Month: May 2010

by

• Southeast Alaska Gardeners Conference and Garden Tours take place May 20-23 in Juneau

David Lendrum, co-president for the Southeast Alaska Master Gardeners Association this year, sent this invitation to Sitka gardeners about the Southeast Alaska Gardeners Conference and Garden Tours on May 20-23 in Juneau:

I would like to invite the Sitka local foods community to our biennial Southeast Garden Conference on May 20-23 at the University of Alaska Southeast-Juneau Campus (Auke Lake). The agenda will be available at our website, http://www.sealaskamastergardeners.org/.

The Extended Stay hotel by the airport has offered an rate of $79.00 per night to conference attendees.

Sitka’s own Florence Welsh of The Welsh Family Forget-Me-Not Gardens and Bob Gorman of the Sitka office of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service are featured speakers. They will be accompanied by Sam Benowitz of RainTree Nursery (Morton, Wash.), anthropological researcher Betsy Kunibe (Juneau), who has been exploring the early agriculture of Southeast Alaska, especially the early potato introduction to native peoples, and Dan Heims of Terra Nova Nurseries (Canby, Ore.), who has reinvented perennial gardening in our modern times.

We also will have a trade show and demonstration venue, and if the Sitka Local Foods Network would like to have a display we would welcome it. You can call me with any questions,

David Lendrum
Landscape Alaska, landscapealaska@gci.net
Co-President of the Southeast Alaska Master Gardeners Association for this year
907-321-4149

Some of the conference highlights include workshops on tool use and maintenance, planter/container design and maintenance, nutrition in wild plants, landscaping to attract native pollinators, birds in the garden, greenhouses in Alaska, low-maintenance landscape design, native plant propagation, meconopsis, fruiting plants for Southeast Alaska, organic edibles, creating flower arrangements to last, rock setting and plant choice for Southeast Alaska, tree grafting, creating color and flash with new perennials, perennials around the world, taking cuttings and how to get roots on sticks, and compost and worms. A PDF file to the agenda is linked below.

Southeast Alaska Gardeners Conference and Garden Tours flier

Southeast Alaska Gardeners Conference and Garden Tours poster

Southeast Alaska Gardeners Conference and Garden Tours agenda

by

• Sitka Seafood Festival seeks local recipes for fundraising cookbook

Do you have a favorite seafood recipe? A recipe you are willing to share? One that you would like to see published in a cookbook?

We want it!

The inaugural Sitka Seafood Festival will be Friday and Saturday, Aug. 6-7, 2010. It will be a celebration focusing on Alaska’s wild seafood through entertainment, education and culinary delights.

As a fundraiser for the festival, we are putting together a local cookbook. The focus will be on seafood recipes, however, we want a well-rounded cookbook with recipes for appetizers, beverages, soups, salads, vegetables, main dishes, breads and rolls, desserts and miscellaneous dishes.

Please e-mail your recipes to sitkaseafoodfestival@gmail.com or mail them to Linda Olson at 230 Observatory Street, Sitka, Alaska, 99835 by Monday, May 24th. Please put your name on the recipe and include your contact information.

Thank you.

For more information about the festival, check out our website at http://sitkaseafoodfestival.org/ and our page on Facebook.

by

• Sitka Community Schools opens registration for Blatchley Community Garden

Blatchley Community Garden

Blatchley Community Garden

Sitka Community Schools has opened registration for the 2010 Blatchley Community Garden located behind Blatchley Middle School.

Potential gardeners can register for a plot from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday through May 28 at the Sitka Community Schools office at Hames Athletic and Wellness Center. Availability of garden plots is limited, and former gardeners will be assigned their plots from previous years if they register before May 28. Fees for the program are 50 cents per square foot for plots.

Blatchley Community Garden features small plots for families or groups who want to raise vegetables for their personal consumption. This is different than the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden, which raises vegetables for the Sitka Local Foods Network to sell at the Sitka Farmers Market.

For more information, please contact Scott McAdams at 966-1405 or lead gardener Dave Neutzel at 738-8732.

by

• SEARHC Employee Wellness Team builds vegetable garden at Sitka campus

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) Employee Wellness Team is building a new community garden for employees on its Sitka campus.

The vegetable garden is located on an unused patch of land on the lower part of SEARHC’s Sitka campus, between the employee fitness center and daycare facilities and across the street from the SEARHC Behavioral Health residential substance abuse treatment centers. The garden is being built with the blessings of the SEARHC Employee Wellness Team, SEARHC Green Team and SEARHC Facilities Management Department. The garden was initiated by SEARHC Grant Writer Kerry MacLane, who also is president of the Sitka Local Foods Network.

SEARHC employees are holding regular lunchtime work parties on Fridays, and employees who work in the garden will be eligible to share in the bounty when the produce is ready to harvest. The garden will be used to grow potatoes, onions, greens, herbs and edible flowers, among other items.

In his note about this Friday’s work party (May 7), MacLane wrote, “This will be a great opportunity to work out and get out any angst that you might be harboring. Come go crazy on the weeds. Aggressive behavior is encouraged. We are going to be digging up weeds, chopping down salmonberries, mixing in sand and compost, and forming two big raised beds.”

SEARHC Employee Wellness Team leaders Lisa Sadleir-Hart and Doug Osborne said a community garden for employees is something a lot of businesses in Sitka can build. A workplace community garden allows employees a chance to get physical activity and gives them the opportunity to add more locally grown vegetables to their diets. Other benefits of an employee garden include reduced stress and improved employee morale. Also, some employees may live in small apartments where they don’t have room for a garden.

To learn more about how you can start a similar employee garden project at your business, contact Kerry MacLane at 966-8839, Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 966-8735 or Doug Osborne at 966-8734.

by

• Construction to limit space for this summer’s Sitka Farmers Markets

Due to construction, this summer’s Sitka Farmers Markets will have no outdoor vendor space. The Baranof Island Housing Authority will construct a building this summer in part of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall parking lot, and the parking lot will be closed off for safety and to store supplies.

We will try to make as much room as possible available to vendors inside ANB Hall. We encourage vendors to create vertical displays so more people can share the tables. This year, the Sitka Farmers Markets are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on alternate Saturdays, July 17 and 31, Aug. 14 and 28, and Sept. 11, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall.

Due to space limitations, we may have to give our local food booths a limited priority over arts and crafts. The earlier you register for booth space, the more likely we will be able to find a spot for you.

We really, really, need more locally grown produce vendors, home bakers, fish mongers, prepared food vendors and volunteers this year. If you know of someone who can help, please let us know. If you have extra locally grown produce but don’t have the time to staff a booth, you can donate it or sell it to the Sitka Farmers Market for resale at the Sitka Farmers Market booth. Proceeds from the produce sold at the Sitka Farmers Market booth goes toward Sitka Local Foods Network projects.

This year we had to raise the vendor fee for a table to $15 to cover costs of renting the ANB Hall and kitchen, hiring musicians and other expenses. There is an option to get your vendor space free if you help out with set-up and clean-up.

The registration form and market rules are linked below as PDF files. If you have any questions, please contact Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights and weekends only) or by e-mail at lawilson87@hotmail.com.

• 2010 Sitka Farmers Market vendor rules

• 2010 Sitka Farmers Market food rules

• 2010 Sitka Farmers Market vendor registration form

by

• Volunteers prepare St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm garden beds for planting parties later this month

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

About a dozen volunteers held a work party on Saturday, May 1, to help get the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden ready for planting later this month.

The volunteers pulled weeds, cleared rocks and sticks from the garden beds, mixed sand and compost into the soil, built a new pea patch, transplanted some rhubarb and strawberries and performed a lot of the tasks needed to get a garden ready for planting. In addition to the slideshow above, click here and scroll down for a similar slideshow on our Shutterfly site.

Food grown at the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden, which is located behind the See House behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church on Lincoln Street, is sold at the Sitka Farmers Markets. This summer the Sitka Farmers Markets take place on five alternate Saturdays starting on July 17 and running through Sept. 11.

Planting parties at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm take place from 2-4 p.m. on three straight Saturdays in mid-May — May 15, 22 and 29 — safely after the last frost of the spring. Tools and gloves will be provided. For more information on the planting parties, contact Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5985 or 3akharts@acsalaska.net, or contact Doug Osborne at 747-3752 or doug_las@att.net.

by

• Alaska Department of Fish and Game releases first fishing report of 2010 season

Sockeye salmon hang in a smoker in preparation for the 2009 ANSWER Camp program

Sockeye salmon hang in a smoker in preparation for the 2009 ANSWER Camp program

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released its first sport fishing report for the 2010 season.

The Sport Harvest Rates for the Week of April 26-May 2, 2010, includes a sampling of marine boat creel surveys from the ports of Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Sitka, Juneau and Yakutat. The current report looks at chinook (king) salmon and halibut harvest rates for the past week, including how long it typically took an angler to catch a fish.

Fishing was going well for chinook salmon in Sitka, with seven rod hours per salmon harvested. This is better than last year’s 25 rod hours for the same week and the 33 rod hours for the same week in 2008. It also was better than the five-year average (2005-09) of 13 rod hours per salmon. Chinook salmon fishing was better than average in Petersburg and Wrangell, but slower than normal in Juneau and Yakutat, with Ketchikan yet to report a fish.

Sitka, Wrangell and Yakutat were the only harbors to report sport catches of halibut last week, and all reported five rod hours per halibut. That is somewhat better in Sitka than the five-year average of eight rod hours per fish for the same week. No coho (silver), pink (humpy) or chum (dog) salmon were counted during the creel surveys.

The report also listed salmon derbies this spring and summer in Southeast Alaska.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game website still needs to remove last year’s reports and add this year’s, but that should happen in the near future. Future fishing reports should be updated every week through the summer, and they will be found at this link once the site is updated. News releases and emergency orders issued for the 2010 sport fisheries in Southeast Alaska can be viewed at this link.

Sport Harvest Rates for the Week of April 26-May 2, 2010