January questions

[laurajv]

Nicked from resonant!

Call me: Laura or Jac; she (or they).

Other things I've been known as (that I'm willing to share): Laura. and Jac. and LJV. Briefly wrote HP as "Rapparee" but only wrote a few stories as that.

A bit about my nonfannish life: I live in a medium-sized city with an absurdly good museum system, with my spouse, children, and pets. I'm a gardener, and I'm mostly focused on permaculture/agroecology and growing edibles in urban spaces. I'm currently enrolled in my state extension's Master Gardener program.

A bit about my fannish life: Right now, I'm mostly into MCU stuff, especially things having to do with Natasha or Bucky.

Things I'm super-enthusiastic about: food forests. medium-sized domesticated carnivores. cooking.

Comments

[resonant]

See, I knew I was going to learn things I didn't know; I had no idea you were a gardener! I'm seeing a lot of intersections between gardening and urban planning that you didn't used to read about -- green alleys, rooftop gardens to control runoff and erosion, etc. It's a fascinating field, and I'd love to read anything you'd care to write about it.

[laurajv]

One thing I'm particularly passionate about -- in case you didn't guess -- is growing food in urban spaces, using sustainable practices. Where I am is a forested mountainous plateau, and as much as possible I prefer to work with native plants in a forest garden (managed) ecology. This can be a challenge -- you're by default encountering less sun in that environment, and there are some non-native plants that have strong appeal (say, apples and pears).

In non-forest gardening activities, right now I'm in charge of seed selection for 2015's state extension edible garden; I'm a little dubious about the crop rotation we're using but I wasn't involved when it was developed, so I guess we'll see! That's a non-forested site, and it's got a number of challenges -- it's hot, and on a slope that causes some pretty major issues (drains very fast from some spots; makes the walking paths and garden entrance dangerously slippery if it's rained recently). Not my primary interest, but because it's a state extension site, we're doing a lot of experiments -- does Cultivar X grow in this part of the state? What disease problems happen on this plant? What about this intercropping practice? This year I'm excited to see what happens with using sunflowers as supports for pole beans. I'm also supposed to figure out if we can use swales for water control in that space (I think we can, but it's an established space with extant beds, so I need to figure out where they can be placed, and what kind we should use -- there's SO much in the space, it's hard, but I think we can probably run a diversion swale to keep a dry spot irrigated, and maybe use some fishscales to slow drainage).

I'm supposed to be involved in the revitalization of a student outreach urban gardening program, but no one has been able to get in touch with the nominal project head, so...I don't know, I don't think I'm qualified to take that over, but I will if I have to. I am pretty into teaching school-age kids to spend time in the interstitial green spaces of the city, and how to use those spaces to support wildlife, beautify, and produce food. My son's school has a lot of unused spaces (lawn areas fenced off so students can't use them) and next year I'm hoping to talk the PTO into participating in a local school-urban-farming program. (Why not this year? Because this year I have class during PTO meetings. They're at the same time all the time, despite repeated requests from many parents to rotate the days. My opinion of the PTO is not high.)