The garden and compost hub will be closed December 23-January 3 for the winter holiday. 

Happy Monday!

Hello All,

Brrr…it was cold out there this morning! York helped me to open up the hoop houses and we were almost blown away! Looks like March is deciding to go out like a lion🦁

Last week was a blur of activity with Workday, Kaleidoscope, Boy Scout Troop 888 (making it out 2 days!), PLAY and LDS joining us to continue not only our work on the plant sale and succession planting in the garden but many other chores as well!

Tuesday our regulars got us starting the week with harvesting over 90lbs for our neighbors, succession planting broccoli, kale and sorrel (this is a new planting for us!) as well as pricking out over 150 tomato plants into their 4” pots for the plant sale, inventorying the other tomatoes and unpacking our new tropical plants! The OG’s in the Orchard had help with a couple of new volunteers planting 4 trees from Trees of Antiquity; Black Mission fig, Sandra Rose plum, Pink Sparkle apple and Black Gillyflower apple!

Wednesday Workday joined us! These guys got busy harvesting our biggest day yet, over 150lbs of produce for our neighbors! They also helped to create over 700 tags, over 50 flats of 4” pots and then seeded over 700 cukes, melons and squash!!! All for the plant sale you guys!!! A few of our regular volunteers did some succession planting, at least 75 plants out in the beds and weeded out some poppies in the process…do not worry, there are plenty of poppies in the garden😊 Brenda and I stayed after to over seed some Tom Thumb lettuce (the ones we had were not germinating) and they are already popping up! 

Kaleidoscope was out and helping us get the cars loaded for transferring plants over to Livermore High School. While going through the plant sale we need extra room for keeping up with orders and planning for our garden so Livermore High helps us out with storing our garden plants! While a few of the Kaleidoscope crew was busy helping Brenda with loading the other 2 crews planted 8 of their Sugar Daddy peas in ARB1 from their first visit, weeded and gleaned out the strawberry gutters and in front of the blackberry patch! A. helped us to break open K.’s pumpkin so we fed that to the worms! Thank you K. for bringing it! 

Friday afternoon shift (there was so much done last week that I am tired right now just writing it all down, lol) ok, Friday afternoon; the first of troop 888 joined us and weeded and wood chipped around the Fire Pit and in front of of the JA beds! P. stopped by to pick up 4 trees, and a mystery pomegranate plant, for Jackson Elementary and got a tour of the Orchard from Brenda! In the Big Hoop House we got to planting more of the cukes, melons and squash-over 300 more seeds started! Once planted we had to move the inventory around a bit to make room for all our new plants! 

Saturday, I heard they got hailed on at the end of the morning shift! Yeah, March is definitely going lion on us!!! Throughout the 2 shifts they were still able to get a ditch dug for installing PVC pipe to our soon to be new beds, thank you to A., he figured out a way to use the tractor to dig the ditch! His team and troop 888 also painted the pump shed! Over in plant sale land-over 200 peppers & eggplants got potted into 4” pots, almost 100 greens got pricked out and planted into their packs and over 900 seeds were started (beans and squash). Plants were also moved over to Livermore High to keep room for more plant sale happenings at the garden! Thank you to PLAY and LDS for helping out on Saturday as well!!!

All told everyone harvested over 280lbs for One Nation Dream Maker, Tri-Valley Haven, St. Bart’s, Open Heart Kitchen, Livermore Homeless Refuge and Culinary Angels! 

Go team go!!!

Seriously everyone, without you we could not make all this happen! And, I am sure I am not covering everything, I always feel like I am forgetting something but please know it is all appreciated🥰

Take care

Lori