Hi All,
Yesterday Tod and I were kind of all over the place. We went to the Columbia store in Richmond to stocked up on some needed hiking/birding wear and then walked the docks to try and find some birds on our list but to no avail. After that we headed up to Berkeley to get OA sponges for the bees-this helps to fend off the mites. We wanted to go to Cheese Board Collective while there but they are now closed on Sundays and the Williamson’s Sap Sucker did not appear when we meandered over to the area it was last seen in. We headed out of Berkeley and over to Dublin where we stopped in at 5 Guys for a burger and a much need stop at Ulta. We stopped in to the Livermore Costco but it was a bit hectic and decided to stop at Trader Joe’s for some dinner foods and headed home to binge watch Vikings during dinner!
Blue Oaks Church was back out this Saturday! Part of the crew went out back to help with work on the expansion and the other part of the crew helped out with Plant Sale plants. In the expansion Blue Oaks helped to sheet mulch, cleaned cardboard (it has staples and tape on most pieces) and helped with irrigation that both our regular volunteers, AW & TE, continued work on. They also worked on filling part of the trench that was dug for irrigation so we can drive back to the bees and use the tractor out in the field. Blue Oaks also helped with transplanting 89 plants into 4” pots and 1,014 into 6 pack pots for the Plant Sale. Another 180 seeds were started as well and they helped to finish setting up the Big Hoop House with the irrigation in order to help us bring over close to 30 flats to make room in the Little Hoop House. We always enjoy having Blue Oaks Church out to help in the garden!
We also had Pleasanton Transition, York and Kaleidoscope out to help in the garden! Pleasanton helped with filling 16 flats of 6 pack pots with soil, found tomato seeds to start and paired gloves. York continued helping with the weeds that just won’t give up growing in the A & B bed paths. Kaleidoscope came out for 2 shifts and helped with weeding a path from the Little Hoop House to the Big Hoop House, filled 12 flats of 6 packs with soil, watered & mulched in the trees we have heeled in to our compost pile and helped to clean out the Big Hoop House so we can get it up and running for storing Plant Sale plants.
Busy crews in the garden!
Between Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday’s crews they all helped to get 2,521 tomato seeds started and 1,025 plants transplanted over to their final pots for the Sale & garden. Work also continued in the garden; the Orchard was weeded, cleaned up and some pruning done. Weeding garden wide going on-the area between the N beds and the P beds as well as the Compost Area-trying to get the grasses out before the seed heads pop! JA helped to break the ground up to make it a bit easier for Kaleidoscope to pull the weeds between the Hoop Houses. Strawberry baskets were removed from arugula plants in the P beds to let them grow and stretch.
Over the past few weeks we have been working closely with the Oliveria crew to keep the compost coming for our expansion. The Enrique’s were working Friday shift along with ZI & VW to move the left over compost we had dumped on the front apron (due to the rain) into the hub for the compost customers to use.
Shout out to Brenda and Lance for using the Church kitchen to wash produce on Wednesday! Wednesday morning we found out the water had been temporarily turned off and they both jumped in to action to make sure the produce was ready to be delivered by noon! 178# of produce they wheeled over and back to be sure our local food pantries received clean produce from us!
Our total last week for harvest was 297# of produce for our local community! The weather was making our plants want to bloom so we had to get in there and harvest a lot. This week may be a bit on the lower side due to that but who knows!
As always, thank you all for coming to help in the garden to continue the work of getting food out to our community!
Take careLori
P.S. The Orchard crew is looking for some help in the Orchard with all kinds of chores. If you are interested while out on your shift please stop in and see what they need help with! If no one is there ask me what is needed and I will let you know.
P.S.S. Culinary Angels sent me a link to the recipes they use: https://culinaryangels.org/recipes/