Happy Monday everyone,
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Many thanks to all the regulars and everyone from the National Charity Leagues, the Young Men’s Service League, and the Global Leadership Initiatives for Youth (GLIFY) who came to work in the garden last week.
Moving to direct sowing of late summer plants folks sowed 2,160 bush beans, that will serve as both a nitrogen fixing cover crop and source of green beans for our neighbors., plus almost 1,500 sunflower seeds that will feed our pollinators, winter birds and neighbors, 90 fun jen , 45 summer cabbages. 48 orach and countless dill, fennel and marigold seeds. We also planted a donation of onion bulbs from one of the GLIFY moms. Thanks for sharing Ms. Jenna! All these seeds went into the 735 sq. feet of bed space that we amended with about 4,800 pounds of compost and summer fertilizer.
As I mentioned last week, we finished transplanting all our hoop house seedlings. Just to share, since March we transplanted about 5,120 plants into the garden. Right now there are 71 broccoli, 20 cabbage, 77 chard, 114 collard, 150 corn, 282 cucumber, 280 eggplant. 167 assorted herbs, 103 kale, 138 melon, 21 okra, 543 pepper. 298 summer squash (zucchini’s and the like), 33 sweet potato, 317 winter squash and 327 tomato plants growing in in the garden. Also in the garden, are all the directly sown bean, sunflower, greens and herb seeds we’ve planted over the last to weeks that are germinating as I write. Our neighbors are lucky people to have folks like you all taking care of them!
We harvested 262 pounds of fresh veg to share with our neighbors in need. Maybe the most fun was the pound of coriander seed. Thanks VJ and AW for your patient gleaning of the seed from the five foot high cilantro plants.
We made huge progress in the battle of the weeds, weeding about 6,083 square feet of beds and paths! That’s almost half the garden we got weeded. WAHOO! Saturday, we even had to start putting weeds in the old driveway weed pile again, as we had filled the city green bin. In addition to all those weeds pulled folks trimmed the summer squash plants back into their beds and put the new growth of melons and cucumbers up on their trellises. The garden looks gorgeous because of you all.
Saturday folks also finished the huge chore of organizing the potting shed and inventorying all the pots and flats that we have available to start our winter seedings with. Many thanks to those who worked on that project, it had been on the to do list since May. It feels so good to tick that chore off the list! THANK YOU!
As always, I am indebted to all of you and send you all my sincere gratitude. Fertile GroundWorks could not do all we do 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.
Happy gardening everyone.
With sincere gratitude and hugs,
Brenda
