Hi All,
Forgot to update you all on the last Happy Note…the North Hive has accepted the new Queen! She is laying eggs and the hive seems to be calming down. The only issue was when, Tod (my husband) who was helping Alana and I on Monday with moving the boxes, got stung 3 times! We think he may have stuck his thumb under the towel that was covering the box and squished one of the bees, which in turn angered the other bees that let him know he did something wrong! Bees die when they sting so they do not just sting willy nilly, there is a purpose to them stinging. I remember when I first started working with the bees and every time I did not look where I was placing my hand I would get stung. They let you know when you are doing something wrong that harms the hive. Other than Tod getting stung the bees seemed to be getting back to normal!
Brenda and I picked up broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage transplant Friday for all the bed prep to come! In fact, bed L04 was planted with 52 of the Veronica cauliflower during Friday afternoon’s shift! We do need to be careful when planting out the brassicas, there are a few beds that cannot be planted with them for another 2 years due to a bacteria that attacks brassicas; beds A06, ARB2, B06, H01, L02 & M09. We plan out where the vegetables are going to be planted so no reason for you to remember that info but just wanted to let you know what is going on with some of the beds.
Leif’s and Laura’s Crews were out and helped Kelly continue sheet mulching the path behind the Office. ELM was out and they helped Kelly & Enrique to glean out bed M01, water in the trees that are potted up as well as the grape vines & berries and watered the worms. Brenda and I had stopped in while ELM was there and a couple of the Crew helped us bring in the plants to the Little Hoop House. Thank you everyone for the help you give to the garden!
Peas & Me were out this week. We’ve had 5 moms and their 8 kiddos out the last few weeks and this week we had another mom and her son join us! Half of the crew harvested over 15# of cherry tomatoes out of bed AB09. The other half of the crew harvested over 20# of tomatoes from bed L02 and another 9# out of bed K05. The cherry pickers had a fun time taste testing the different tomatoes and some of the girls had fun carrying their own crates from the crate shed to the next bed to pick tomatoes. Lots of muscles getting used that day! Thank you all for helping in the garden!
We are in the process of eradicating the goji berries if anyone is interested in helping that effort out. Please do be careful if you helped, they have large thorns on them! They have not offered us much in the way of fruit so we are going to take them out and replace with edible Native plants.
In the Orchard one of our Wednesday volunteers, SB, noticed the mulch is covering too much of the trees out there. In the coming weeks he is going to start working on clearing away some of the mulch to pull it away from the grafts on the trees. “Unburying the grafts will help with overall tree health.” SB I will try to work with him on it that way I can help to spread the knowledge!
The beginning of last week Brenda, Amy, Lance and I headed out to the New Expansion. Lance had found a big puddle in one of the trenches so we needed to figure out what was leaking. Amy and I found the leak we thought to have been the culprit, along with several other leaks, that were fixed that day. Brenda and Lance found another issue altogether in another section. One of the valves had blown and was no longer telling the hose to turn off-it was starting to become a pond out there. Brenda turned the water off and the valve was fixed. The trees are slowly starting to dry out and look like they will survive the drenching! While fixing the valve we ended up finding some other rather large leaks in the P beds! Remember, if you see a leak please let us know. We can either train you on how to fix it or we will take care of it ourselves. The sooner we get leaks fixed the healthier our garden will be.
Throughout the week you all got another 7 beds prepped for planting! Besides L04 you also planted M11 in cabbage & mustard, L02 in beets & lettuce (thank you KM!), M01 in cabbage, B13 in Chinese cabbage and A17 in collards & Chinese cabbage! Over 504 plants in the ground, some transplants the others seeds, all ready for Winter harvest!
Within all of that work you also harvested over 600# to send in to the food pantries for our neighbors!
Great job everyone! Thank you again for all you do!
Take care
Lori