Hi All,
Hope you all had a great weekend! Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!
We are back from Philly! Tod and I had such a fun time traveling around New Jersey seeing all the old places I lived as well as my grandparents old place. Got to share lots of fun times I had with Tod! New Jersey is so darn beautiful…Tod was surprised at how beautiful it was, he told me he thought of it as being industrial! Parts of it but mostly you are surrounded by trees!!! In Philly we got to celebrate Kiley’s graduation! She was so done with ceremonies that her and quite a few of her classmates ended up leaving as soon as they walked! She is so happy…still a bit stressed with studying for her boards but I swear the girl is GLOWING! We took her and her boyfriend, Max, down to Cape May for the weekend to celebrate with them. We ate crab, walked the town and got to enjoy each other’s company! Our last night in Philly we took them out to Kalaya, this amazing Thai restaurant we all saw on the “Somebody Feed Phil” show and we have all been wanting to go to! Just AMAZING! Definitely recommended if you like Thai food and are heading to Philly! The trip home was uneventful and we were tucked back into our beds by 10pm Tuesday night! Tod ended up flying out to Kansas on Thursday to get our work van! He found an amazing deal that he could not pass up and it was way more affordable to fly him out and pick it up so he can have it for starting back to work this coming Tuesday! He made it back safe by Saturday night and we took it for a spin yesterday! It rides really nice.
Last week in the garden;
ELM was out and got busy in the garden! Their 4 man crew split up and got a lot done. 2 of the crew helped me to pick up fallen fruit from under the Fire Pit trees and fed them to the worms-we also gave them some water to help them in this heat. While that was going on the other 2 crew members were busy helping Brenda to pull weeds out of bed G04. Once done with that we all worked together on amending the bed and getting it planted with 11 Mashed Potato squash plants! Most of us got covered in ants because the watering we did upset an ant hill and we watched them as they vacated their hill for drier land! The crew did a great job getting everything done before they went and had their lunch. Thank you ELM!
Thank you all for weeding. That bindweed is in full bloom and we just need to get them pulled up and out of the garden before it sets seed! Our Board Member, Dick Crawford, said they would help with the front end entrance and spray it with the vinegar. We will need to do that continuously for the next 15 weeks in order for it to be eradicated from the front. This will help us with our mission to get it out of the garden, at least for a little while. Brenda mentioned that the star thistle was eradicated for a while but she is noticing that it is making its way back in!
JR pulled gopher traps on Wednesday but no gophers were trapped. They are smart animals! There was one, just before I left for Philly, that we saw pop its head up over by the produce washing station. I let JR know about it but he could not find the hole. He found out that the little critter was tunneling under the cardboard!!! We were able to trap him but the other gophers around the garden have been eluding the traps! For the ground squirrels out back we have motion detectors that we want to set up to see if that would help with keeping the squirrels out of the new beds out back.
Garlic started getting hung in the Office. Still lots more to hang. We hang the garlic so it can dry and then we use the garlic cloves in the Fall to plant for our harvest next Summer. If you are interested in helping out please ask Brenda or me and we can let you know how it is done!
Big batch of the gypsum fertilizer was made. We will continue using the gypsum mix since all of the beds are low in calcium. Lots more will need to be batched up before we are done prepping beds. We use, feed meal, kelp, phosphate, gypsum, azomite, copper sulfate and zinc sulfate.
You all got a total of 7 beds prepped, including the one ELM worked on. That means we have 17 more beds to prep and we will be done prepping for the Summer! We have 5 full shifts left for June. If we are able to prep 3 per shift we will get pretty darn close to our goal! We will still also need to plant all the beds but if we can get the prepping done we can plant the beds pretty quick!
You also got 8 beds planted last week with a variety of plants-beans, melons, peppers, shallots, parsley and squash! Okra seeds were started on Friday so we will have some okra plants within the next couple of weeks to plant in the garden!
We are trying to figure out how to deter the ground squirrels from devouring our new set of beds and we are going to try out the motion detectors on them! While the P beds have the fencing around them the squirrels have figured out how to get around them-we are also seeing squirrels in the Orchard, and they do not live up to their name, ground squirrels, because they have been caught climbing the trees! Wish us luck with trying out the motion detectors on them!
You all harvested 467.42# of produce, ~57# of it was garlic that was laid back for seed in the Fall, so still over 400# of produce was sent in to our food pantries last week thanks to the hard work you all put in to make it happen!!!
Gosh, I love coming home to a job like this!!!!
Thank you all for always showing up and helping out!!!
Take care
Lori