Happy Sunday everyone!
Wow what a busy week in the garden. Many thanks to DZ for sharing her birthday with us on Saturday. This week the regular volunteers were joined by folks from Salesforce, Workday, and the PLAY, Rise and Shine Youth groups. Despite the promise of rain folks still came out to help harvest 111 pounds of produce to share.
Thank you everyone!
In the transportainers, folks marveled at the wonderful newly installed LED fixtures as they grabbed tools. Thanks Roger for letting the light shine!
Out in the orchard we found the irrigation control box – oops we sheet mulched over it. Then we went on to rearrange water lines to bring the trees’ individual drip lines out into their growing rain shadows. Most folks figure that the roots of a tree extend to reach out beyond where the branches end so the roots can catch rain that is not blocked by the branches. When we planted the trees we started with the water lines really close to the trees trunks but now the trees have grown and it was time to ‘grow’ their watering system too. JS, RM and NM also fixed leaks as they found them. Many thanks folks for your efforts and great ideas on how to optimize the orchard watering system.
Most of our time this week was spent seeding and potting up seedlings from earlier seedlings. We got seeds for 1,000 cucurbits ( 467 squash, 346 cucumbers, 49 pumpkins, 136 melons), 628 beans, 96 more lettuce seeds and 132 more tomato seeds sown. Then we moved on to potting up 110 basil seedlings, and 1,271 tomato seedlings. You all ROCKED IT OUT! Thanks you for helping us keep track of all those seedlings as they moved from six packs to 4” pots. Folks were asking about where the seedlings were going so I did some math and since January we have grown and potted up 6.697 seedlings, 5,061 are destined for our plant sale or school gardens with the remaining 1,636 to be planted out in our big garden’s first spring plantings next month. Next week we should finish potting up herbs and tomatoes and hopefully be able to make enough greenhouse room to start more seeds for subsequent spring plantings in our big garden. YAY! Keep doing your rain dances everyone!
We are beginning to collect berry flats and other flat boxes for transporting seedlings, so if anyone has flat boxes at home or wants to grab some during their Costco runs and drop them off at the garden anytime it is convenient for them, we will find them and be happy to have more flats.
As always, my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to all of you for everything you do to help the garden be loved and productive and making the world a better place for all of us to live in. Fertile GroundWorks could not do what we do without each and every one of you.
Until next we meet, please do stay safe and keep loving the ones you are with.
All my best
Brenda
