21st Annual City Garden Contest (we were JUDGES!)

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of being shuttled around the city by Greater Newark Conservancy as judges for their 21st Annual City Garden Contest. (North Newark Urban Garden's very own Mike entered his own garden into the contest, wish him luck!!) There are over 10 categories to choose from and you are able to enter into a maximum of 3 of those categories. Our judging category for the day was for the Best Combination Flower/Vegetable Garden.

We met up at Greater Newark Conservancy a little after 9 a.m. and headed out and about in their van to start the day full of judging. With clipboard in hand and jotting down the points of each garden while, we were all quite impressed and proud of our fellow neighbors and their gardens. You can see all of their hard work and creativity they put into beautifying our city. One of participants was a 13 year old boy! It was definitely inspiring as new community gardeners but more as born and raised Newarkers.

The next round of judging will take place in the beginning of August. We will be reporting back during that time!

WOOHOO the Fence is up!

Yes!!! With great help from the City of Newark, our fence is up and our garden area is secure! *sigh of relief* We are very excited that the fence is in place and now we are moving towards the next steps for "OUR" garden. Thank you to the Sanitation Department who did one more cleaning up before the fence was installed, clearing the rest of the debri that  was dumped since the last clean-up.

We are very grateful for the support that we have been receiving from the City of Newark, Greater Newark Conservancy and our great community and neighbors (both on and off line)!! You guys are great!

Babies for the Garden?

Can you find me?

I woke up this past weekend morning to a beautiful thing, the seedlings have hatched, bloomed, SPROUTED!! The green banana peppers, cayenne peppers and cucumbers have been welcomed into the world. Yes, the babies are born. I’m so excited and feel connected to them. In order to not risk the seedlings I had to transplant them into flower pots. If this isn’t the time, I don’t know what is. I rushed out to buy garden soil, which I got on sale after nicely telling the cashier that the price on the sign should be honored regardless of what is ringing up. Wow those bags are heavy (not good for a person with lower back pain). Next grabbed my window garden box and a few other flower pots that I had and started the filling of soil and planting. I have to admit, this was very relaxing which I needed after all different types of stress that I been undergoing. Well, they are doing well and I’m a proud mommy of the veggies! I can’t wait to share with others and eat them.

Aren't they cute!?!

Our Store!

As you already know we are spinning wheels, and are working hard to get this North Newark Urban Garden rolling in 2011.  In the mean time we have created our own store, to raise some funds, to continue our hands on work in the garden....

http://www.cafepress.com/NorthNewarkUrbanGarden

Please continue to get the word out , and share our twitter, and facebook pages, in addition, as we do more work in the garden, we will share videos on youtube,

www.facebook.com/NewarkUrbanGarden
www.twitter.com/NwkUrbanGarden
www.youtube.com/NewarkUrbanGarden

If you have any information to give us about how to maintain, sustain, and care for a garden, we would greatly appreciate it, you can share it with us at NewarkUrbanGarden@gmail.com. 

Thank you in advance for shopping at our store!

Fence, where art tho?

OBSTACLE: Fencing for our garden. With trash is continuously being dumped on our lot, we have a tremendous need for a fence. We check the usual sites looking for a used / free fence, but had no luck. So we moved forward with getting estimates from a few fencing companies. That was a rude awakening, t he prices were way out of our volunteer budget range! We had thoughts of a fundraiser campaign but time is definitely NOT on our side but the powers from above are and we are currently waiting for measurements to be taken as I blog. Hopefully the process from the measurements to the installation won’t be too long, as the seedlings NEED to be transplanted ASAP!!  

Stay tuned for more updates on our garden.

Our Journey so far ...

Introducing the team and spirit of North Newark Urban Garden:

Thanks to Sustainable Urban Development for the inspiration of the video. They are doing great things in Philly!

We have PAVERS!

The search began on craigslist, freecycle, and word of mouth for pavers for our garden. The majority of  responses that we got back with our search:

1. Not being the 1st to respond, even though an email was sent quickly after the ad was posted.
2. Left over pavers from completed job (which we definitely picked up, "beggars can't be choosers")

Our search wasn't an easy one, for obvious reasons until I received "that" email from a wonderful guy Abe. He liked our idea of an urban garden and would like to donate the pavers that he had to our cause. We are greatly appreciative of him! (note to self: add to holiday card list)

Next obstacle? Transporting the pavers. After not getting responses to our "Need Van" request, we decided to go to the location and pack the car with as many as we could. This was done in two trips.

The first trip was on the Friday, day before Memorial weekend. Yes, my timing is always great. Getting out of the office early (just like everyone else on a holiday weekend) didn't cross my mind of the traffic I would hit heading towards Hudson County (yes, Route 3, 1&9, JFK traffic). None the less, we got there and starting packing the car with 123 pavers.

With still approximately 90 pavers left, a second trip was a must on Saturday morning. How could we not pick them up? After all, it's for our neighborhood and community garden! So before heading out for a great family day in South Jersey, the second car was packed and ready to transport the rest.

Our last pick up was made during the week but this time we had a van! So it's time to get all of the remaining pavers in there and head back to the storage grounds!

We still need more supplies, but things are coming together! If you have any gardening supplies, please contact us.

Thanks to Gagi, Boriquita, Mike, Nico, Jay

from On Line Towing for  and of course

our determined helpers with all of their hardwork!

Garden Pick up #1

The venture over to Greater Newark Conservancy to pick up supplies for the garden was a good start to a new beginning. We received soil and seedlings to get us started and will be making another trip back soon.

The people are great there and very helpful, especially their gardening information and tips. They offer great programs, workshops and sale items at affordable prices to the community. They have a beautiful garden area for you to walk through, where I saw many unique and vibrant flowers.

It's Ours!!

Well on May 20, the lot became ours! Sooooo exciting to be part of something of great potential on many levels. First thing we moved forward with was the clean up! A house once stood where the lot is  and turned into dirt, weeds and garbage. People feel that they can dump their mattresses, tv's and garbage here. The city of Newark, helped tremendously with the clean up and trash removal. They did a wonderful job, big shout out to them!! Guess what? A few hours later and an empty speaker was sitting in the lot!! We removed it and the lot has been staying pretty clean this past few days.

A fence needs to go up and then we can get to work! In the meantime, we talked about putting up those orange construction type fences and putting a "Coming Soon" sign. That should deter people from throwing / dumping garbage and also letting the neighbors that a garden is in the works.

Proven Forces behind Twitter

What started off as a simple tweet to Newark's mayor Cory Booker about a North Newark urban farm, quickly turned into 3 tweeters from North Newark joining in conversation about starting one for our neighborhood.

After some online research, we found out about the city's Adopt-a-Lot program. The program encourages us to beautify our community by offering residents an annual lease of $1 on city-owned empty lots. Who can pass that up? For $1 we can make a difference in our neighborhood's appearance but more importantly help eachother with living healthier! We moved forward with our plan and "signed" our lease on May 20!!

Twitter is where it began, I have to give them a shout and of course plug North Newark Urban Garden's twitter page. Follow us, we follow back!

Attempting to link all accounts

We have adopted a lot on 3rd Ave and Garside St to create a community garden.  The community garden is still in its baby stages.  In the meantime, to get the word out, we have created twitter and facebook pages which you can follow at:

www.facebook.com/NewarkUrbanGarden
www.twitter.com/NwkUrbanGarden
www.youtube.com/NewarkUrbanGarden

I am currently testing tweeter feed to ensure that all the links work, and I want to be able to update both status at once, to save time and energy.  If you have any information to give us about how to maintain, sustain, and care for a garden, we would greatly appreciate it, you can share it with us at NewarkUrbanGarden@gmail.com.

If you would like to volunteer to make this happen, and/or have any ideas, please contact us at any of our pages or the e-mail listed above.

Thank you from the cofounders of North Newark Urban Garden.