Hi All,
Yesterday Brenda gave a talk at Asbury Church! Tod & I went to support her as well as Lance and surprise, surprise, Bruce Campbell, one of Fertile GroundWorks’ founders, was there as well! Ouk Yeon, Asbury Pastor, started with speaking about letting the old be “gone!” in order to let the new “come!’, which I found very inspiring for me right now! Brenda continued with talking about how the garden has inspired changes in the volunteers who come to help, how the work of harvesting produce to send out to our local community brings people together and how in that work our volunteers have also come to find sanctuary in the garden. She spoke of how the garden started as a way to feed our community, has turned into a million other ways that it feeds it, through all the little kindnesses we extend to one another in the work we all come together to do and how that goes out in to our community at large. It was all very inspiring and fills my heart up to know that we are all part of that!
In the garden last week…..
We had 2 Kaiser groups out last week! The first Kaiser crew helped Kelly to glean & weed bed K05. The chard was so overgrown that it was taller than most of us in some spots! Afterwards they helped me to plant bed I01 with 57 Millionaire eggplants. The second Kaiser crew came out and helped Brenda to glean, weed & prep bed M10, moving over 2,000# of compost. Now it is ready to be planted! They also planted bed M11 with 33 Astia squash plants. Thank Kaiser Crews for helping us to get ready for summer!
Pleasanton Transition crew were out and weeded beds L01, L03 & K06. Kaleidoscope was out and they helped to consolidate 2 compost bins down to 1 and watered in the trees waiting to be planted in the expansion. Enjoy Life More were also out and transferred the rest of the compost, size reduced plants to add to the rotating composter and weeded behind the compost bins. Peas & Me had a nice crew out! They got busy taking agribond off of 3 beds, replacing irrigation hoses on 2 beds and still had the energy to weed some of the orchard. SM joined me and was a great help in showing the Peas the wildlife the garden has to offer and read them a book during their break.
Whilst the groups were busy doing their chores our regular volunteers were out taking care of more chores! They were busy planting more beds for a total of 7 other beds planted with 426 seedlings. They all got busy gleaning out at least 1/2 beds on the harvest days for us so we can send all the veggies in to the food pantries, they then weeded the same 1/2 of the beds so we can all get in there next week and concentrate on prepping them for future plantings!
The Bee Area got some help with getting the weeds tamed back. Lance and DW took out the thistle before it could become a stand! It is much appreciated since we need to get in and out of the Bee Enclosure to take care of them. By the way, we successfully created a new hive! The Middle Hive has eggs, larvae and capped brood!!! That all means that the Queen is doing her job and now the hive will grow. Within the next few weeks we should see a surge in the amount of bees and will need to place a second box on to help them grow! Fertile GroundWorks now has 3 hives in the Bee Area!
More weeding happened on the West side of the Big Hoop House-all that blooming bindweed taken out before it could go to seed. The same crew that took care of that also finished gleaning & weeding out the other half of bed N09. The Enrique’s & VB completed prepping it so that is also ready for planting. Bed AB27 was also gleaned weeded & prepped for future plantings. As we prep the beds we are continuing to switch out the irrigation hoses. If you are prepping a bed and do not have time to switch out the hoses please let us know so we can set up another day to get that done. We are testing out which is the best irrigation hose to move forward with so we appreciate your help in getting this done.
Livermore Feed delivered straw to the garden yesterday. We have straw up front by the Office and we have a pile of bales out back by the new expansion. We will switch over to using this to mulch the beds instead of the grass. For the paths we have plenty of cardboard but we are waiting on a delivery of wood chip before we can start covering them.
Brenda switched the irrigation times for Spring. She upped the time for some sections and expanded time to a couple of days on others. That means we may start seeing any leaks that may be out there. If you do see any please fix them. If you do not know how to fix them grab me and I can show you how. We think it is important for everyone in the garden to know how to fix leaks. We have plenty of connectors to do this with now that we are switching out the irrigation hoses. It is a simples fix most times! It will also be good to let us know before you fix it because if the bed is going to be prepped that day we are just going to end up switching out the hoses and then the connector would just be taken off!
The week ended with K05 getting prepped and N13 gleaned, weeded and prepped! Beds M15 & M16 both had trellises installed for the bitter melon…we REALLY need to plant them this coming week! Beds M09, M14 & B18 all had their tomato cages installed and Mosquito fish were delivered to the “pond” we have out back for the bees in hopes of them keeping the actual Mosquito population down!
The Compost Class on Saturday was a success with 27 people showing up to learn about composting. They stayed an hour longer to ask all their questions. Thank you to Lori Caldwell from StopWaste for coming out to teach our community!
Yay teams!
For the week a total of 390.44# of produce was harvested and sent in to the local food pantries!
Thank you all for your efforts in continuing the work that was started so long ago!
Take care
Lori