Gardens Across Iowa!; a humanitarian movement aided by new technology

 by Sondra Wilson. Last updated 11/10/24.

The following six “phases” show the various projects our team is working on, in the order we’ll complete them (because we can’t start Phase II without first completing Phase I, and so on). Note that 5% of all campaign contributions go toward Wild Willpower PAC’s discretionary funds, which are used to help people in need: our prime directive is “to help people live sustainability”, so we are apt to help people toward getting on their feet as opposed to helping with rent or only temporary emergency relief.

Phase I: The Gardens Across Iowa! Google Calendar (prototype to create App – see Phase II):

You can now download the Gardens Across Iowa! Google Calendar for free. It integrates directly into the your current Google Calendar to provide you with:

• Precise dates to plant various garden crops based on Iowa’s frost date (~April 20). For example:
  • On Jan. 26, users receive this notification, “Two weeks from now is the ideal time to begin germinating hot and bell peppers indoors. Here are the supplies you will need…” Soon you will be able to purchase any supplies you don’t have right through the Calendar (which in turn helps support this project). We are only seeking the best, most affordable products in order to save you time on research.
  • On Feb. 9 the Calendar will alert you with this notification that it is time to germinate your peppers. 
  • On May 1 you will receive this notification, “Ten days from now it will be time to transplant your pepper sprouts into the garden. Now is the time to harden your plants and prepare the soil.” Again users click the notification to receive directions for doing these two tasks.
  • On May 11 you receive this notification to transplant them into the garden, again with step-by-step directions.

The Calendar contains several entries for various crops now, however with your support Wild Willpower PAC will be able to hire our student-led team to:

• Vastly improve the entries we currently have in place (including adding photos), and
• Add numerous entries for a wide variety of garden crops and herbs.

The Calendar also groups each plant with their companion plants. For example, corn, beans, and squash grow exceptionally well together. Beets and turnips are also companion plants. The Calendar integrates companion planting techniques throughout to make planning your garden simple and fun.

There are also many plants that should not be grown next to each other which are also indicated within the Calendar.

Additionally, we are vacuuming the internet to collect the most efficient, aesthetically-pleasing techniques we can find. Here are just a few examples:

Double-planter technique for potatoes:

A clean, simple, portable way to grow potatoes, allowing gardeners to simply lift the inner pot to pluck potatoes. A great way to maximize space within your garden. To grow potatoes earlier in the season while there is still danger of frost, put a tarp over the ground to enjoy an earlier harvest.

Cucumber tipi:

Vine cucumbers love to hang, allowing them to grow larger and longer, with stronger vines, and without yellowing and flattening on the underside. The large leaves grow up the tipi and provide shade to retain water within. Cucumbers like a lot of water, so this creates a perfect environment for the fruits to thrive.

Rain gutter-planter hanging strawberries:

A semi-shady overhang to guard the plants beneath from direct sun doesn’t get more gorgeous than this:

Oh my gourd! – what a gourdgeous tunnel!!

Advertising Opportunity for Businesses = Discounts & Special Offers for Calendar Users:

At the bottom of each of the Calendar’s database entries, our sponsors will be listed along with their logo, a link to their website, and a special offer available to the user that is available exclusively through Gardens Across Iowa!. Users can activate this offer in two ways:

• Coming into the business and saying, “Thank you for helping to sponsor Gardens Across Iowa.” This allows our sponsors to hear firsthand gratitude from Iowans who appreciate that businesses are helping to make this possible, and provides our users with an opportunity to consider that these businesses do in fact care, and are doing something very important to help the community and the environment.
• If a business provides sales through their website, a link may be provided that users can click which brings them to a page to make the purchase where the exclusive discount or offer is available. 

Not only will can you use the Calendar/App to plan your gardens, you can also use it to shop deals and find discounts locally! This could be 10% of any select types of products, “buy one get one free”, or whatever offer our sponsors choose to make.

This will get more exciting once the App is developed (see Phase II below), however as we’re developing the Calendar, we will work to equitably place different businesses at the top of each entry so that all businesses are as visible as possible throughout the Calendar. If at some point in the future we find a way to make location service based advertising available within the Calendar, as described within Phase II, we will do that.

Come Visit Us at North Grand Mall in Ames – starting 11/22/2024 (excluding Thanksgiving weekend):

Come visit us every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at North Grand Mall Farmer’s Market! We’ll be working on improving the Calendar (creating database entries), and would love to give you a demonstration on how it works, and show you all the behind-the-scenes progress.

Soon we will have the first of several “Homesteading Starter Kits” at our booth: these include heirloom vegetable seeds which are packaged alongside their companion plant seeds and directions on how to grow them together. Our first two kits are both “3 Sisters” Kits):

• “Succotash Kit” because sweet corn, lima beans, and squash are the three main ingredients for making traditional succotash. This kit includes a recipe!
• “Vibrant Heirlooms Kit” which includes gorgeous Good Mother Stallard beans, rainbow gem popcorn seeds, and seeds to grow colorful, tasty Honeyboat Delicata Squash.

It is our hope that these kits get people excited about getting started growing something in spring, and it will allow us to earn needed funding so we can hire more students perform the research necessary to create more plant entries for the Calendar.

A copy of the in-store certificate from each of our business sponsors will be on display at the booth, such as this one from Perfect Plantista:

Phase II: Modeling a Movement – Wild Willpower PAC is seeking a plot of land in Ames, Iowa:

Wild Willpower PAC is currently seeking a plot of land to work with in spring 2025 so we can create a model garden. We would like to approach Iowa State University with a proposal to implement an on-campus student-run garden. We will seek to automate watering with timers wherever possible, and to troubleshoot any problems to make the garden as hands-free as possible. It is our hope that positive media attention could broadcast our model garden so it may be replicated anywhere in Iowa. At Iowa State University we have one of the top engineering colleges in the world and one of the top horticulture colleges in the world: if we can’t engineer a horticulture movement, I don’t know who can!

Phase III: The Gardens Across Iowa! App:

Once the Calendar is complete, it will be used to develop the Gardens Across Iowa! App. which will include location services. That means:

• Advertising slots, located at the bottom of each calendar (database) entry, will show local sponsors at the top of the list. For example, if we have 5 sponsors in Ames, and a user in Ames is looking at an entry on tomatoes, Ames sponsors will be located at the top, followed by ads from other nearby sponsors who are slightly further away. If that person drives to Des Moines, nearby Des Moines area sponsors will located at the top, and so on. A list of all Iowa sponsors may be toggled by the user so they look through all sponsors and find deals.
• Each local sponsors’ ads will be shuffled and randomized. For example, if we have 5 sponsors in in Ames, there will be a 1 in 5 chance that your business is located in the premium spot, followed by the other 4 sponsors.

The App will also allow users to toggle various plants within the calendar on and off, so if they don’t want to grow eggplants, they can toggle those notifications so they don’t show up in the calendar. Next year, if they decide to grow eggplants, they can toggle it back on to receive those notifications.

Phase IV: Replicating Our Model Garden:

Proceeds from sponsorships and campaign contributions from private citizens (donate here) will help us hire our app development crew to get this all running as described above, however that is a finite process. Once the Calendar/App are finished and there are only maintenance and fixed costs for Wild Willpower PAC, proceeds will enter into a fund that goes toward purchasing land around the state for use in opening up community gardens.

Phase V: The Gardens Across America! App:

The Gardens Across Iowa! App will be used to develop the Gardens Across America! App. This means that if a person were using the app in Colorado, for example, the dates for each plant will relocate within the calendar to dates which match Colorado’s frost date. This App will be useful to anyone in the U.S.

Phase VI: The Gardens Across Earth! App:

The Gardens Across America! App will be used to develop the Gardens Across Earth! App. It is our hope that what we are modeling here in the Heartland can help end food insecurity around the world. Heal the Heartland; heal the world!

Thank you so much for your support!

If your business is interested in becoming a sponsor, please email [email protected] with “Gardens Across Iowa!” in the subject line.

If you are a US-based business, politician, PAC, or Citizen, we are very grateful for your contribution!

Gardens About Iowa! is a joint venture between Wild Willpower PAC, Sondra Wilson for Iowa Governor, and our sponsors:

Wild Willpower PAC is registered with the IRS as a 527 tax exempt political organization, and with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) as the first registered “Civil PAC” in the nation. While many PACs primarily focus on getting candidates elected (or not elected), Wild Willpower PAC utilizes campaign contributions toward Service Projects to help the general public.

Sondra Wilson for Iowa Governor is the name of Sondra’s campaign committee registered with the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board for the 2026 gubernatorial election. The Calendar and App (see Phase III) will be used to make Sondra’s proposed Statewide Gardening Program feasible. The plan includes:

• A school program to teach students to manage a garden, with produce then being used within Iowa’s school lunch program. Remember that low-income students just had funding cut for Iowa’s school lunch program, so here is a low-cost, common sense solution that provides students with valuable skills that will serve them the rest of their lives. Also, kids love playing in dirt!
• Allocating funding to municipalities across Iowa so they can purchase land to open up community gardens “in every town and city across Iowa”. Professional gardeners will be hired by the state (similar to FDR’s public works program) to help manage the gardens – essentially taking care of any tasks not being maintained by individual plot-holders. Also this provides plot-holders with not only the Calendar/App to help them with gardening, but also a local professional to talk with to help resolve any issues they may be having, or help that they need. Additionally Iowans have access to Iowa State University’s Extension Offices to find assistance as well. This part of the plan is important because:
  • Iowa recorded record high food insecurity in 2023 (Food Bank of Iowa). With some of the most rich, fertile soils in the world, there should be no reason for this.
  • In 2022 $802M in crops were destroyed due to the derecho and drought which happened in the same year (Des Moines Register). Currently Iowans are not prepared for major natural disasters, war, or severe economic downturn. In urban areas, this leaves Iowans as sitting ducks,. God forbid should such a disaster should occur.
  • This plan will help beautify cities, connect people with nature, and bring community members from all walks of life together within a healthy setting.

Benefits of an En Masse Homesteading Movement:

• improve local food supplies.
• stop landfills from growing because “gardens aren’t wrapped in garbage”.
• provide families the opportunity to live self-sufficient, healthy lives.
• reduce dependence on welfare programs (and thus, to reduce taxes).

    Why the term homestead? – The term “homestead” is actually a very important common law legal term which prevents a person who is working to live sustainably from having their home foreclosed on.

Thank you to Saboteur365 for this great commemorative graphic we’re using in accordance with Fair Use.

References:

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