Hi All,
One more week and then the garden is closed till next year! We were super busy last week getting things done before the winter break. Thank you all who stepped up to get the back breaking work of prepping these beds and getting them planted…that was everyone!
Valent and Sandia work groups came out last week and got a lot done in the garden. Valent got bed N09 weeded and leveled and what a job that was. The N beds were overrun this year with bindweed so they, along with Brenda, wrestled it out of the bed. They also helped to plant 3 beds with almost 200 brassicas, over 300 onions and at least 50 garlics that we needed to sort through first because some of it had gone rotten on us. Oh, and one of their crew found shallots growing from seed in bed K06 that I had her transfer over to bed AB09 on the West end…check them out if you get a chance! Sandia came in and helped to get compost on bed N09 and one of their crew helped me to place the irrigation hoses back on. Part of the crew helped Brenda prep bed AB33 that was overgrown with the dreaded bindweed, another part of the crew gleaned out bed AB34 of all the tomatoes and peppers and they all helped us glean through 3/4 of bed N11…that was the San Marzano bed that had everyone all summer long getting lost in it because there were SO MANY tomatoes!!! One of their team members also went through the AB34 bed and took all the tomato clips off the trellis. Go teams go!
Shout out to the Tuesday regular crew! They got 3 beds prepped that day. Everyone was working their butts off, lol! Ryan led the crew that prepped up bed AB09, GL led a crew that prepped up bed K06 and Brenda led a crew that prepped up AB07! MB, PB, SM and KB teamed up and transplanted beets in bed M02. Yes, we are trying something different instead of direct sowing them to see if we get better results! LP, KM and EL all took on the task of planting AB32 with 186 Marathon broccoli and 279 Red Burger onions! Afterwards they tackled the mallow that we found growing in bed I02! DB was out in the garden trimming back the walnut tree hovering over the berry patch, check out his handy work if you get a chance!The last of our onions were planted in bed N09, the peas made it out to beds AB07, AB09 and AB10 as well as the last of the Clementine (orange) cauliflower made it into the beds! York was out the beginning of the week and they had gleaned out the squash plants for AB07-AB09 making it quicker for us to move in to prep the beds and get them planted. RL had come out on Wednesday to help out in the Compost Area. The day before the temperature read for Bin #1 at 140. He worked on sifting Bin #3 which gave us more compost to us in the garden beds as we prep them up.
Saturday’s crew braved the cold rain and planted 170 cabbages and 40 garlics before the rain started. Then they all ran for the Big Hoop House and sorted through the garlics we have from last year and cleaned labels for our upcoming Plant Sale! Yup, already thinking about that! We also use the labels for what we grow in the garden but prep work for the plant sale is right around the corner!
We planted over 2000 Valley Transplant plants and got about 100 garlics direct sown. All the chores complete and 155lbs of produce went to our pantries for our neighbors. Majority of the weight is from the greens we are able to harvest from right now. That says a lot because the greens do not weigh that much individually!!!
Thank you all for your efforts last week! We are needing to get about 13 more beds prepped this week and we are hoping the weather gives us a break to work it all out! Could not get it all complete without you all pitching in!!! Again, thank you.
Take care
Lori
