Hi All,
Yay! I got to be with my daughters all weekend long! They both came down from NorCal to hang out with me for the weekend and it was a bonus weekend since it landed on Mother’s Day! It was so nice hearing their laughter and talk all weekend long. It felt like old times:) They left this morning and man the house sure is quiet:(
Last week in the garden…
York was out and they helped to feed and water the worms. At some point we need to get in there and take the worm compost out of the left hand side to use in one of the beds! They also helped to gather up the brood boxes and sugar water feeders for our bees! Yup, the bees arrived this week. The 2 nucs were installed on Wednesday night and then we transferred them over to their brood boxes on Thursday. Brenda found both Queens!
Kaiser and Vector Labs came out to help us get a lot done in the garden! Kaiser gleaned out beds A15, A17 & D02 (lots of onions!), prepped beds A17 & D02 and planted D02 with 42 Alma Paprika pepper plants-CL transplanted 2 bitter melons from over by bed M02 into the South end of D02. Kaiser also mulched both beds in to help conserve water. Vector Labs gleaned out bed M01 of all the onions, there were ALOT-ask Rayna! She lead the crew and made sure they got out every one of them. They also helped Qaadira plant bed B01 with 14 tomato plants, 15 basil plants and caged it all in. Vector also stayed on to help us load up everyone’s vehicles for delivery to the pantries:)
RB was out with his Weed Annihilator helping Kelly over by the AUMC garden. AL & CW also joined them and were able to get the path between the Fertile GroundWorks garden and the AUMC garden cardboarded and wood chipped! We are currently working on opening the Saturday afternoon (1pm to 4pm) shifts back up to help with all the weeds sprouting up EVERYWHERE! I am waiting to hear back from a couple of youth groups but if anyone is interested please send me an email and if the youth groups are not able to come out maybe we can create our own group!
The Bee Area received some love before the bees arrived! Brenda & I rearranged the set up and Brenda, with her friend NR, fixed up the water to the galvanized tub that was dug in to the East side of the Oak tree so it would not dry out. There are plans to add water plants and possibly fish to help cut down on mosquitos! Wednesday regulars helped to finish up the cardboard and wood chip on the East side:) We received word from the Boy Scout who took on the Bee Shed project and he should be coming out soon to get that completed.
Five other beds were planted; N14 with Amana Orange tomatoes-thank you GL & LL! A15 with 32 kale Lacinato, M02 with Rainbow Jazz tomatoes, A17 with the same and A18 with Japanese White eggplant and a Lao Green Stripe…thank you Saturday crew!
Another shout out to the Saturday crew; they moved 30 bales of straw, swapped the mower out of the tractor for the chipper to chip branches, added a trellis to bed K07 and created a roof connecting K07 & K06 so we can make a tunnel with the bitter melons this year! CL gave Brenda this idea when she was helping out on Tuesday. We are hoping it’ll create a bit of shade in the garden for those super hot days that are inevitable!
The total now for the beds planted-23 out of 94! We are a quarter of the way to having the entire garden planted:) Almost 800lbs of produce was harvested and sent in to our neighbors! It is definitely onion season! We have our eye on bed N09 this week for gleaning out the onions. We will glean half of it tomorrow and the other half on Wednesday since it is one of our largest beds out there.
High five to everyone out in the garden this week! Thank you all for always showing up and helping out:)
Take care
Lori