoughtful use of the valuable facilities under NYC Parks’ jurisdiction.” 

Community gardens signed a ten year license agreement with the city in 2022 but the wording imposed by the city states “ this License is terminable at will by the Commissioner in his or her discretion at any time, upon sixty (60) days written notice, and Licensee shall have no recourse of any nature whatsoever by reason of such termination.”

We are the biggest community garden program in the country — and yet we are not safe. We seek a permanent solution to the preservation of community gardens in New York City.

For eleven years The Elizabeth Street Garden has been trying to reach an agreement with the city government to insure its continued existence. The city has ignored over a million letters sent to the Mayor’s administration calling for the protection of Elizabeth Street Garden. Pragmatic alternative locations to the proposed housing have been offered, but the City remains intransigent.

The past tells us we have to be proactive. We cannot sit back and watch as our gardens are listed as available for development and Elizabeth Street Garden is destroyed. We’ve got to make some noise.

We demand that no community gardens be placed on a list of city properties for potential development and that Elizabeth Street Garden be preserved. This is our ongoing struggle, please join us.