Rose RootZone: Oct 2022 Iss. 1

Dear Valued Rose Roots Gardeners and Friends of Rose Roots,

Your plots have been stunning this season! So much produce has been harvested already in our little peaceful corner of paradise. As our Tenth Anniversary Celebration season comes to an end, we look forward to seeing everyone at our final season close Work Party and Brunch Potluck on Sat Oct 29 at 9 am. We will clean, organize, and shut down the garden for the season followed by a Bruch Potluck around 11:00 am. Big News: We are Lucky to be hosting The band the Humminbirds for this final season celebration! Please RSVP HERE and select an item to bring in the potluck Sign Up list.

Reminders Log Service Hours

Please remember to log your Service Hours Here by Oct 31 as 12 hours are required per plot per season. Service hours are considered work performed in community spaces, including attending work parties, monthly meetings, and helping maintain community plots and common spaces. For hours not logged, we will send invoices for $7 per hour in November. We have had wonderful participation this year, and we also appreciate your financial contribution if you prefer to cover your hours with a financial contribution towards helping maintain our all community garden space.

Where to Put your Organic Matter when Cleaning your Plot

Plots should be cleaned out by Oct 31. When cleaning out your plots, please put your sunflowers and larger organic matter that can't be reduced and mowed easily out in a pile to the West of the barn outside the garden fenceline (sign will be posted). We will reduce that organic matter and use it for the Westside Landscaping project to enrich the soil. Consider planting cover crops (eg. annual ryegrass, Sudan grass, oats, buckwheat and legumes such as peas, beans, alfalfa, clover and vetch) to enrich the soil. Please put ALL non-organic matter (metal, plastics) in the dumpster.

New and Returning Gardeners Pre-Registration for 2023 Season

We already have eager gardeners reaching out to reserve plots for next season. If you leased a plot this season, you will be offered that plot again with first priority. Please let us know if you plan to come back or Not at the Pre-Registration 2023 Form HERE. This will help us plan for next season and will support ensuring all our plots are assigned to eager committed gardeners.

Produce Donation Report

Cindee Malito and our produce donation delivery team have diligently tracked and organized produce donations throughout our harvest season. Cindee reports that September was our BEST month of donations as gardeners donated 535 pounds of produce. This equates to the dollar amount of $1449.85. As of October 6, gardeners for the 2022 season have donated 958 pounds of produce for a total dollar amount of $2596.18. Also, Cindee heard from Shelley at the veggie van that their last day of giving out produce will be this Thursday, October 13. From the bottom of her heart, Cindee thanks everyone who donated produce this year. She also thanks our fabulous and faithful produce plot caretakers Karel, Tom, and Sarah Hemler and our hard-working and over the top volunteer produce delivers Laura Velapoli, Amy Arendt, and Christie Moran.

Event Recap

Sept 15, 2022: It was a perfect evening with fabulous presenters. Laura and Gamma, our Rose Roots Celebrity Chefs, treated us to an educational, fun cooking class with community. Delicious veggie soup, roasted carrot soup, fuchsia hummus, and tasty roasted salsas were featured along with community socializing. It was a night to remember.

Laura and Gamma's Healthy Garden Cooking Class

Garden Leadership and Elections

Would you like to be more integrated into our garden community? Do you like to organize and lead community events and projects? Our elected garden positions are 2 year terms and include the roles of President, Vice President, Administrator, Treasurer, and Membership Lead. Non-elected Volunteer Lead positions are also outlined below. We additionally appoint two members-at-large as voting members of our steering committee. Meetings are monthly for 1-2 hours during the garden season April through November. All garden members with any level of experience are invited to submit nominations. Gardeners are encouraged to self nominate if interested! Helping lead this wonderful community is a great way to meet people, learn more about gardening, and support local organic agriculture. Below is a general overview of Garden Leadership Organization and roles with Elected Roles in yellow and Volunteer lead positions in Pink. Further information on Elected positions can be found Here.

Rose Roots Garden Leadership Elections

WHAT: All but the Treasurer position are completing their two year terms this season. As such, open positions for the 2023 gardening season are President, Vice President, Administrator, and Membership Lead. We have several nominations and would happily accept more before Oct 31, 2022. Garden leadership is what you make of it, but at minimum is only a few hours committed per month. It's a great way to get service hours in and meet some wonderful people!

HOW: Elections will be online through Google Forms and sent via email to garden members. Responses will be anonymized and linked only to IP addresses so that only one person may vote per IP address. All active garden members may vote. If you would like to run for a position, please send a short paragraph about your background and what community organic gardening means to you.

WHEN: Our election ballot will be sent out in November via Google Forms. Responses can be submitted from Nov 5-12. Our new leadership team for the 2023 garden season will be announced Nov 19.

Garden Leadership is Fun!

Tech Issues: Such is Life

We’ve had some back end tech issues with Google suddenly transitioning their free legacy suite to a paid Google workspace subscription, without giving organizations “super admin” status to actually upgrade. As such our Google Workspace and website have been down periodically this month. In the process of problem solving with nearly every former and current leader and several crafty gardeners, a wonderful team effort, we’ve transferred our domain name for our website to Wix for ease of access, have applied for non-profit exempt status with Google, and are waiting for confirmation so we can continue to access Google products for free.

For ten years, as unpaid volunteers with a very small budget to run Rose Roots Community Garden, we have used the following collaborative web hosted Google products:

• Google Drive

• Google business emails

• Google Forms

• Google Sheets

• Google Docs

• YouTube

• Google Calendar

• Google Meet

• Google Maps

• Google Photos

• Google business listing (which we updated this year, facilitated by getting a mailbox, with our current address 8412 Alkire Street, Arvada, CO 80005)

These products allow us to keep gardeners and community updated through our Wix supported website, where we put links to the applications above (eg. Google Forms we use for elections and sign-ups for our food donation delivery program, along with pre-registration for plots. Google Photos we use to share slide shows of special events, YouTube we use to share recaps of community events, etc). We also use Evite, Sign Up Genius, Facebook, Instagram and Next Door social media sites which are not Google products. All of these tools are imperative to support communication with our garden community and have been quite successful in getting the word out for gardening events and work parties. As such we will continue to use these tools going forward.

Rose Roots Community

Gardener Gratitude

Thank you to the following garden leaders this season:

• Erin Newton, President: For supporting community engagement, maintaining our website, keeping gardeners informed through newsletters, navigating technical challenges, and hosting visitors such as the Arvada Garden Bike Tour and the Meiklejohn Elementary School 4th Grade Garden Scavenger Hunt.

• Patty Sacks, Vice President: for being a fabulous lead on Neighborhood Improvement Westside Landscaping Project and mentor to gardeners.

• John Malito, Treasurer: for tracking Rose Roots finances and ensuring all gardeners have been reimbursed.

• Gary Williams and Jim Richards, Operations: Jumping in whenever needed to support Operations needs.

• Laura Bennett, Administrator: Thank you for being a bright spot of sunshine always, bringing gardeners and leaders together, and hosting fabulous meetings, events, and workshops.

• Former garden Leaders: Gina Schley and John Chism, Jason Anderson, and Kendra Eliason for serving as mentors for current garden leaders.

Thank you to our Garden Community:

• Thank you to Shelley Cooke, The Veggie Van leader, and Doris for picking up our produce on Thursdays.

• Thank you to Community Table food bank volunteers who processed and utilized our produce for those in need in our community.

• Thank you to Cindee Malito for coordinating our Produce Donation team.

• Thank you to James "Glenn" Glenroy, Bill Ott, and Julie Lesnick for leading our compost processing efforts.

• Thank you to Karel, Tom and Sarah Hemler for their hard work cultivating our Produce Donation Plots.

• Thank you to Deb Harris for designing and maintaining a beautiful kiosk.

• Thank you to Karissa Devore for designing our Evites for special events.

• Thank you to our workshop presenters Gina Schley, Jim Richards, and Laura Bennett for sharing their knowledge.

• Thank you to Nicole McCrorie for hosting community members for the first ever City of Arvada Pollinator Garden Tour.

• Thank you to our CSA neighbor with Forever West Taylor Drew for volunteering his time to help grade our Westside Landscaping project.

• Thank you to our musicians Tim Merkel and Laurie Dameron for some fabulous skilled acoustic garden entertainment on our Music in the Garden community nights.

• Thank you to all the gardeners who have come out and worked so hard to support the Westside Landscaping project!

• Thank you to the City of Arvada and Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) for their continuing support.

Upcoming Events

Tues Oct 18, 6 pm: Laura's Bennett's house. Text 303-253-5090 to RSVP.

Sat Oct 29, 9 am-12 pm: Final Work Party and Potluck Brunch