Written by Logan Witt, Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership (SNAP) member at the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC), May 2024
I assisted in coordinating the Grow Your Own Community Garden Festival at our Tahoe City Field Station in partnership with the Lake Tahoe Master Gardeners and Slow Food Lake Tahoe. The free community event celebrates the joys and benefits of edible gardening in high-elevation regions – hosted at three unique locations: Tahoe City, Truckee, and South Lake Tahoe. These special events feature a high-elevation seedling sale and edible gardening demos with a special emphasis on watershed-friendly and sustainable practices.
One of my favorite parts of the festival is the option for people to pre-purchase high-elevation-specific plant seedlings for a cheap price. The available plants included peas and beans, leafy greens, tomatoes and peppers, edible flowers, squash and pumpkins, onions and leeks, potatoes, root crops, and micro-greens. Lake Tahoe Master Gardeners were available to answer any garden-related questions and teach people how to grow their own food sustainably! We also had some fun family-friendly activities about pollination, stream monitoring, citizen science, phenology, seed dispersal, and fun crafts. Full Circle Compost was generous to donate a truck full of their amazing Tahoe-specific compost to give away to the gardening community as well! Speaking of donations, Tahoe National Brewery donated beer and other drinks for the festival for everyone to enjoy.
The Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) hosted our Grow Your Own Festival at our Field Station in Tahoe City. Our field station is unique due to its original use as a historical fish hatchery which we transformed into storage for a lot of our research equipment. Our field station manager gave tours of our field station, educating the community on some of the research we do on and around the lake. The Eriksson Education Center is also in the Field Station where you can learn more about topics like the history of the fish hatchery and the changes of Lake Tahoe’s food web. This was a great opportunity for us to not only get the community together for watershed-friendly gardening, but to also share more about what TERC does behind the scenes!
Funding for SNAP is supported by Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation’s Nature Fund and Martis Fund – a collaborative project of Martis Camp landowners, DMB/Highlands Group (the developers of Martis Camp), Mountain Area Preservation Foundation (MAP), and Sierra Watch. Sierra Nevada Alliance is a proud grantee of AmeriCorps and California Volunteers, Office of the Governor.
