Saturday, April 26, 2025, 12–4 pm
Avenue B between 7th & 9th Streets
Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York, NY
POSTPONED—LUNGS Spring Awakening 4/26/2025
MAYORAL FORUM ON COMMUNITY GARDENS
The Bokashi Method to Prep Your Soil 12/14/2024 Sat 1-4pm
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
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!!!
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.
| 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.     | ||
Día de los Muertos 10/26/2024 Sat 3-6pm
Campos Community Garden
644 E 12th St (between Ave B & Ave C)
Saturday, October 26, 2024, 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
The 13th Annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival continues
ReScheduled Festival LAST DAY–Closing PArty!!!
Sunday OCTOBER 6, 2024 — Details>>
Green Oasis Community Garden, 370 E 8th St (between Ave C & Ave D)
Sunday October 6,
2 pm. Poetry, Sparrow, the Truffles, Bob Holman, and provisional list.
Sun Oct 6, 4 pm. Mitchell Cheng [Green Oasis]
Sun Oct 6, 5 pm. Elliott Sharp [Green Oasis]
Sun Oct 6, 6 pm. Kid Java [Green Oasis]
KID JAVA is a NYC‑based band that plays “Blue Note Americana”, ie., music that is deeply indebted to the blues, but mix it up with other rootsy genres and often with a contemporary feel. Sometimes we’ll play a down-home traditional blues, other times more swing-oriented material, and then there is the New Orleans second-line or funk tune thrown in to keep things lively.
Sun Oct 6, 7 pm. Ray Santiago [Green Oasis]
Afro-Cuban Jazz, Ray Santiago is New York City based pianist, percussionist, singer, composer, arranger and band leader, active in the US Salsa scene from the early 1970s.
A Petition to Protect our Gardens
LUNGS is working in conjunction with the Green Guerillas and the New York City Community Garden Coalition to coordinate a Day of Action this Saturday 12-4pm at El Jardin del Paraiso, 710 E5th St between Aves B & C, you can also enter on E.4th St.
This Day of Action coincides with GreenThumb’s City-Wide Community Garden Harvest Fair at El Jardin.
Our purpose is to make a public statement supporting community gardens and our total opposition to the gardens being put on a list for development. The gardens are too important to lose, we must protect them for our families, ourselves and future generations.
On Saturday we will collecting signatures and making posters and signs to express our love for our community gardens. This is an all out effort, we are asking you to wear green on Saturday to show your support. We need to make our voices heard. We must be proactive.
We’ve been through this before. In 1996, Giuliani was mayor, and he tried to auction off every community garden across the city to developers. The gardens were listed by the city as empty lots. Gardeners mobilized city-wide, demonstrations, pranks, and arrests followed. We lost some gardens but ultimately prevailed.
In 2015 de Blasio proposed building housing on over 40 community garden sites. After fierce advocacy, 36 of these gardens were preserved.
Losing green space to buildings is obscene. This is not a housing issue, this is a developers scheme. Once an open public space in NYC is gone, it will be lost forever.
We are supporting the work of GreenThumb, and welcome the chance to meet gardeners from across the city.. But our message to Mayor Adams is Hands Off Our Community Gardens!
Please Print this out and circulate, we need this Saturday at El Jardin del Paraiso
Preserve Our Gardens, Protect Our Future: Tell Mayor Adams to Stand with Community Gardens!
Beginning in 1973, the NYC Community Gardens movement is the largest urban gardening program in the United States. Community gardens provide free, public, green space to the residents and visitors alike. These community gardens provide ecological, nutritional, and health benefits to the all and provide space for community building. Many community gardens sprang up on vacant or abandoned lots that the City of New York owned. The city issues 10 year licenses to community groups to steward and maintain the gardens under the NYC Parks Department’s GreenThumb program.
However, on August 21, Mayor Eric Adams issued Executive Order 43, ordering all NYC agencies to review city property to identify potential sites for housing development. NYC Parks Department property is included in this review.
We demand that Mayor Eric Adams issue a clear directive exempting community gardens on city-owned land from Executive Order 43, reaffirming their protection, and ensuring that any land review process fully recognizes the irreplaceable value these spaces bring to our city.’
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Please join us Saturday, the GreenThumb Harvest Fair will be fun!
LUNGS 13th Annual Harvest Arts Festival continues this week, see the complete schedule HERE.
13th Annual LUNGS HARVEST ARTS Festival September 20–29, 2024
September 17, 2024
Join us for The 13th Annual LUNGS HARVEST ARTS Festival September 20 (Fri) – 29 (Sun), 2024.
Full Schedule: Fri 9/20 – Sun 9/28
Events per day:
Friday, September 20, 2024, 6 pm — Opening Night Party
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Monday, September 23, 2024
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Friday, September 27, 2024
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Sunday, September 29, 2024 — Festival Closing Night Party
Sunday, October 6, 2024 — Rescheduled Festival Closing Party!
August 30, 2024
We are working on our ten day’s schedules and lineups. We will be printing a Festival Program the deadline for inclusion in the printed program is September 5 (Thu). Please let us know if your garden will consider presenting some events, workshops and performances.
We are working on wild-ranging Festival and welcome any ideas and help.