USDA Educational Garden

USDA Educational Garden - Albany

Joint effort by the WRRC and PGEC

Part of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack's People's Garden Initiative

In collaboration with:

Gospel Flats Organic Farm

Ocean View Elementary School

UC Berkeley Field Services

Welcome to our Garden!

The garden is ready for winter. Most of the plants have been removed, the ground rototilled, a cover crop of fava and vetch planted, and the whole field has been netted to keep the birds and squirrels from eating all the seeds. We left some sunflowers and a row of alliums.

Our donation total for 2012 is 1795 lbs! The produce was donated to a local soup kitchen.

If you are in the building, we invite you to join us and volunteer to tend the garden. If you are not so nearby, you are still very welcome to visit us online and watch our garden grow! For more info on our Garden, please see the Garden Info page.

Volunteer Requests

While the garden is resting, we will not have regular field tending sessions. Every few weeks we may go out to check on the field and repair the netting if it is ripped. Those notices will out out to the garden mailing list. If you are in the building and interested in volunteering, please see the Volunteer page to get on our mailing list.

Latest Garden Announcements & Highlights

10/13/12: We're in the news again! Mary Flaherty has written a wonderful article about us in the local e-newsletter, The Albany Patch. For that and other articles about our garden, please see the Articles and Press page.

10/4/12: The kids from Ocean View Elementary came and helped us harvest and plant some lettuce starts. We had a beautiful crop of pumpkins. The kids got some pumpkins for their classroom and the rest will be set aside for the building-wide pumpkin carving contest later this year (these are not pie pumpkins).

8/21/12: Donated 150bs of produce (zucchini, cucumber, delicate squash, and a few brussel sprouts, carrots and tomatoes) to a local soup kitchen! When I dropped off the produce donation, the guy who helped bring in our donation said that he was so excited about the freshness of our produce. Most people drop off food that only has a few days (if that) of shelf-life left, so it is usually starting to rot or turn bad and it won’t keep. Stuff as fresh as what we donated means it will keep longer and they can stretch it out over several days. Plus I imagine it tastes better and they have more options on how to prepare it. Thought you all might like to know how much our produce donation efforts are greatly appreciated!