Happy Monday everyone,
Many thanks to all of you for coming and helping out last week. Another week of beautiful but dry weather, remember your rain dances! The garden had help from teams from Kaiser, Workday, and Tzu Chi HS plus folks from YMSL, NCL, BTC, Livermore, Granada, Foothill High Schools plus Bishop O’Dowd and Gale Ranch Middle Schools who came out to help this week.
We gleaned and harvested 248 pounds of fresh carrots, beets, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and greens to share with our neighbors. The carrots were gorgeous and I think folks had fun pulling them up. I hope everyone had a chance to take home a new veg to try. Perhaps you also discovered a new recipe to share with us for our cookbook?
We transplanted in the last of our winter succession crops from the hoop house into the beds we gleaned: including 265 beets, 144 turnips, 144 rutabagas, 48 Yokatta-Na (tatsoi) and 48 lettuces. We have about 10 weeks before we will start putting out our first summer crops, so we may try to sneak in some radishes, peas and lettuces too. We also started our edible native plantings in our Joanne Abey beds with our first four native huckleberry bushes. Ms. Abey is Asbury original organic gardener and she shared her beds with Bruce when he first started the garden.
Speaking of summer plants we started seeds for 190 more peppers and at least 792 herbs. With those tiny, dang near dust like, herb seeds we know there are more seeds in the pots than we thought we planted. From one flat of basil seed we potted up 240 seedlings! We will have a big first planting of basil this spring. YAY! Fingers crossed for lots of rain and little frost so all that basil can grow in May! In addition to the basil, we also potted up 112 eggplants and will start potting up our first tomato seedlings this week. Out in the hoop house and green house we installed our tunnels of love and found the ONE heat mat that was giving us grief and blowing the GFI fuse in the hoop house so now all the seedlings are warm throughout the nights.
In addition to all that plant work we got 2,100 sq feet of beds and paths weeded out and got 288 sq ft of paths sheet mulched with coco coir. The coir feels so good under foot, we hope it will be a good weed block too. Saturday’s crew had fun with pick axes and Maddoxes as they got the ditch dug to hold the produce washing sink’s drain pipes. We will use the rinse water to help irrigate the native and black berry beds. Waste not want not. Our compost cycle continues as another 96 sq feet of compost got sifted, moved out and the bin refilled with another fresh batch of kitchen scraps and the like.
As always there is lots to do in the garden. None of it would get done without wonderful volunteers like you. You are all truly amazing human beings. THANK YOU!!! for enabling us to TEACH, GROW, and GIVE.
I do hope that you all will be able to come back and see how your efforts helped the garden to grow and change with the seasons.
Until next we meet, please do take care of yourselves, and have a great week.
Happy gardening everyone.
With sincere gratitude and hugs
Brenda
