Hi All,
Last week in the garden….
Albertson’s crew of 3 came out and kept the week moving along. They helped to prep up bed L01-squared it up, got out any extra weeds, amended it and then planted it! They helped to get 66 Shoya Long eggplant as well as 49 Mizuna plants in the ground. The Mizuna went to seed but our hope is that it seeds the bed and we continue getting Mizuna plants throughout the Summer and hopefully into the Fall. One of their crew members also helped to wash and pack the harvest they all helped to pick for delivery to our pantries!
Bank of America were out as well last week and helped us to start ending the week! Their crew of 10 volunteers were able to help us prep and plant bed A14 with 32 Gold Rush and 20 jalapeño peppers, plant 142 Parris Island lettuce in to another bed, glean out garlic in bed I02 AND we were able to get out to the Orchard with their help to get the fruit off the ground as well as start weeding out the infamous bindweed in the North West corner-it still needs a lot of help out there. Some of the bindweeds were growing up the trees. We were able to get most of the bindweed off the trees but you all know how fast that plant grows!
GL and a crew of our regular volunteers on Tuesday gleaned bed AB32 of all the onions-over 400lbs-as well as weeded and amended it all in one shift! It is one of our longer beds and was completely filled with onions. Good job ladies!!! Wednesday’s regular crew came in and got AB32 planted with 40 Benevento tomatoes (donated by new staff member Scott Flowers) as well as caged them up! That bed is now complete thanks to the concerted efforts of 2 crews over 2 days. It is always wonderful watching the garden continue moving forward to the efforts EVERYONE puts in!
Kelly, JB & DM got to work on gleaning out the rest of the West side of K06, removed the trellis and Chad came in to help Kelly get that side prepped. Saturday crew came in to glean out the East side and were able to get it forked. This week we will finish prepping that bed and getting the trellis back in so we can create the tunnel for our bitter melons to grow on. We are all excited to try out this idea that was given to us by one of our regulars, CL. She is also working on keeping the squash off the ground so the plants do not go sprawling in to the paths and stop us from being able to reach them!
Gopher traps are being set and some success in trapping them! One trap that was set on Tuesday we had a gopher trapped the next morning. Super success on Saturday when one trap was set in the morning and a gopher was caught by 1pm that afternoon! This is helping our beds from getting eaten by the gophers. There have been several beds so far that needed to be replanted because the gophers came through and ate the plants out! One of our raised beds was hit hard-the gopher ate all the onions in it! You can still see the results of gopher damage in bed F01, there are at least 4 empty tomato cages!
The Native Hedgerows have been receiving some much needed attention. We are now taking any poppies that are being weeded out and using them as a mulch on the hedgerows to continue the poppy population! All the veggie beds we are using straw mulch to help us conserve water. There are still a few beds that we mulched with grass that will be needing to be straw mulched before the hot weather decides to stick around!
Bed M04 got some Tuesday love with the volunteers prepping and planting chard in the North end and bed M01 got the same love with the volunteers hilling up the potatoes. JT took his own path on Wednesday and weeded the bindweed out of beds M14/M13 area . The Saturday crew in the AM prepped one bed and planted another. The PM crew for Saturday gleaned & weeded one of the larger beds, N10 and gleaned, weeded & forked the East side of K06.
SO MUCH DONE in the garden last week and as I always say-I am sure I did not get everything in to this note! Please, Please, Let us know what you got done in the garden so we know what has been done. Sometimes we think there is something that is needing to get done and when we show up someone has already been there to do it. It saves us lots of time and energy when we write down everything that has been completed and we can check it off our list!
Almost 800lbs of produce was harvested out of the garden last week. Some of that went in to the box shed for sending in at a later date (garlics & onions) but most of it went straight to the pantries!
We cannot get all this done without everyone’s help! Thank you all for continuing to show up, for continuing to roll up your sleeves and help us to get fresh produce out to our neighbors!
Take care
Lori