Grow And Share

Freaking awesome! CAKE gives fruit trees away at concerts - http://www.cakemusic.com/gallery.html - Frank loves CAKE!

(We give plants away, and hope to "soon" give away fruit and nut trees too.  Our Pepsi RefreshEverything entry to plant trees across NC did not win, but we'll find a way to do it eventually!.)

Picking this week - Wednesday & Friday mornings in Zebulon we will be picking and need VOLUNTEERS to help us pick / glean. Call the number below if you can help.

All the produce we collect will be distributed to the needy through Pilot Baptist Church, Zebulon.  Their free produce farm stand will be open Saturdays 9-11am starting June 26th. If you know a family in need, let them know to come by.

PLEASE SHARE: If you have any extra produce from your farm or garden and can share it, contact us and we can pick it up before the Saturday food giveaway.

Kay Whatley

Grow And Share

1.919.269.5414

Our second annual fundraiser, the Grow And Share Music Festival 2010, will be held Labor Day Weekend near Raleigh NC.

The festival will again this year have Farm Education Stations.  We are seeking farmers to come and share what they know, from the very basics through intermediate farming and food growing topics.

Can you come and spend the day with us and share what you've learned with adults and children?  If so, contact me via Local Harvest, or call 1.919.269.5414.

Thank you!

Well, we've got 10,00 plants growing in the greenhouse.  As best I can recall, this is the order that the sprouts appeared:

- cucumbers

- zucchini

- peas

- watermelons

- muskmelon

- cantaloupe

- brussel sprouts

- acorn squash

- beans (also very quick)

- cabbage (planted later, very fast sprouting)

- tomatoes

- okra

- peppers (take a long time it seems)

I think the greatest "surprise" was a small container of beans we planted late.  Frank was cooking some pinto beans and had a bag of dried beans from the store.  When putting them in to rinse, he spilled about a dozen onto the kitchen floor.  I scooped them up and put them in a round container of soil in the greenhouse.  They came up in just a few days, and at about two weeks growth they are 4-5 inches tall and very healthy looking!

I don't know if the beans will produce, as I only know they were pintos and don't know how they might have been grown or if they may be from hybrids.  We'll need to wait many more weeks before we see how they produce.  These will likely be part of our family garden, rather than part of the Garden Plant Giveaways we are doing in April, as we are experimenting to see how they do. :-)

Baseball Radio Network Aims to Grow More Than Ratings!

Play-by-Play Sports Properties To Team Up With Local Non-Profit on Mudcats Broadcasts

Zebulon, NC, March 1, 2010--

Grow and Share is a unique Zebulon based non-profit organization dedicated to providing healthy fruits and vegetables to U.S. residents through food education and widespread gardening.The organization’s website www.growandshare.org provides assistance to homeowners willing to start or expand their own gardens while pledging to share produce with those in need. This season, Grow and Share will get a big boost from the Carolina Mudcats broadcast booth.

Grow and Share recently attracted the attention of Joe Bourdow and Patrick Kinas who will produce radio and Internet broadcasts this season for the Carolina Mudcats through their Play-by-Play Sports Properties venture on an expanded local network led by the powerful “flagship” radio signal from WDWG 98.5 FM.

“Grow and Share offers a creative approach to combating hunger, a big problem nationwide and here in our local communities,” says Joe Bourdow, Play-by-Play Chairman. Bourdow who recently retired after thirty-one years as President of Valpak, the national direct mail advertising company, wanted to use the baseball broadcasts as a vehicle to help the community in a meaningful and sustaining way.

“I have been involved with fighting hunger over the years through volunteer work Valpak has done with the National Association of Letter Carrier’s Food Drive, the St. Petersburg, Florida Free Clinic Food Bank and other organizations.Grow and Share is a relatively new organization doing impressive and important work and they are doing it just down the street from our ballpark. We have decided to try and help by letting our audience know how they can help grow and share healthy food”, he said.

“We will all be cheering for our local team this spring and summer,” says Kay Whatley, Creative Director for Grow and Share.“We are excited that many of the more than quarter million fans coming out to Five County Stadium this season will be following the team on the radio and the Internet and will hear our message.We think that this new relationship will help us significantly increase our participation, production and distribution of healthy food for those in the communities we both serve, “ Whatley said.

This year the Mudcats will be heard throughout the five county area on radio from 98.5 FM as well as in Raleigh on WDOX 570AM.The broadcasts are also streamed live on the Internet at carolinamudcats.com and on the official website for minor league baseball milb.com.The 2010 Mudcats (AA affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) open on the road at Birmingham April 8^th.Home Opener at Five County Stadium is April 14^th at 7:15pm.

For more information about Grow and Share, visit www.growandshare.org. For businesses interested in advertising on the Carolina Mudcats Baseball Network and reaching fans throughout the area contact joe.bourdow@mudcatsradio.com or visit the company’s website at mudcatsradio.com.

About Play-by-Play Sports Properties, LLC

Play-by-Play Sports Properties, LLC has been licensed by the Mudcats to broadcast all 140 regular season games as well as the championship series games (if the team qualifies) and is the first such company to license broadcast rights from a minor league team.

About Grow and Share

Grow and Share is an organization dedicated to fighting hunger “from the ground up” tm by growing interest in gardening, local foods, food education and community building through harvest sharing. Grow and Share helps communities help themselves.

CONTACT:

Joe Bourdow

800.667.9807

joe.bourdow@mudcatsradio.com

Kay Whatley

919.269.5414

info@growandshare.org

Grow And Share Music Festival 2010 fundraiser confirmed for Sunday, September 5th 2010.

This music festival is a fundraiser for Grow And Share, a non-profit fighting hunger through widespread gardening, produce sharing, and community building.

With live music, great food, farm education stations, gardening info, games, and family fun, this is a great event to attend as part of your Labor Day Weekend!

Admission and parking are free! Funds will be raised through donations, raffles, and sale of food and goodies.

Sponsorships and booths are available. Call 1.919.269.5414.

Non-profit GROW AND SHARE is seeking seed. If you have any packets you won't be using, or even parts of leftover packets, we would love to have them. Please visit http://www.growandshare.org for address/phone to donate by mailing them or to arrange pickup for larger amounts of seed.

We focus on shared and community gardening to fight hunger. Donate your un-needed seed, we will grow your seeds into plants, and in April we will give the plants away to gardeners in many neighborhoods. The food grown on those plants will be shared with neighbors, strangers in need, and food banks.

Help us get lots of healthy garden produce into the hands of the needy, and to help US residents eat healthier from local gardens!

We ESPECIALLY need tomato seeds and greens seeds. All vegetable/fruit/legume seeds are welcome. No flowers, please, unless they are edibles. :-)

Thank you in advance for your donation!

Happy New Year 2010! We have a whole new year ahead!

At Grow And Share, we have plans that will get many plants into US communities, help many gardeners across the US grow food, and start many new gardens feeding US residents. More information on becoming a Grow And Share gardener may be found on our website: http://www.growandshare.org/?p=741.

If you are interested in fighting hunger through Grow And Share's garden projects, please visit our site and contact us directly.

We will be pulling the greenhouse poles out of the ground tomorrow and then moving them to the new site to put back in. Hard work but worth it!

We can still use volunteers to assist with moving the greenhouse (Zebulon in Wake County) and re-assembly (Zebulon/Pilot in Franklin County).

Moving will continue this Wednesday and Saturday, and then re-assembly will begin! We will be working pretty much every day from this Saturday through early January to get the greenhouse up.

Once we have the greenhouse working in January, we'll be planting 10,000 plants for giveaway in April.  (All US gardeners welcome to come to the giveaway for our free garden plants, as long as you are willing to sign our pledge to share your harvest.)

Please email or call if you are available to help in the next few weeks.

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I’d like to again thank our volunteers from this past Saturday. With help from Guerrilla Growfair (Crop Mob) we were able to dis-assembly the entire greenhouse! Helpers included Mitch A., Steven H., Paul B., Matt R., Fabian L., and of course Grow And Share’s own Frank W. and Kay W. We worked from early morning through about 4:30pm and accomplished quite a bit. Thank you all for helping!

Greenhouse 2 is well on its way to relocation here at Grow And Share in Zebulon, NC USA.

This past weekend, volunteers Riley E., Mitch A., Craig A., AJ B., and Frank and Kay Whatley took down all of the electrical systems. Heater, fans, and other components have been taken down and readied for the move.

This upcoming Saturday, December 12th, a group of volunteers and the local Crop Mob will be taking down the greenhouse structure and plastic and loading it into trucks. We hope to move all the components to our site by the end of the weekend.

By the following week, re-construction at the new greenhouse site will be underway. The plan is to have the greenhouse re-built and electrical systems re-connected by the end of the year.

We could use a few more volunteers and some support. Please email Grow And Share if you can help us with:

- taking down the greenhouse this Saturday

- access to a large truck for moving the pipes and other pieces

- ASAP this week access to a bob cat to finish smoothing the greenhouse's new site, or donations to help us cover rental costs ($350 for a single day).

- assistance over the next two weeks with re-assembly

- donation of cinder blocks, boards, or heavy wire mesh to construct tables inside the greenhouse

- miscellaneous other help

We thank our generous benefactor for his donation of this wonderful, all-inclusive greenhouse. In January 2010 as the greenhouse is brought online, we will be dedicating it to this kind gentleman and his family. More details on the dedication will be posted at that time.