Hi All,
Sending this out early because I will not be here on Monday…Tod and I are going camping up in Medicine Lake with my youngest & her fiancee and one of Tod’s closest friend and his wife! It is looking like it is cooling down a little bit…no 90* weather…but I am betting it will still need to be early morning hiking! This is also the first time we are taking our van out camping! Cannot wait to see how all that will work. I hope you all have a great week and I look forward to seeing you all when I get back!
Last week in the garden;
Fremont Bank was out to lend a hand with the garden chores. Part of the crew went with Karina & Enrique to create some tomato cages. Karina split part of them off at one point to get bed P15 caged up and half of bed P10 caged up! The rest of the crew worked up front weeding out paths and sheet mulching the area they got weeded…makes for a nice walk through the garden! Thank you Fremont Crew!
Kaleidoscope was out to help as well. They fed & watered the worms and watered the trees we have heeled up in the compost bin. They also started work on sheet mulching the Washing Station. It was hot, the crew was tired but they pitched in to start the area and it looked great! Our afternoon shift came in to help them finish it off!
Peas & Me were out as well. The first chore they helped to get started was laundering the gloves. They helped me to place the load in for the wash and then transfer it over to the dryer. Next on the agenda was eggplant planting. About 60 eggplants were planted in to bed I01 due to gopher damage from the last planting…there may be more gopher damage because they seem to be coming back but even if half survive we will be good! After the planting they helped to give them a lot of water (it was hot out) and we tucked them in with some straw to help conserve the water!
CW installed our new owl box! Check it out! It is out in right field over by the old tree stump! Hopefully this will help us out with keeping the ground squirrel and gopher population down so our harvest numbers can go back up! For now our volunteers continue to set gopher traps since these guys now seem to be coming back with the squirrel population down since the Burrow Busters came out!
Work continued on JG’s irrometer project. They are installing the wiring that is needed for them to connect the data to the computer. Brenda and volunteer JM were checking the data on Friday afternoon and it looks like it is working!
Ugh, we have spider mites in the garden…ALOT of spider mites. On Tuesday I took the sprayer and got to spraying 8 beds with the neem oil mixture. In one of the beds we lost 8 plants due to the fact that they were just ridden with the mites (and I thought the bee mites were bad) so they were torn out and sent to the green waste bin out front. They are mostly in the front beds but if you see them beyond that please let us know so we can get them sprayed as well.
Wednesday shift saw Brenda and PL unclogging the sinks in the Washing Station. The drain had been slowing down over the past few weeks and Wednesday they just started backing up on PL. They used a drain cleaning bladder that when the hose is hooked up to it the pressure builds up and forces the water pressure to push out the clog. It took a while but they got the drains flowing again. We ask everyone to remember when cleaning root vegetables, as well as anything else heavily ladened in soil, to rinse them off in the tub Lance leaves over by the station so that way we keep the dirt from building up in the pipes.
Kelly jumped on the tractor and filled up the Compost Hub with the leftover compost we have out in the field. Garden wide veggies were getting tied back and strawberry baskets were taken off of mature plants so they can continue growing. While doing the harvest walk I noticed bed E02, A05 & A04 were lacking in bean plants. CL, KS & ER took the beds under their wings and reseeded them with more bean seeds. They also placed the strawberry baskets over the spots they planted. Over the next couple of weeks do help us keep an eye on them and take them off if the plants start filling up the baskets. That way they will be able to grow up rather than stay confined to inside the basket! Bed R09 was planted with Winter squash and the S beds were planted with apricot & plum trees.
Weeding happened, always does! LP & KM helped bed K07 out so the peppers have a fighting chance at producing. The N beds got some weeding attention on both Tuesday & Wednesday…lots of bindweed coming back out there. TL took care of the M beds on Wednesday, again, bindweed. Lance continued the work of spraying the bindweed on the apron out front. If the spraying works by eliminating the bindweed out front then we will start using it on the paths throughout the garden to help us with this beautiful but invasive weed.
278# of produce was harvested and sent in to the food pantries last week! Thank you all for getting out there and harvesting everything that is available each day. We appreciate your consistent work in coming out to the garden
Take care
Lori