Hi All,
Almost done! We have 8 more beds to prep and plant for our summer veggies! That is not including 2 of the smaller G beds out front and 2 of the ARB beds leading in to the garden! Still, we are super jazzed about where we are right now with getting the beds filled!
Last week Stanford was out and their crew got right to it! Two of their members showed up a bit early and got right to work with Qaadira in prepping up bed B02. It was still full of Redbor kale but not anymore! They made quick work of it and when the rest of the crew joined in they were able to get it not only prepped but planted as well with 13 Brandyfred tomatoes AND cage them in! The other half of the crew were busy helping Scott prep bed AB31-first though they had to glean it of all the onions that were in there as well as a bit of cauliflower, all of which went straight to the pantries that day! 16 crates worth of onions-over 300lbs! Go Crew Go!
It was a Kaleidoscope week! Their crew helped Kelly size reduce the Redbor kale and feed it to compost bin #5. Another part of the crew helped me to plant ~48 Peppermint chard in bed M10, watered it in and strawed it back in. While Kelly and his happy volunteers continued on the size reducing my volunteers looked in on the worms! They have not received any love in about a month but were still looking good! We gave them some leaves and water that day. The next day I was able to go in and give them a small bucket of over ripe plums!
I want to call out a Zeiss crew member who was not able to come out with the big groups a few weeks ago but reached out and came in on her own! NC got busy helping Qaadira to prep bed L03! There was exactly 15lbs of garlic they gleaned out of that bed which ended up being held back for seed and almost 10lbs of broccoli that they were able to send in to the pantries that day!
ACMG planned a garden tour for last Tuesday! Brenda and our Orchard Guru, Dean B, took them around on Tuesday morning. They got to see our volunteers in action, Dean gave them a tour of the Orchard & all its workings and they learned more about what goes on in the garden!
RB Weed Annihilator was back at it! The weeds around the large rain barrels and the hoop houses were taken out by this dedicated volunteer! On Saturday there were also 2 young people from the PLAY group that helped out with getting the bindweed taken out around the garden-the campfire pit and over by AB10 they worked on together. Then they split up and one volunteer took care of the area by the library box and the other volunteer worked on the bindweed in bed K18-this young lady took the time to unwind it off the Jerusalem artichoke so as not to disturb the roots! Doesn’t that speak volumes to the dedication of our volunteers!?!
Beyond the beds mentioned above 3 more larger beds were prepped & planted, M01 was side dressed &n planted, 2 of the G beds prepped & planted and ARB3 was prepped and planted! Melons and squash were starting to get tied back-they are starting to grow in to the paths and if there are trellises in the bed we need to be tying the plants on to them in order to keep the paths walkable! K18’s Goji Berry plant was removed-this baby had thorns like nobody’s business! We are going to replace that with thyme plants for now.
Lance has been having a lot of onions & garlic brought up to him, I’m sure sometime sit seems by the truckload, and has been keeping up with weighing them every single day! Thank you Lance for taking care of that important part of the day for us!
You all also harvested over 725lbs of produce to send in to our local pantries:)
You know what I am going to say? Well, I will say it anyway-WE CANNOT GET THIS DONE WITHOUT YOUR HELP!!! Thank you all for always showing up and giving it your best:)
Take care
Lori