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In case you don’t know, Loving Garland Green is the official steward for the Garland Community Garden.  We meet the first and third Monday of the month at 216 East Kingsbridge Drive, 6:30 to 7:30 PM.

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At our Monday February 19 meeting Jane Stroud, our President, has promised to bring some Hopniss for us to sample.  If you’ve never heard of Hopniss, you can join my club.  Until a few days ago when Jane educated me, I had not heard of this plant either.  This edible is also known as the “American Groundnut.”

Hopniss is our North American answer to the South American potato.  It is a tuber from a bean plant.  The beans, flowers and shoots of Hopniss are all edible.  The first European reference to Hopniss comes from Thomas Harriot, the resident scientist with Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1585 voyage to Virginia.

This plant has been found as far west as Colorado.  The Hopniss is reported to be a hardy plant that loves to grow in wet places such as stream banks, around the edges of ponds.  Yet it is also drought tolerant—this is a suitable candidate for growing in our gardens here in North Texas.

Old World/New World Garden Patch

As mentioned previously on this blog, we plan to have an Old World/New World bed down at the Garland Community Garden this year.  Half of this bed will feature plants fro the Old World the Europeans brought to the New World and the other half of the bed will feature the plants from the New World that the Europeans took with them back to the New world.  Hopniss will be among the plants featured in the New World section,

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Update on Fava Beans and Tulips in the Garland Community Garden

Most beans prefer warmer (but not too warm) weather.  However, the Fava Beans prefer temperatures between 40 and 70 degrees F.  About three weeks ago I planted 15 Fava beans in three different places in the Garland Community Garden.  Shortly after we had that cold snap with temperatures dipping into the teens.  I had given up on them.  Then on Thursday (Feb 15) Low and behold!  The Fava beans have broken through the earth with their lovely dark green leaves.  I think all the beans have germinated.

Jane and I counted emerged tulips on Thursday as well:  28 of 50 tulips are now poking through the soil.

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If you want to have fun, learn more about what you can grow in our North Texas area, or taste some American Groundnut, come to the next meeting of Loving Garland Green:

Monday February 19 – 6:30 to 7:30 PM – 216 EAST Kingsbridge Drive 75040 (between Crestone and Naaman School Road)

The Garland Makerspace Discovery Group will be sending off our application to obtain our Certification of Formation as a nonprofit organization in the State of Texas this coming Wednesday.  Our name will be the “Garland Area Makerspace.”

Of course we are very excited about this giant step for our local community but we are looking ahead to the next step, which will be to promote and educate people regarding makerspaces, maker technologies, and what they offer communities. We want our community to be as excited about the possibilities offered by makerspaces as we are so they will join us in our collaborative effort to make our community and world a better place.

Ask three people what a makerspace is and you are likely to get three different responses.  Two things about makerspaces are certain: makerspaces are reshaping education and encouraging entrepreneurship in the USA and the world. They are cropping up everywhere all over the landscape. Many U.S. schools (grade schools and high schools alike) as well as public libraries now have makerspaces.  In fact, Garland Texas may have the largest makerspace in the world.  It's called the Gilbreath-Reed Technology Center which is designed exactly as a makerspace.  This facility, however is only available to Junior and Senior high school students in the Garland ISD.

Makerspaces with adult memberships are places where all kinds of makers come together under one roof:  from blacksmiths to those who use 3D printers to create prototypes.  These makers vary in expertise from the beginners to professionals who earn a living with their maker skills.  The physical structure of the makerspace as well as the necessity of sharing some of the same tools among various members from different disciplines is such that it naturally encourages collaboration—not only between those of the same discipline but also with those from different disciplines.  When diversity is added to the pot, all kinds of exciting and beneficial things can happen.

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3D PRINTERS

Among all the great tools and equipment available for makers, the Garland Area Makerspace will eventually have several 3D printers. A lot of people think that 3d printing is the latest technology when actually it has been around for more than 30 years.  Chuck Hall invented this type of additive manufacturing technology in 1983.   Born in 1939, Mr. Hall is even older than the Baby Boomer generation.

Why all the fuss about 3D Printers Now?

Since 3D printers have been around so long as an additive manufacturing tool, why are we just now hearing about them you might be asking.  The most likely explanation is that the patent on one of the most common 3D printing technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM), expired in 2009. Until then, the only places where we could find a 3D printer would be in an industrial facility.  Now instead of $200,000 and more, the 3D printers have arrived to the consumer market for under $2,000 and their sales are growing.  According to Wohler’s Report 2015: Gartner:  In 2009 3D printer sales were 1, 816 compared to 232,336 in 2015.

How does 3D Printing work?

The process for 3D printing is an additive manufacturing process.  Things are built layer by fused layer.  Instead of ink, the printer uses various kinds of materials (plastic, metal, resin, stone, etc.) that are melted at high temperatures in the printer and then poured out in very thin layers onto the building deck of the printer.  The printer “knows” where to pour the material because it has received digital instructions from software in a computer that is communicating to the printer wirelessly or through a physical connection—just as your ink or laser printer knows what words or images to print on paper. 

The computer “talks” to the 3-D printer much in the same way that your computer “talks” to your printer to print out a page.  However instead of Word, 3D printers require software such as Auto-Cad that creates images, which are then sliced into layers for creating the three-dimensional object.  Also, just as you can scan photos and documents into your normal printer, you can scan real objects into your 3D printer—provided you have a 3D scanner.  To do this you place the object (such as a kitchen spatula) on your 3D scanner, scan it, and then send to print.

Who uses 3D technology now?

The medical and prosthesis field use 3D printing extensively.  For example, the majority of today’s hearing aids are 3-D printed.  Dentists use this technology to make things like retainers.  Aircraft manufacturers use 3D printing to make aircraft parts such as 3D print fuel nozzles.  Architects use 3D printing to create models.  Shoe manufacturers use this technology to print soles.  These are just a few examples.

Tiny Home fans take note: one of the most exciting examples of the potential I’ve seen for 3D printing in action is a home that was printed in less than 24 hours in Moscow.  This 409 square foot house features a hall, living room, bathroom and kitchen and cost $10,134.  Apis Cor and PIK collaborated on the design.  Below is another example of a Building on Demand (BOD).  This building is located in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn and was built in the spring of 2017.   

We may not be creating such large objects with the 3D printers in the Garland Area Makerspace right away, but who’s to say what the future will bring us?

CC BY-SA 4.0 – Touted as the first building in Europe made with 3D construction printing – spring 2017

Remembering Groundhog Days Past

Groundhog Day is today, February 2.  According to legend, if the groundhog comes out of its hole and sees its shadow, it will be frightened and will scurry back to its hole.  Thus we will have six more weeks of winter.  Here in Texas, we don’t have to worry about Groundhogs seeing their shadows because groundhogs are not indigenous to Texas.

Back in 2015, Robert Smith, one of our local businessmen here in Garland, secured a groundhog from Georgia for a Garland Groundhog Day celebration. Her name was “Gretchen.”  Mayor Athas and other local dignitaries were present.  The mayor read a proclamation stating that Gretchen had seen her shadow when emerging from her hole.  Thus we were destined to not have an early spring. Apparently the legend has some merit as you can see from the photos below that I took in the Garland Community Garden on March 5, 2015 when Margie Rogers, Anita Opel and I went to play in the snow.

Margie makes a snow angel while Anita stands by the snow woman we made- 03/05/2015 – The official measurement at DFW was 3.4 inches.  In Garland, my official measurement was 4.1 inches.  It was a lot of great snow.

The only other memorable Groundhog Day I can remember is one I had in 2001 when, like Bill Murray I had two Groundhog Days.  Like so many events in life, the possibility was due to a fluke of timing.  I was flying back home to California from Jakarta. When you fly west from California, if you fly far enough and not too far, you’ll fly into tomorrow.  On the return trip, you are flying into yesterday. Jakarta is about 23 hours away from Los Angeles (for flights that stop once in Hawaii for refueling). I would never have been aware of repeat experience if the pilot had not called our attention to it. Groundhog day has been a holiday often passed unnoticed in my lifetime.

Citizen Science Tulip Project

Tulips are up at the Garland Community Garden!  Yes they are peeking up through the earth.  I’m impressed at their prowess.  We planted them 7 inches deep on January 6.  Here is our progress as noted on the map.  The green indicates the places where the bulbs have pushed through the earth.  Growing is a miracle that never ceases to leave me awestruck which is one of the reasons I love the garden so much. 

Tulip Map from the Journey North Citizen Science Tulip Project:  Green indicates where tulips have pushed up through the earth – Feb 2, 2018

GARLAND COMMUNITY GARDEN UPDATE

Jane, President and leader of Loving Garland Green (stewards of the Garland Community Garden) is busy planning lots of new projects and interesting things for the coming spring.  Among other things, this year the garden will have an Old World/New World garden plot; and a Three Sisters Plot.  In addition, I may get around to planting that weed plot I’ve been promising to plant for the past three years.  It’s amazing the number of edibles we label weeds and disregard as a food source.  Dandelions are a prime example.  The pilgrims brought this plant over with them as a winter green.  If they could come back and see how we now spend billions of dollars on Roundup every year to eradicate this edible from our lawns, I’m sure they would be shocked.

Speaking of shocking things, here in Garland, we still bag up our leaves and place them curbside to be carried off to our landfill.  In 2016 Loving Garland Green began our November Leaf Awareness Campaign.  The purpose of this campaign is to increase public awareness regarding 1) that our leaves go to the landfill and 2) leaves ideally need to stay in the area where they fall because they replenish the soil.

Soil, the thin layer that covers the earth’s surface like skin is an undervalued and endangered natural resource. According to soil expert Winfried Blum, worldwide only 12 percent of the land area is suitable for farming.  That area is supposed to insure food security for 7.5 billion people.  Removing leaves from your yard in Garland is equivalent to removing future soil and sequestering it in a landfill where it is taken out of circulation for years.

In 2016 we rescued 713 bags at an estimated 21,290 pounds.  This may sound like a lot, but unfortunately 713 bags of leaves is tiny when measured against the bags of leaves that are likely taken each year from the homes of Garland residents to the Hinton landfill.  Given our approximate 80,000 households and estimating low at five leaf bags per household, we send close to a half million bags of leaves to the landfill each year.

This year Loving Garland Green did not pick up leaves, but we do have approximately 50 bags that citizens have left at the garden.  I’ll get down there sometime this week to mulch them.

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NOTE:  You really can’t leave the leaves where they fall, as they will create a blanket over your lawn that blocks the sunlight.  You need to mulch them using a mulching blade on your lawnmower.  The tiny pieces will sink down to the ground and you should still be able to see the grass sticking up.  If you have too many leaves, mulch them and either bring to the Garland Community Garden or use to start a garden for your family.