Hi All,
Tod and I got out of Livermore for a night! We ended up staying in Arnold and visiting the Calaveras Big Trees! First time for both of us seeing the Calaveras Big Trees, gosh they are MAGNIFICENT! It is just mind blowing how big around, tall and how long they have been standing. This one stump you are allowed to walk on to was at least 21 feet across-you could’ve made a house inside of some of these trees! A few sad stories on how they stripped some of the trees of their bark to display to the masses, heartbreaking. The magnificence of these trees was just amazing though. We also hiked the Grove Overlook Trail which took us above the trees and able to see the tops of the trees and their greenery. We got there around 7am and had the trail to ourselves for almost 2 hours! We also got to visit our friends who live in Murphys! We had lunch with them on Saturday when we got there and plan to use their guest room next time! They are such a sweet couple, she tried enticing us to stay longer with turkey soup and homemade sourdough bread for dinner…if only we didn’t have to work on Monday! Alas, we had to come home…
Pleasanton Transition was out last week and helped Kelly to weed out bed A03 to help us get ahead of bed prep! They also helped him to weed out the front walkway and underneath the picnic table area for the Eagle Scout’s project that was starting this past Saturday! With the Pleasanton crew working on the weeds it helped to move the Scout’s project forward for him!
Kaleidoscope was out last week as well and got a lot done in the garden! We are starting to get the irrigation hoses down in the Expansion but while that is happening we need to keep the trees watered and they helped us with that chore in the Greenhouse and over in the compost bunker where we have them healed in. Kelly started the rotating composter with the crew; taking the plants that were gleaned out on Tuesday & Wednesday, size reducing them and then adding them in to the composter. They also helped Kelly & Aditi plant 19 Green Zebra tomatoes in bed M14-yup, the first of our many tomatoes went in last week! We may be harvesting some tomatoes by mid June! Thank you Kaleidoscope!
Through the mighty efforts of volunteers and staff we were able to prep 11 beds last week! Lots of gleaning and weeding going on in each bed, as well as lots of shake & baking since we are beginning with the front beds which require the shake & bake! We all got out there and did it! Don’t know about you all but my body is SORE, lol! The other thing we are doing with the beds this year is switching out the irrigation hoses. We have 2 different hoses to use and decided to use them in tandem with one another in each bed. Our goal with that is to see which brand works the best in our garden and then eventually switch back to one brand. A few of you got to see what that looked like. In a bed with 5 hoses you can use either 3 blue & 2 white or 3 white & 2 blue. There are a few beds with 6 hoses and there we can just place every other hose with the alternating hose color.
Recap on bed prepping;
1. Glean & weed the bed
2. Mark off how far out you need to fork the bed then take off the irrigation hoses
3. Fork the bed and then level
4. Amend with appropriate amount of fertilizer and water the fertilizer
5. Cover with 2” Oliveria Compost, level and then either shake & bake and level again the front beds (from the front of the garden to the pump shed) or leave as is (from AB25 back). Water in if need be.
6. Switch out irrigation hoses
7. Plant, water and straw in!
A total of 5 beds were planted; the tomatoes that Kaleidoscope planted, peppers, cucumbers and squash made it into the ground last week. We have a lot ready to get in the ground and also received a few more from the Master Gardners! They had some Chef’s Choice tomatoes that we loved from 2 years ago! They also had some Brandywine tomatoes, Delicate squash and Beef Steak tomatoes that they were able to share with us amongst some other tasty treats! We are definitely ready to get our garden planted as the beds are being prepped:)
Soil samples are being taken. We invested in a soil sampler probe to help us with taking the soil up and it is such a BIG help! Last week we were able to get 5 out 13 samples completed. One more sample area up front and then we can move towards the back of the garden, into the Orchard and the expansion! The soil samples help us to determine what fertilizer recipe to use for our beds each year. Like I had mentioned in last week’s Happy Monday note for this year we are using a gypsum heavy recipe because the beds are low in calcium and we found that out from the soil samples taken last year.
Weeding happened in the garden…Lance continues his quest in the P beds and added in the N beds! RH was out on Friday and she weeded in the M & L beds for us and of course lots of weeding going on in the beds that were prepped!
DB trimmed and thinned fruit on the trees over by the campfire circle.
AW & TE continued their irrigation work in the Expansion!
FYI, we are needing help with getting trellises added to some of our beds for the pole beans that will be going in. Anyone who would like to help out with that please let me know!
We have been busy little bees in the garden-speaking of, I do not remember if I mentioned this or not but we are currently working on hive #3! The end of this month will tell us when we open it back up to see if the new Queen made her virgin flight and we will know this if we see eggs and larvae! Wish us luck! The other 2 hives are doing well. The North Hive is battling mites but is still growing. The South Hive we saw ALOT of eggs and smaller larvae last week!
With all that is going on in the garden we harvested 349.63# of produce for our local food pantries! Go Team Go!!!
Thank you all for helping out in the garden!
Take care
Lori