Hi All,
Boy it is a wet one out there today! Last week RL & I turned off the irrigation to the garden beds to save on water and luckily we did! We also got the hoses on the gutters reinstalled on the hoop houses just in time to steer the rainwater away from the foundations. Looks like rain for the next few hours and it should be a dry day tomorrow for us to continue prepping beds and planting our winter crops!
3 beds were prepped up over the weekend, beds D02, E02 & F02. In beds E02 & F02 we decided to try growing beans this year. F02 did ok with the Dragon’s Tongue but the garbanzo beans we tried in E02 was a bit much. Thanks to some of our regulars they stayed the course and harvested all those tiny beans off the plants. CL did mention it is probably better to have a machine harvest something like garbanzos so we probably will not be growing them next year! Bed D02 had tomatoes and peppers growing in it but the plants came to a stop last week with the cold that hit the beginning of the week.
York was out for the final time this month. They harvested 38lbs of green tomatoes out of the D02 bed, forked about 1/4 of bed AB30 and watered the worms. One of the young men found the rotating composter a few weeks ago so we went ahead and had the York crew take it over. This week we placed a bucket of mooks and a bucket of branches in at a 50/50 ratio. Ryan helped us the next day by adding some of our GOG compost to help with the break down. Let’s see what the York compost turn out to be!
Essex and Surplus Line Association were out last week to help! Together they helped us to harvest over 500lbs of produce to send in to the local pantries! Essex helped to get bed AB30 prepped and ready for planting as well as helped to glean out some beds of the pepper plants that were done and planted some fava beans for us in bed B01! Surplus Line came out in the rain and helped to plant 1000 seeds; chard, peas, beets, rutabaga, lettuce and radishes! Yes, root veggies should be direct sown but we are going to try something different this year to help them along.
The OG’s (Original Gardners) got in and took out some fire blight in the Orchard as well as trimmed back the walnut tree hovering over the berry beds. Before they headed out to the Orchard they lent a hand in harvesting! Thanks guys!!!
Beds that were planted last week: M09, M10, M11, M12, A17, B01, L03, AB30, D02, E02 and F02! Bok Choys, Onions, Broccolis, Cauliflowers, Beans and Garlic went in to these beds. Over 2000 transplants were planted into these beds along with almost 650 seed direct sown! In bed D02 there were also 8 thyme plants that were left to grow from the 2024 spring planting:)
All these chores and we harvested 591.4lbs of produce for our neighbors! Lots of greens are coming on for us to start sending in to the pantries! There was a nice variety of kales being harvested as well as the bok choy that is now coming on. We were also able to harvest sweet potato leaves and some Mizuna!
Thank you all for coming out and helping the garden produce for our community:)Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Take care
Lori
