Hi All,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend! Tod and I were hoping to beat the heat on Saturday and went to the Berkeley Botanical Garden…we were disappointed! It was sooo warm there. Do not get me wrong, we definitely enjoyed the gardens but we did not beat the heat! Sunday was a lot nicer, we visited Tod’s Aunt in San Francisco and got to enjoy not only the company but the coolness there as well:)
Shout out to Zeiss and our regular volunteers who helped us to beat the heat on Friday and opted to come out in the morning instead of the afternoon! It still got pretty darn warm but they helped us get a lot done! We all went out back and worked on weeding out the rest of the Native Hedgerow before we went to the front of the garden and got to planting. By the end of that shift we planted almost 200 assorted peppers, squash and tomatoes! Two of our regulars weeded out the front end of one of the L beds and Lance worked on the produce for Culinary Angels to pick up. That was a lot done by a crew of 3 from Zeiss and a crew of 4 from our regulars:) Go team go!
It was a short week last week, only 4 days in the garden but there was a lot done!
Kaleidoscope came out and helped Kelly to move all the plants out of the Big Hoop House and into the Little Hoop House due to the heat we were experiencing. The Big Hoop House gets well over 100 degrees and that ends up cooking all of our seedlings. The Little Hoop House is a little bit cooler but we still need to get everything planted before the true heat of the summer hits. Another part of the Kaleidoscope crew also helped me to get labels cleaned for all the upcoming Fall plants we will need to get started-yes, we are already thinking of Fall plantings. Gotta plan ahead:)
Our Board Member, Jay, his brother and 2 friends joined us last week. They helped to glean out bed L01 of 390lbs of onions, weeded it out and got it forked before we called the shift done! One of his crew also helped us to harvest probably one of the last harvests of our peas out of the AB beds and helped Qaadira to wash and pack the produce for delivery to the pantries.
In between all that happening our regular volunteers were out there and were able to get 3 beds gleaned, weeded and prepped. Lots of weeding going on in other parts of the garden; the Native Hedgerow was started on Tuesday, continued on Wednesday and like I stated earlier was completed by the Friday crew. The compost area got some weeding and card boarding done and the Orchard received some weeding love as well. KM went out and direct sowed 60 dills seeds in to bed N08 and she then joined LP who was working on planting lettuces in to beds L04 and M02 for a total of 144 lettuces now in the ground to grow and give us more lettuce for our pantries!
Shout out for our staff: Rayna worked with SB & JG on bed K18 to harvest the sorrel seeds for spreading out in the P beds and for the birds to eat. Before the volunteers got to the garden on Friday Qaadira and Enrique M patched up some bald spots on our cardboard around the Produce Washing Station. Please help me in welcoming a new member of our staff, Scott Flowers, whom helped last week in getting the K05 chard bed a little more under control…you can actually walk down the path now, lol!
Everyone harvested over 1000lbs of produce to send in to our local pantries! Some of the onions were placed in to storage but know that they will eventually be sent in.
Thank you all who continue to show up and help us get the work done:)
Take care
Lori