The Santa Fe Railyard has the honor of of receiving a Heritage Preservation Award in spring of 2010 the category of Community Preservation Planning from the Cultural Properties Review Committee! The Railyard Stewards thank the committee for recognizing the Railyard Park + Plaza, and Gayla Bechtol and Suby Bowden for their nomination of the space.
The Railyard is mentioned in a New York Times article entitled ‘36 Hours in Santa Fe’. For the full article, visit http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/travel/23hours.html?th&emc=th.
SPICE MARKET
The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market (1607 Paseo de Peralta; 505-983-4098; santafefarmersmarket.com) dates back a half-century, but it stepped up a notch when it moved to a permanent building in 2008. Everything sold here, including dried chilies, yogurt and grass-fed meats, is produced in northern New Mexico. The market is part of a bustling district that includes the new Railyard Park by the architect Frederic Schwartz and the landscape architect Ken Smith, both Manhattanites whose taste is anything but quaint. As you wander around, be on the lookout for the Rail Runner, a gleaming new passenger train scheduled to pull in from Albuquerque at 11:08 a.m.
Alvord Community Students present their work at the Railyard Park food gardens to Jane Goodall, using a poster called “Sparkly Desert.” Jane Goodall visited Santa Fe to listen to presentations from about 20 youth and school groups.
Greetings from the Railyard Park! First of all, join us this Saturday, May 15 for a fun planting workshop with a farmer from the Master Gardeners Association, or on Saturday, May 22 to plant in our donation garden with Beneficial Farms!
If you’ve walked through the park lately, you may have enjoyed the yellow roses blooming along the Gabion Gardens while listening to the sound of water gurguling past in the Acequia Madre.
While spring thinks about warming up–sometimes yes, sometimes no–gardening in the park is certainly warming up. In the last month the park has had visits from a number of school groups, including Alvord, Acequia Madre, Cochiti, Monte del Sol, School for the Deaf, Waldorf, preschool kids, and Agua Fria Elementary (coming soon). Many of the school groups have volunteered in the waffle garden and helped beautify the park for spring.
Stop by the Waffle Garden to see their efforts unfurling, with beautiful fava beans, red runners, bok choy, onions, garlic, carrots, spinach, radishes, beets, lettuces, peas and many other vegetables already vigorously growing.
Dedicated park volunteers have also been busy tending the over 125 different varieties of perennial flowers, shrubs, trees, and grasses that make our park unique in Santa Fe. Stewards have provided over 500 hours of service to the park so far this Spring! EARLYBIRDS GARDENING DAYS are ongoing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. Come on out and join us!
The Farmers Market has moved outside, making our Tuesdays and Saturdays in the park more lively. Stop by our info booth at the Saturday Artists Market, and say hello to our summer VISTA intern, Heidi Brandow, a student at IAIA.
See you in the park!
SATURDAY MAY 15– SPRING PLANTING WORKSHOP with the MASTER GARDENERS ASSOCIATION A local farmer and member of the Master Gardeners will guide attendees on planting choices and techniques, including hands-on planting in the community garden. Attendees will plant a giant pumpkin, an herb garden, a squash garden and more! 10 a.m. – Noon at the Railyard Park.
FRIDAY MAY 21– BIKE TO WORK DAY EVENTS & BOOTHS Railyard Plaza, 7 a.m. – 10 a.m. The event will feature door prizes, food, coffee, bike experts, and other fun and informative activities
SATURDAY MAY 22– SPRING PLANTING II WORKSHOP with BENEFICIAL FARMS Join us in our community waffle garden for education on spring planting! This garden is focused on education, and donation to local food banks. 10 a.m. – Noon at the Railyard Park.
SATURDAY JUNE 12 – HORN O’ PLENTY VEGETABLE GARDENING Help plant and maintain the community vegetable gardens and ornamental gardens, 10 a.m. – Noon
SATURDAY JUNE 19 – IRRIGATION WORKSHOP with THE CITY OF SANTA FE – Learn how to get the most out of your irrigation system! Robert Wood will instruct. 10 a.m. – Noon at the REI COMMUNITY Room at 500 Market Street.
► SUNDAY JUNE 20 – FATHER’S DAY CONCERT AND MOVIE
► SATURDAY JUNE 26 – GAY PRIDE CELEBRATION
For more information or to RSVP for workshops, contact the Stewards atinfo@railyardpark.org or at 505-982-6975.
Dennis Carroll | For The New Mexican
Posted: Sunday, April 11, 2010 – 4/12/10
The edible word of the day is arugula. First of all, it’s fun to say — arugula, arugula — as you put your mouth and tongue through all kinds of contortions just to get the letters out. Also, as any restaurateur knows, add Eruca sativa to any salad, and you can get away with charging more for the dish, especially if you sprinkle on goat cheese. And of course, there are numerous accounts of the supposed aphrodisiacal qualities of the arugula — also known as rocket. But never mind all that.
Arugula, a mustard-green type of weedy plant native to the Mediterranean, was among several early season vegetables being sown Sunday in the Railyard’s demonstration gardens by members of the Railyard Stewards and those who had come to pick up a few tips about desert gardening.
Stnina Babankova, visiting from Montreal, noted that, “Whatever you put in the ground there, it grows. Everything grows by itself.” Babankova, who’s spending the spring with her daughter, Zee, in Santa Fe, had gathered with a handful of others and was hoping to pick up some gardening tips for Zee.
Instructor Steve Warshawer of Beneficial Farm’s community support agriculture project, was quick to point out that too many New Mexico gardeners think, ” ‘Oh my gosh, this is the desert. If it’s not growing, it needs water.’ That’s not necessarily true.” Many plants, including arugula, are very hardy and actually don’t need all that much water, Warshawer said. They often are patient, more so than their gardeners, perhaps, and lie content in the ground not doing much until water and temperature conditions become more suitable for a sustained growth.
Warshawer, who farms on Roe Mesa, offered a variety of spring garden tips, including creating a “three-finger” planter tool composed of a thumb and the index and middle fingers to ensure that a seed is planted at the right depth — basically up to the first knuckle of the thumb or until you feel resistance from the undug ground underneath the prepared soil.
He also suggested ways to make the best use of a limited water supply and unpredictable rain showers. They included, in the arugula’s case, hoeing a furrow an inch deep to allow any water in the soil to rise to join the water you or Mother Nature may have added from the top.
Warshawer also demonstrated how to make a “high-tech transformational seeding device” from an envelope or folded piece of paper from a reporter’s notebook.
The group, under the guidance of Warshawer and the Railyard Stewards’ executive director, Eliza Katzmann, also planted spinach (more of a fussy grower than arugula), snow peas and fava beans in the demonstration “waffle garden.” The area is named for its giant waffle appearance created by the construction of dirt paths around the recessed rectangular garden plots.
That helps prevent any water that reaches the plants from simply running off and not settling into the soil.
The Stewards and the Santa Fe Master Gardeners Association still have two upcoming instructional gardening sessions planned for the Railyard plots: spring planting on May 15 and midsummer garden care on July 24.
ON THE WEB
• For more information on the Railyard Park, visit www,railyardpark.org.
• To learn more about arugula, visit www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Produce-440/arugula.aspx
