Hi All,
Last week we had Kaiser and Blue Oaks Church out and they all helped us to start ditch digging around our new P beds to build a fence to keep out the ground squirrels! Kaiser came in first and started on the East side and Blue Oaks got us to halfway down the West side! Both teams also sheet mulched the areas they worked each day. Part of the Kaiser crew also helped with weeding out the bindweed towards the front of the garden and Blue Oaks came in to take out the crab grass! Blue Oaks also were able to help out with continuing some seed starting for the Fall planting.
With the trees in the Orchard all trimmed back the guys moved to the Front Apron to top off the fruit trees there. The Berry Patch continued getting more care with a couple of the guys checking in on the irrigation & some weeding going on by some of our other volunteers:) A couple of the Orchard guys also helped out with gopher hunting! We saw the fox over the weekend so hopefully they will get some help with their gopher hunt!
In the Office the garlic trimming is now complete. The bags you see hanging in the Office hold the garlic we are going to plant this Fall. We are going to send out the rest of it in to the pantries this week for families to enjoy! We are also starting to send opo squash in to the pantries. For those of you who do not know, opo squash, also known as a bottle gourd, is a mild flavored, elongated squash that is popular in Asian cuisine! Mature opo can be dried out and used as containers! We are hoping we are able to send all the opo squash we grow out to the pantries to be consumed!
The P beds are getting some planting love! Qaadira, KS and Blue Oaks Church got the last of the tropical plants into the beds! They all got out there and planted sugar cane, guava, tamarillo, 2 sapotes, 2 atemoyas, 2 sun chokes and 2 loquats!
Some of our regular volunteers started seeds for us last Tuesday & the Portuguese kale, the Winwin bok choy and the mustard are already sprouting! The tomato cage area is now sheet mulched, we started flushing lines on some of the beds to help with watering and leaks were fixed. All kinds of vegetables were tied back-melons, cucumbers, opo, bitter melon and tomatoes! We need help with continuing that chore. Thanks to some of our dedicated regulars I think we are ahead of it for the time being! Of course, there was ALOT of weeding going on all week long!We also harvested 682.57lbs of produce to send in to the local pantries!
Thank you all for helping us in the garden as much as you can!
Take care
Lori