Blog Posts

June 20th, 2020 Bring Materials to Build a Compost Pile

6/21/2020

On Saturday, June 20th, members and associates individually brought their saved organics - greens and browns back to the compost area where they learned where to place them as Anthony, Jorg, and Kaz created a new pile to cook this season. Danika and Aiesha helped out with many tasks like more sifting, so compost was available for pick up as well! A beautiful, quiet, physically distanced day of safe composting thanks to Anthony Longo's leadership.

Remember to keep your organic matter in your plot until the next announced time to bring it to the communal system. Take a look below at the curated exhibit by Karen Lee teaching us to carefully prepare materials to compost and showing us what dangerous items to leave out!

RIGC Compost Learning: Zoom Meet up

6/15/2020

Thank you for keeping all cleaned up organic matter in your own plot at this time!

Mark Your Calendars!
The first day in which we will be open for bringing organic matter to the back compost area will be June 20 from 10 am - 1 pm. The compost committee might even have some compost for you at that time! :-) In fairness to the compost committee and for the safety of us all, members cannot leave anything at any other time. See you on June 20!

Watch the Compost Zoom
To learn ways in which you can compost directly in your plot and/or hold organic matter neatly in your plot, please watch the Compost Education Zoom meet-up held on June 7, 2020 and organized by Aiesha Eleusizov:

Intro & Ways to Hold Organic Matter in Your Plot and Save for Communal Compost System- 15 min - Jerome Dutilloy

Using Dry Leaves Stems & More for Soil and Pollinators like our Native Bees - 12 min Jack Burkhalter

Compost Directly Into Your Soil -both garden materials and food scraps - 14 min Shelley Yu

Full Cycle Container Composting in Your Own Plot and Conclusion - 31 min Karen Lee

You can also find additional compost resources here on the RIGC website

Masks available at RIGC Thanks to Ben Kallos office

6/5/2020

This past week, Neal Weissman made a trip in to Ben Kallos's office to provide gardeners with extra masks if needed to keep us all safe in the gardens. This pandemic has us all connecting in so many new ways and we are so grateful for elected leaders and their staff who help in so many different ways at this time! Neal will distribute to any who are in need or who forget theirs for safety.

Good evening Neal,

Thanks again for making the trip up to our office for the masks. We hope they'll helpful for any RIer's who are still in need in need of them!

Stay safe,
Sushant Harite
Budget Director and Office Manager
Pronouns: he/him

Office of NYC Council Member Ben Kallos
District Five: Midtown East, Upper East Side, El Barrio and Roosevelt Island
Phone: 212.860.1950
Web: BenKallos.com

Signs, signs, and more signs: 2020 has challenged us all!

5/26/2020

In order to ask for official access to the gardens for Members and Associates, Executive Board members worked hard to study NY State laws and guidelines and Green Thumb community garden guidelines. We made a proposal and received RIOC's response. Then about a week later we were able to sign an addendum to our annual lease giving specific requirements from RIOC for RIGC members to officially return to gardening.

One of the requirements was that the Board stay in touch with members and let them know the rules. So, as soon as the letter went out to everyone confirming access on May 17th, we started drafting the required signs, then printing, then laminating, then posting them. In the meantime, RIOC's community liaison office, Terrence McCauley also made us an official sign. So by Memorial Day, we had even more reading to post for you all.

Take a moment to read carefully. We appreciate all the support and care gardeners are showing for each other by wearing masks and gloves and by maintaining physical distance. For some of us extraverted, excited types, it is a constant effort. For others, it is much easier to stay quiet and solitary. As we move ahead, please be patient with everyone.

We are all in this together as a community of volunteers learning new ways to connect. We can take care of others (remain 6 feet apart, wear mask/gloves, disinfect shared surfaces) and still continue to share our love of all things gardening: vegetables, flowers, native plants, miniature evergreens, birds, pollinators, ecology, composting, blue skies, green trees, comfortable benches, and all the space and health that nature brings us at RIGC.

"We are back, too!" More news from Neal

5/23/2020

After 17 years, the cicadas are re-emerging in droves in Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia right now. Similarly, our garden community is experiencing a rebirth as we too return to our gardens.

RIOC has agreed to allow members and associates to return, but visitors and guests must remain outside the gates.  The water has been turned on for our plants and for washing our hands. It’s great to see old friends working their gardens again, but things are not as they were. Things will not be "normal" for a long time. Now we are keeping our distance, wearing our masks, and not taking the shortest route as we navigate to the most empty paths in the garden.

There are no shortcuts to getting back to normal. It may seem like a 17 year wait at times, but we have to take it in stages. Currently our agreement with RIOC does not allow us to use shared or borrowed tools. This means that you need to use your own tools, and not use tools that another member used, even if they “appeared" to be healthy. Some may be upset that we were forced to lock the communal shed, but I have recently polyurethane coated all the wooden handle tools making them less porous, which in turn makes them easier to sanitize, which lays the groundwork to eventually making them usable in the future. As for power electric tools, the only one who will handle them is Vaughn.

It is easy to become complacent and to assume everything is as it was, but we should all proceed with caution and understanding. Please follow the rules. Use gloves and sanitize surfaces and assume that others might not be as thorough as yourself. Keep your distance from others at least 6 ft away. If you and your neighbor or friend are both gardening, you might not want to spend extended periods of time near each other. Staying home is the safest option. If you come to the garden, try to come at off peak hours. We appreciate your support because we are very lucky to have our little garden of Eden, even if it's in the eye of a storm.

Save NYC Compost: In Earth & Compost We Trust

5/1/2020

Miss our NYC compost program? Don’t compost yet, but believe in the program’s great value? We have recently heard from BigReuse and Anna Sacks @the_trashwalker that our Food Scrap Drop Off program is on the budget chopping block.

Christina Delfico, one of our long time RIGC members writes:

Now is a great time to take action!

Please take a moment to send an email to the City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, he has the power to add the Food Scrap Drop Off program back into the budget that the Mayor has proposed cutting. You may also copy Ysabel Abreu, in the Manhattan Borough President's office.   Feel free to use the sample below to copy, cut, paste or even personalize a message to Corey Johnson. You may ask children to send in art, too!

Email:
SpeakerJohnson@council.nyc.gov
CC:
yabreu@manhattanbp.nyc.gov

Subject: Fund & Safely Reopen NYC’s Compost Drop-Off Sites

Dear Speaker Johnson,

An unprecedented pandemic can understandably demand full focus and make environmental advocacy for smart programs seem less relevant and pale in comparison when lives are being lost, so I write knowing this is the context of our times.

Respectfully, this is an urgent plea that you continue to recognize the city smart compost & Food Scrap Drop Off (FSDO) collection program, and make sure to add it in the city budget so that it is not cut.

Our community has come to understand and embrace the fact that food scraps are not trash and are a valuable asset when transformed into compost to amend our neighborhood soils. In addition to creating local jobs, reducing the use of fossil fuels to truck scraps to faraway landfills, the knowledge that food scraps, or organic waste, can release methane gas when in landfill which is more harmful to our air than carbon dioxide, makes this one of the smartest city programs in existence. Please advocate to keep this program.

With major budget cuts threatening DSNY’s curbside compost program, we’re asking for your leadership to ensure that our community drop-off sites can be maintained and expanded starting May 5, so there is no lag in public compost collection and we can keep diverting food scraps from landfill.

Thank you in advance for fighting to fund this essential service and offering New Yorkers an alternative to throwing our food scraps into the trash and exporting them to landfills.

Appreciate all you do to protect the air, land & water and keep New Yorkers healthy.

Respectfully,

For more news, please register here to tune in to the virtual #SaveOurCompost Town Hall next Tuesday 5/5 at 6pm to find out more.

To recap and provide the initial petition link: State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright posted this announcement in one her 4/24/20 Special Update

Neighbors Fighting For Composting Service Restoration During Pandemic
Neighbors have reported to our office that many essential waste reduction initiatives are going by the wayside.  On the UES and on Roosevelt Island, residents have worked to rally neighbors to participate in the food scrap drop off and compost program. The program saves on trucking to landfill and avoids placing methane gas producing organics in the waste stream to the tune of over 300,000 pounds a day according to DSNY. They are asking for neighbors support on this petition: Sign here.

Food scraps and yard waste organics are not trash, they are natural resources! If these items are taken to landfill, they become global warming greenhouse gases. We know the wonderful value of composting first hand from our garden club experiences. Let's take our city and planet back to far better than normal after this crisis!

Earth Day 2020 marks 50 Years: Virtual Celebration on RI

4/27/2020

Roosevelt Island Celebrates Earth Day Online. #EarthLove 2020

RI celebrated Five for Fifty or 5 days for 50 years

This year’s second annual Roosevelt Island #EarthLove Day event had to be cancelled. However, from Wednesday, April 22nd through Sunday, April 26th, RIOC and partners iDig2Learn, the Roosevelt Island Garden Club (RIGC), Green Roosevelt Island Neighbors (GRIN), and more presented five days of interactive activities to show your #EarthLove for Roosevelt Island: Click here at RIOC's site to see the daily themes and activity ideas: Gratitude; Food; Trees,; Upcycling; and Birds,Bees, and Butterflies! You will also find a link to a beautiful tree alphabet font!

Instagram glimmered with pictures of our Island tagging many varied local folks and institutions. On the Friday evening at virtual talent talent show one family sang "Oh What a Wonderful World" and "It's a Small World After All" in honor of this event. Rebecca Seawright's office included us in her special update!

Stay tuned for more collaboration with RIOC for Roosevelt Island Day in June through their community office alongside iDig2Learn, GRIN, and more.

RIGC Board Members Meet Up Virtually

4/6/2020

Thanks to a garden member's generous sharing, the RIGC Board met and saw each other live as planned on April 5th. They will be able to meet again on Sunday, May 3rd.

Here they are pictured as the rest of the world all seems to be pictured these days: on a zoom platform in early April. RIGC volunteer Board members very much miss seeing you all. Please take care and stay safe!

Message from our RIGC President

3/25/2020

Dear RIGC Members and Associates,

As bad as things are during this outbreak, this may still be to some extent, the quiet before the storm and NYC is in the eye of the storm, but like all storms, this too shall pass. Meanwhile, we strongly encourage all members to stay home.

Watch the NYS Governor's daily updates on TV. Sign up for RIOC advisories. Visit gardens around the world on virtual tours. Write a blog post on your favorite plant or collect old photos of your own garden for our website and send these to me at rigcpresident@aol.com and to rigardencluboutreach@gmail.com.

Staying home is your best course of action to protect yourself and others. This virus will sicken persons of all ages. In addition, it also remains crucial to have an abundance of caution if you are older or have health issues. Based on our surveys, the biggest portion of our club are people over 70, and the second biggest group are over 60.

We all need to take care of one another by the warm embrace of keeping our distance from one another. Things are changing daily. The "elbow bump" was briefly very popular but is now passé, replaced by 6' of social distancing and lots of hand washing.

Since you are not in the gardens to take care of your plot, you might be worried what your garden will turn into without you; yes, there will be weeds, but so be it. Like everything else, the RIGC Standards Committee is also on hiatus at this time. (And actually our lives would be a lot better if our only worry was about getting an LOV. )

Take care of yourselves, be well, and I look forward to seeing everyone again when this is over.

- - - Neal

Neal Weissman, PRESIDENT
Roosevelt Island Garden Club
rigcpresident@aol.com

A Brave New Spring by Iliada Bass

3/20/2020

With all the escalating news and all the twist and turns around our jobs, kids’ schedules, our lifestyle and the entire economy, it’s easy to forget that, in our gardens, a whole entire new season is quietly brewing and slowly emerging, about to burst into a riot of colors, scents and indescribable beauty.

I am amazed and humbled every early March, a lot of times February, by the brave little crocus showing up in full color, delicate, and perfect in their tininess, pure and unapologetic, nor proud. Especially when they pop their beauty above snow, gorgeous and carefree against frost and frigid winds, there for whoever or no one to see them, it makes you wonder… are they aware how humbling that is for humans? Who of us is capable of standing up so fragile, vulnerable, so carefree and giving in the midst of winter and look so gorgeous in the process?

Or hellebore - grand dames of winter gardens - so poised and elegant. The rosemary has been standing there all along, green and fragrant - just in case you need it, and the sage, wilting a little, but still there, with so much to give. Other herbs start sprouting their leaves - oregano, parsley, and the chives are taller by the inch. As you pass, or lean to touch the fresh green, short whiffs of herbs mix with the smell of the earth and you just have to dig your hands in the soil - the full signal of spring.

A few days ago, the daffodils were coming up all green, with barely a tinge of yellow in the slim buds. What a shock to see so many in bloom today, already double height, their sway as legendary as once portrayed by poets - and little do they know or care about that… Last week, one hyacinth bud was barely out of the soil, it’s tight geometric perfection giving away a hint of pink. This evening, three of them standing tall, still opening and growing, fragile and unformed, still gathering their pink together. The irises are sending their swords up, the columbine’s delicate leaves have been silently confronting February, the strawberries are sending off their offsprings underground in all directions, lupines grow their clusters with decorum.

What a gift!
Never the smell of parsley and its baby sprigs were more enchanting. The garlic and oregano are throwing all their might in every tiny leaf, - each, a powerhouse of beneficial engines running high, pushing to grow. Add to this the general non-stop chirping, the tiny buds of growing colors on the trees and the clouds moving at speed only God knows where, and you completely forget of crisis, of all our human limitations and made-up solutions that only take us that far…

When every day, right in our face, we see and hear the lesson: life is more beautiful without all those agendas and our little ulterior motives; just live and be happy, enjoy what’s around us, forget repeating ourselves how we’re mastering nature and universe - we’re not, we never did, we are just part of it. And we should be grateful to learn from all our fellow living things in the garden how to be simple, and ourselves, and simply give the best we can, ideally - unconditionally.

<<Previous

Forward>>