Hi All,
It was a quiet weekend at home. I got to hang out with my bestie on Saturday and we did some shopping together! Yesterday Tod and I just kinda hung out and got the house straightened up a bit inside. We did go to this restaurant we LOVE in Dublin, Mirchi Cafe-American comfort dishes with a Pakistani twist! SO delicious! Tod had the Lahori burger (I really want to try it but get told every time that it is SPICY) and I had their AMAZING fried chicken! If you have not been…GO!
Last week in the garden Katherine Chen hosted the first 2 of her three Collaborative Events she organized this Summer! This is for a course she is taking which calls to action the students and her question was “How to feed 8 billion people on a warming planet?” Which lead her to Fertile GroundWorks. Her intervention brings together people from the local community to volunteer in the food system. Her 1st crew, Youths, helped to harvest on Wednesday morning as well as weeded out the N beds of the nefarious bindweed as well as some Sorghum plants that were wanting to take over out there! Friday afternoon she had a crew of Adults out and they continued the weeding that was started on Wednesday and then continued with even more weeding into other areas of the garden! This chore is super important to maintain the health of our plants that are producing the vegetables that will be going in to our food pantries. Katherine has one more crew coming out, Families, on the 30th and we are looking forward to having them out!
Lots of weeding going on last week! Out on the front apron a test was done with weeds being pulled and another part of the apron being sprayed with a vinegar solution to see which would help us keep the weeds back longer. Time will tell. So many beds were weeded, about 10 beds outside of what Katherine’s crew did, as well as the Orchard, the Berry Patch and the Produce Washing Station! The Driveway and Produce area also got some cardboard & wood chip laid down by the Saturday crew. Oh, and Wednesday found CL out back weeding out the N15 Native bed and KS joined her!
In between all that weeding there were other chores getting accomplished! GL was in bed A13 tying back the melon plants, CL tied up squash in bed N08 as well as trimmed up the C01 bitter melons and gave D02 bitter melon plant a metal trellis! Other volunteers helped with getting some of our beds directly sown with cucumber, squash, radishes, melons or greens seeds to replace the plants that did not make it-either the heat took them out or the gophers got to them! K18 had the last of the thyme plants as well as the last Lao Green eggplant dropped in to it!
Irrigation! Lots of mending going on. If you find a leak please continue to let us know and we can always show you how to fix it! Some of them are pretty simple while others need a bit more time and effort but we need to be sure everything is getting fixed so our plants continue getting the water they need! We turned the water off in the Big Hoop House so please do not leave any plants in there they will fry! We are also in the process of turning the water off in the Little Hoop House so be sure to check in before leaving anything in there. Currently we will be leaving the Greenhouse left on to keep any of our potted plants alive as well as any seeds we end up starting.
We are also in the process of making sure all the beds have straw mulch. When we first started planting the summer veggies we were using the grass clippings. They are now all broken down and we need to replace any beds that had the grass clippings mulch with the fresh straw. Please let us know if you end up replacing the straw on any bed we may have missed!
We harvested 477.44lbs of produce to send in to our local pantries! Thank you MB who is helping us out with getting the produce over to One Nation Dream Makers earlier than normal to help them out! We forgot that we switched the schedule around and she had to remind us of that and am so glad she did!!! I will need to set an alarm so I do not forget again:P
Thank you everyone for all the help you keep giving to the garden!!!
Take care
Lori