Happy Tuesday everyone,
I hope everyone had a great weekend. Another very productive week! Regular volunteers were joined by Kaiser’s IT team, students from Livermore, Granada,Valley, Foothill, and Amador High Schools and a few new volunteers who came out just to help.
Together we harvested 308 pounds of fresh produce to share with our neighbors in need through Open Heart Kitchen and our local food pantries. I am so glad we harvested everything that was close to ripe Tuesday and Wednesday, when we got to the garden on Friday it was a whole new garden. The frosty nights we had pretty much killed the eggplant, melon, squash and most of the pepper plants. The tomato forest rows and sweet potato beds fared a little better but their tops and exposed ends got frost killed. We’ve given the folks at Open Heart and the pantries know that the summer crops will be done next week and that it will be greens and winter squash for the next few weeks until the rest of the winter crops come on. I know their clients love getting all and any fresh vegetables we can give them.
We kept on making strides in moving the garden into winter. We got 800 sq feet of bed space gleaned, cleared, weeded and amended with 3,000 pounds of compost and fertilizer. Four of the seven beds we prepped will get planted in onions soon, the other three beds got 145 brassicas aka mustards or Asian greens transplanted into them.
Greenhouse chores kept folks busy too as we identified seedlings that were ready to be transplanted and started planting them in the garden on Saturday. We started 144 Celtuce or ‘Chinese lettuce’ and 48 ‘Blauer Speck’ kohlrabi seeds. All new varieties for us. Victoria led folks in the delicate task of pricking out seedlings, expanding 810 of them from space for 432 seedlings. Sometimes it is hard to get just one little seed per six pack cell and when germination is good you end up with way too many seedlings in a cell. Victoria’s teams then went on to ID flats with poor germination and consolidate the seedlings that had come up and over-seeding the empty cells with fresh seeds. We did the same thing out in the garden, pulling back the agribon to check germination of direct sown seeds and filling in the holes in two beds with 36 red Brussel sprouts and 360 white radishes. Fingers crossed.
We also got LP’s wheelbarrow some new handles! Thanks AW & KW for your efforts on that. Huge progress was made out in the new orchard space. Atticus and his team got all the trenches dug! We’ll be starting to put in the irrigation pipes on Saturday afternoon. Sunday we got 84 trees ordered for planting in January, after we start getting some rain for them to get settled in with. Very exciting!
As always, I am indebted to all of you and send you all my sincere gratitude. Fertile GroundWorks could not do all we do without wonderful volunteers like you. You are all truly amazing human beings. THANK YOU!!! for enabling us to TEACH, GROW, and GIVE.
I do hope that you all will be able to come back and see how your efforts helped the garden to grow and change with the seasons.
Until next we meet, please do take care of yourselves. Have a great week!
Happy gardening everyone.
With sincere gratitude and hugs,
Brenda
