Hi All,
Tod and I went to visit with my youngest daughter and her fiancé this weekend! We did a little wedding shopping, figuring out the centerpieces and she got flowers for her bouquet-they are artificial so they will last! Patrick had archery practice on Sunday so we got to spend some parent and daughter time with Kyla before we needed to head back home. It was so nice just to sit and talk with her. I miss having her so close.
Saturday in the garden there was the talk on edible California native plants given by Carol Peck, Master Gardener and member of California Native Plant Society and California Rare Fruit Growers. That kicked off our Saturday Garden Seminars for 2026! One of our regular volunteers, MB, sent a text out yesterday with some:
“Cool facts: chia seeds are native, what we used to call miner’s lettuce is ‘roorah’, a first people’s word, and an easy way to leech your acorns is in your toilet tank over the course of weeks…Oh, and our state grass? Purple needle grass!”
Sounds like it was a great time at the talk!!!
Last week in the garden:
Laura and her Pleasanton Transition crew were out last week and helped me to label the flats in the Little Hoop House for delivery to the High School with GoG (Garden of Grace) or PS (Plant Sale). Sending the GoG plants to the High School helps us to make room for even more plants that we are needing to grow for both the garden and the plant sale. We will be doing this for the next month! Thanks to them helping out with that we were able to get the vehicles filled with the GoG plants and delivered to Livermore High School. The Tuesday volunteers were able to organize the Hoop House by plants and inventory it all for us to update our systems as well.
Work on the expansion continued. Sheet mulching the fields, we are now on to the second 2 sections most of which were covered Friday & Saturday. Brenda, AW & TE worked on the irrigation Saturday so we have water flowing to where we need it. Sheet mulching on Tuesday started on the paths for the N beds and then Wednesday crew rallied and got the last 1 1/2 paths done! We noticed that the bindweed was starting to rear its head out there and last year it was a bear to try and keep it maintained. We got right on sheet mulching the paths so hopefully it helps tamp that down somewhat. We also found more vicious thistle seedlings popping up and Lance had already been by the area to pull them out! It seems like the year of the thistle-I also noticed a lot of it on a walk we took on our way up to see Kyla & Patrick at on of the refuges we stopped at! Talking about the thistle, Lance continues his hunt for the thistle, mallow and now he can add the bindweed as well, ugh!!!
The Native Eastern Hedgerow got some more weeding done. For all who are interested we are continuing to work on mapping out the Hedgerows. As we weed through the areas we need to go a bit slow so we do not weed out the Native Plants that are already there. Some are dormant and do not look too pretty but they need to be left alone or they do not come back. Some are little seedlings that are hard to identify. If you are interested in weeding the area out please be sure to work closely with someone who knows how to identify the Native Plants that we are not weeding out!
JP helped with gopher trapping and whacking down the weeds over by the large rain barrels! There was at least one set in bed B13 because a volunteer had mentioned seeing 2 big holes! Afterwards I saw JP up front in the A & B beds area setting up more traps. If you see holes out there please do point them out to us so we can mark them and get traps set. I am coming across quite a few cabbages, cauliflowers and broccolis being eaten from underneath by the gophers!
More plants were pricked out-parsley & eggplants this week, all for the Plant Sale. For the garden Friday crew started some new jalapeños & Saturday crew started the bitter melon seeds! Last year we started the bitter melons a little late so this year we wanted to be ready a bit earlier with them! This week we will be starting ground cherry & tomato seeds for the Plant Sale!
Total harvest for the week was 222.25# of produce that went straight to our local food pantries!
Thank you all for the help that you contribute!!!
Take care
Lori