Happy Monday everyone,
Wow! Tons of help this week! Folks from Kaiser, Randstad, the Livermore Mom’s Club were out during the week laying the groundwork for our Friday and Saturday crews from National Charity League, Boys Team Charity and BSA troop #939 were joined by students from Livermore, Granada,Valley, Amador Valley, Dougherty Valley, Foothill, and Dublin High Schools. Of the 100 folks who came out during the week, 54 of you were out on Saturday. Many thanks to the folks who came out on Saturday for sharing tools and working together. We were only expecting 30 folks, so had to move fast to keep up with you all. I hope you all made some new friends too. YN wins our traveled the farthest award this week, coming all the way from Rocklin to join his Kaiser teammates.
We were able to add 108 pounds of fresh picked vegetables to thew inter squash that we harvested earlier this month and tomatoes that we ripened off the vine with our neighbors. With your help we have now shared over 23,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables with our community in 2019, WAHOO!! 23,045 pounds to be exact! Our most productive year since we started with six beds in the fall of 2010. We thank you and the community thanks you too!
This week we were able to prep eleven beds, 1,722 square feet , with 6,675 pounds of compost to feed the 1,642 seedlings that got transplanted into them, from arugula and garlic to onions and spinach. Sigh, on Saturday we uncovered beds that had been growing under agribon and learned the hard way that year and a half old parsnip and three year old turnip seed is too old to reliably germinate. Thanks to the ladies who worked so hard to shift those beds to mustards and lettuces. I looked it up when I got home and found out that folks recommend using parsnip seeds the year they are harvested, “let some of your plants go to seed and use that seed to start your next crop”. On top of all that prepping and planting we also started the weeding cycle back up by weeding 544 sq feet of beds, just because they needed it.
Thanks to all of you the garden is almost all planted for the winter. Of the 75 beds we maintain, only three more beds to prep and fifteen more beds to plant with the seedlings growing in the greenhouse. We should be done just in time to start planting the native flower beds and orchard, then onto starting pepper and eggplant seeds for next summer’s plants.
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.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving full of love, good company and great food!!
Happy gardening everyone.
With sincere gratitude and hugs
Brenda
