Hi All,
Tod and I took advantage of the wonderful weather yesterday and got a hike in! We headed over to Round Valley Regional Park in Brentwood…I did not even know what existed in that area. If you head down Vasco towards Brentwood, take the left onto Camino Diablo which takes you to Marsh Creek Rd you end up at Round Valley. Beautiful back there! The hike we initially thought of completing was rather steep so we ended up hiking the meadow and got to see a bull bullying another bull! Luckily they were separated by a fence and a creek! The cows ended up going to another part of the pasture to get away from their noises, lol!!! We ended our expedition with a delicious Five Guys burger and their yummy French fries!
In the garden last week;
Pleasanton Transition helped to clear out mallow weeds over by the Worm Area last Monday. They got at least 2 wheelbarrows full of mixed weeds from that area. One of the church volunteers was in the garden fixing the tractor for us and he gave the students a tutorial on what he was getting done that day. They also took the dirty gloves that were starting to pile up to get them cleaned and matched up for all our volunteers to use!
OH MY GOSH, you all got BOTH the Hoop Houses reroofed!!!
Tuesday saw the crew getting the area prepped for the Big Hoop House. Weeding around the perimeter, gathering ladders and scaffolding and moving the wood planks we had stored on the West side. The Little Hoop House doors were resealed as well as the Greenhouse doors and Southern siding.
Wednesday pivoted over to reroofing the Little Hoop House first! Weeding was to done to get the flooring cleared out for sheet mulching this week. There were 2 new volunteers out that day and they jumped right in with the regular volunteers to get the hoop house covered by the end of the shift!
Saturday the crew all came together to get the Big Hoop House reroofed! This day saw at least one new volunteer showing up and jumping right in with the regular volunteers and the PLAY group to help get it covered by the end of shift! They Las o helped to fix the gutters for rain catchment.
Having all these Hoop Houses taken care of is going to help keep all the seedlings you help us to plant viable for the Plant Sale and for planting in the summer garden this year! As you all know, the Big Hoop House also provides us with a spot to get out of the rain and wind on occasion! FYI, we are trying for a grant that would give us the funds to build a pergola to provide shade from the sun and protection from the wind without roasting us like the Big Hoop House tends to!!! Keep your fingers crossed for us:)
Tuesday also saw the volunteers taking the rest of the brassicas (cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbage and Brussel sprouts) and planting all 365 plants into 12 different beds that were either not coming along very well, got gopher ruined or was needing more food plants because we are already using up the bed! Friday a dad and daughter duo planted more garlic in bed C01 since the beet seeds we planted a couple of months ago have not done anything for us…yet! We will probably start seeing them pop up as the weather warms.
Friday’s crew got to weeding out the path over by the G beds. The 2 new volunteers from Wednesday had started it and Fridays crew finished it. This week we need to get in there and sheet mulch it to hold back the weeds! Friday and Saturday we continued getting seeds going for both the Plant Sale and the garden. We are in need of succession plants so KA seeded some Yokatta-Na greens and some lettuces for us!
Orchard was weeded, tool trailer was organized, gopher traps set garden wide. K18 was planted with more Sunchokes, mallow weeded out by Lance when he found them close to the beds and the Boy Scout in charge of building reinforcement around the paths by the raised beds stopped by on Friday to go over the plans for getting that done!
All that and we sent in 156# of produce to our food pantries as well!
Thank you all for the help you provided this week!
Take care
Lori