-Gila Sustainable Community News, Calendar and Forum-

This section of the Gila Sustainable Community Forum is what is left of the High Desert Organic Gardeners (HIDOG) at the moment.

After over 3 years of meetings, the two women who coordinated it, Anaia Song and Basira Nickle, got tired and tried to pass on the responsibility to someone, but no one volunteered. We talked about still having one or two meetings a year, but now they are both dealing with major health issues.

John Crow set up this column for the group, and we do use it on occasion. Would love to find a volunteer to take it on and have the meetings resume.

What qualifications would the volunteer need, what would there responsibilities be, and who would they need to contact?

I spoke to Basira and she suggested that interested people could start a new garden club. Is anyone interested in being a member of a garden club?

I think it's silly to start another group when there's plenty of people from HiDOG who would be glad to keep it going.

The name is available, so what do others think?

Hey, I agree, why start another group! There's plenty of good energy around organic gardening and growing good food. The name is cute and catchy.

Let's just stay in touch here, sharing organizational ideas/daydreams/visions as well as our questions, needs, learned experiences etd. and let a new iteration of HiDOG manifest and grow (pun intended). If its ment to be, it will happen (organically).

Hi; I was a member of HiDOGs right from the beginning, when Margaret Hadderman came up with our clever name (HiDesertOrganicGardeners). Anaia and Basira did a great job--we had monthly meetings with demonstrations on how to do things: composting, raised beds, bokashi use, etc.; we had 'field' trips to see gardens; we talked about bugs and how to work with organic controls instead of pesticides, etc. Presentations rotated between members, and according to what people said they were interested in. They were great. We had a bit of a lending library, Margaret H. contacted seed companies and we had many seed exchanges, lots of folks came up with good ideas, or shared what they were doing. . . . There was no formal membership, people came and went as they had need, or time to be involved. It was great sharing meals at occasional potlucks, and just being together. Yes, if someone wanted to get it going again I think that would be great! Perhaps either Anaia or Basira still have the mailing list--that would be a great place to start recruiting. With growing interest in this community for neighborhood gardens and cooperative exchanges, I think such a club has LOTS of potential! I've been working with Martha Egnal at the Montessori School & Community garden. She's put on a couple of excellent workshops recently and perhaps would consider collaboration with HiDOGs. Anyway, I'm here, I'll help. GO, LEADER, GO!

I am one of them that came and went. Due to health problems that exploded I have been out of any loop for over a year, I am now trying to get a garden going and I miss the info that was avaiable to me through HIDOG. I am newly retired and haven't had time in the past to study gardening, but it is my love, and want to. I WANT to eat from my yard, I WANT to eat fresh eggs, I WANT fruit from my own trees........ I want to relegate the Supers to the trash bin for fresh stuff until maybe Dec... ha ha ha BUT, if I can also learn how to can, dry, and freeze ... then why would I need them. I NEED YOU.... HIDOG

In the early days if hidog a few members expressed an interest in a web site so I built one and hosted it on my server. It is still there at hidog.info. It was used a little but was extremely hard to get members to submit content that wasn't out of some other publication and © but there are 5 articles and some great quick references that I could/should move over here. But a few people did find it and mostly used it to subscribe to the email that Anaia sent out. Everybody loved the email but when Anaia was tired their was no one to step up in spite of her pleas. So when Anaia said enough and ask me to remove the email sign up form off the web site I did and replaced it with a link to this spot. But she did one last emailing to announce that I had created a place for hidog on Gila Sustainable Community..... Its been used some but not like it could be.

I think geofarm has it right. This is a 24/7 meeting. Summaries of all new posts go out in the email everyday for 900+ people to read. Those who get the email will notice that all the gardening sections are at the top because growing food is at the top of sustainability.

It's wonderful to have Amanda contributing to the gardening section on a regular basis, may she have longevity. I will be doing my "Garden Tours" again and hope that more people send photos. Much can be done with this hidog section and I am open to ideas as far as structure of a hidog space if some ideas/needs come up. Meetings/classes/tours can be organized here and notice given but remember to post them in the calendar for an ongoing daily reminder.

One of the reasons that hidog never really grew is because it ran a low key private little email list that never got out to the larger community. Here we have a very large community who will read and learn but never go to meetings on a regular basis, everybody is very busy, especially gardeners/farmers but interested in the topic. Perhaps more gardeners will let us know what they do and how they do it.

I'm in for some discussion topics. I've got several things going that I'd like to share and hear from other folks about. I'll post them under separate headings but here's a teaser (old marketing habits never die):
Blending your own soil mixture (you've got to do SOMETHING with decomposed granite and clay),
Plant propagation - Vitis arizonica our local "canyon grape" from stem cuttings. (This grape make GREAT jam and syrup).
Windbreaks - natural & man made.
Transplanting - taking the shock out of pot-to-garden environment.
Home greenhouse management - how to make it less labor intensive.
water harvesting - managing rainwater runoff for the betterment of people, plants, animals and minerals.

OK. Enough.

HiDOG lives!

See ya over in a topic (or back in this one).