Hello All!
Brenda and I attended the Pleasanton YMSL, Young Men’s Service League, member meeting yesterday to talk up Fertile GroundWorks and our volunteer opportunities! This is the same group that helped us to build the N bed expansion back in 2020. Orange skies (due to the fires), masks (COVID & fires) and summer heat but these young men and their families showed up and helped Fertile GroundWorks to get it done! Their new coordinator and I have been working together on getting them in the garden on a regular basis so if you see them say “hello”!
Lots of work being done on irrigation last week. In the expansion on Saturday they installed the above ground irrigation and timer! We’ll be planting there soon! During the week there was work being done to the pump house irrigation, the rain catchment system as well as cleaning up old pipes that needed to be sorted through. RL & JR had fun learning how to use the pipe cutter on pipe that leads to the rain catchment system!
Weeding happened…shocking isn’t it, lol
RB Weed Annihilator was back at it! Thank you so much RB for showing up every week and showing the weeds who is boss! B13, AB31 & AB30 got some weeding love from 2 new volunteers, MB & JP! Bed A16 had nightshade weed in it and another new volunteer, CB, took care of getting them out and making room for the nightshades that produce our veggies;) The Big Hoop House’s front end got weeded out as well by the Saturday crew!
The week before PB organized the Big Hoop House for us and this last week we got the pottery shed organized for us to start moving in all the flats and pots that are left in the Big Hoop House! Yes, this is an ongoing project but it is progressing!
Potatoes! We had a bed that we were growing potatoes in and this week they were harvested! CL went in on the first harvest and took up 27lbs of potatoes and the next day LN took up 20lbs of potatoes! We called them Junction since we got the starts from Junction Ave school:) On Saturday they finished the job and got 56lbs more of potatoes! Over 100lbs of potatoes harvested last week
Once they were done harvesting the potatoes on Saturday they direct sowed the bed with Black Eyed Peas to feed the bed!
The compost area got some love. Ryan, Enrique and a couple of the volunteers on Friday, moved the pile around and extracted some that broke down by itself into the ready bin for us to use in the garden! They also cleaned up the pile in front of the of the back bins and sorted them into each bin.
N15’s North end was prepped for pumpkin seeds, tomatoes were clipped back and we received more tropical plants; papaya, jaboticyba and ginger. They are all up by the wash station in the pots with the horehound if anyone would like to see them! There were also 2 Boy Scouts who came out and talked with Brenda about building a bee shed and a platform to access the worm bin! The plans are moving forward with both projects
The bee shed will hold all our bee supplies and the platform will help the York and Kaleidoscope crew when they come out and help me take care of the worms!
The Orchard! DB was out there trimming back some of the trees last week and the guys are also figuring out the irrigation so they can check for leaks while they are out there:) RM helped with the trail cam. He exchanged out the dead batteries for me! Stop by and ask me about it. I have at least one video of the fox running through the garden!
Last week we all harvested 687.19lbs of produce! One Nation Dream Makers, Try-Valley Women’s Haven, Livermore Homeless Refuge, St. Bart’s and Culinary Angels benefited from this harvest! This week Open Heart Kitchen will start coming out on Wednesdays again to pick up our produce:)
Thank you everyone for helping us in the garden
We could not get this done without you all!!!
Take care
Lori
