Hi All,
Happy New Year! Hope everyone got to enjoy their Holidays! We must’ve had a lot of stored up energy because we all hit the ground running last week! The majority planting for winter is complete but there is still so much to do in the garden, even in the dead of winter, and we got right to it!
The beginning of the week found us weeding out a few beds (K18, B03 & B04), Lance started hacking back the mallows over by bed H01 and the OG’s got to hacking back weeds in the Orchard. Beds M04 & K05 got the ground cherries dug out-we are not purposefully growing ground cherries this year, they take way more work to harvest then fruit it produces so we are moving on from them for now but I say purposefully because we all know how those ground cherries like to show up and take over so we will see!
Beds AB07, AB09 & AB10 had peas planted in them last month and we covered them with strawberry baskets to protect them from the birds…well, at least the part of the plant that stayed inside the baskets! A few volunteers helped us to take the baskets off and replace with agribon, this is a white row cover, to keep the birds completely off the peas. Some of it was blown off by the next morning so we will see how it ends up working.
EL’s hubby, AL, trimmed back the privet on the West end of the tool trailer. He had trimmed it back a few months ago so it seemed appropriate that he went in and trimmed back the newer growth!
Bed M04 was amended by our Wednesday crew and planted in with Purple Top rutabaga and Peppermint chard by the Livermore NCL’s on Friday. About 150 plants went in to that bed. On Friday we also had a small crew of Boy Scout who helped Brenda to plant 240 garlics! Bed M01 was also amended and planted with the Peppermint chard, Draggon Romaine lettuce and JK-8 potatoes by the Saturday crew! About 175 plants in total for bed M01.
The berry patch was weeded, Lance cleaned out more of the tomato cages for the crew to put away, the Compost Area received some love, as well as the tractor since it has been sitting for the past month! AW & EL jumped the tractor to be sure we give it a good start to the new year.
A few months back Eagle Scout GG was given a project to build us a table for the Little Hoop House, a tool table for over by the Office and a new bench for the outside of the Office! GG and his troop came in this past Saturday and installed both tables and the bench! The table in the Little Hoop House offers us more room for plants, the bench on the side of the office offers better seating for a break area and the tool table helps to clear up the picnic table so Lance can have more room for weighing our harvest! Thank you so much GG!!!
It is now Plant Sale time of year! DW on Friday found all the pepper and eggplant seeds we are going to need to start planting soon. She also helped to start getting our seed inventory done so we know what we need to be ordering for the sale as well as for the Spring Garden-yes, we are already planning that too!
Harvest total for the week was 206.13lbs! 62lbs of that was from the pumpkins that went out to Culinary Angels on Saturday but the rest was all basically greens! The bok choy is doing really great in our front H01 bed, the kales are still producing and the N15 broccoli bed is doing better than ever! That bed has been giving us broccoli for almost a full year. Plants are the most amazing thing.
It was great seeing everyone I did last week! The lingering cough and fatigue from the flu I had over the break took me out on Wednesday so I hope to see that crew this week:) as well as whoever else I missed!
Take care
Lori
