Hi All,
Beautiful weekend but man was it cold! Tod and I went birding yesterday at Mokelumne River Hatchery with his bird group and we needed to bundle up in our thermals and multiple layers! The birding was good but that cold really wears you out. Next time I need to remember hand warmers.
Between Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of last week we had 12 new volunteers come out to help us with the garden:) Two of our volunteers were littles, 5 & 8, who stayed the entire shift on Friday helping to clean labels for our Plant Sale. Our other new volunteers helped to harvest, weed, planted 318 seeds for the Plant Sale and helped to unload part of the cardboard pile we had out back. Go Newbies!!!
Saturday we had 15 Scouts from Troops 126, with 4 of their chaperones, out to help us with cardboard and wood chip for the paths in the garden. Friday the guys who came out helped Brenda to unload half of the trailer and the next morning the Scouts helped us to unload the rest-about 4,000 lbs of cardboard was unloaded between the 2 shifts! Once we had the cardboard unloaded on Saturday these young ladies helped us, along with the 7 PLAY crew members and our regular volunteers, to spread out over 10,000 lbs of wood chip on the front apron of the garden! It looks beautiful! Everyone came together and got it done so fast that we had time to go back to the Compost Area and get Bin #3 filled in with greens, that everyone pulled up that moment, and browns, that everyone size reduced then as well, to get the Bin heating up and doing its compost thing!
York was back out for the first time this year. They dropped off the clean gloves and took with them the big pile of gloves we had used before the holidays. LD and her group helped to place dstarwberry baskets on the rutabaga and chard plants in bed M04. AS and her crew cleaned labels. After those chores were done we went out back to work the rotating composter, gave it a little water and rotated it about 16 times. We also checked in on the worms and gave them a little water. The Friday crew helped us to feed the worms some squash and we gave them a bit more water-the outer edges were extremely dry!
Organizing is under way. EL continued the seed inventory to let Brenda and I know which seeds need to be purchased for the Plant Sale and for the garden this spring. PB and I took a look at the box shed, I rearranged it a bit on Friday and we both agreed that next week, the week of the 27th, we can start taking boxes again to load up not only for our deliveries but also for the Plant Sale. The Greenhouse got some love to get it going for the seeds that are being started. Brenda and I noticed most of the mats are heating but there were 1 or 2 that need to be looked at this week. We now have a sheet up in the office for keeping track of the heat in the Compost Bins. It is hanging up on the right side of the cork board if you want to take a look.
Oh my gosh, I already wrote about so much and there is still so much more we got done! The tractor has been giving us issues starting up. RM jumped it for us during the week and even brought us a charger. AW and VT jumped it again on Saturday but are finding it is not keeping a charge. It did stay charged enough for AW to transfer a few loads of wood chip from the back end of the garden and move the branches out of the 1st stall of the compost area into the 2nd stall. The 1st stall will no be for size reduced browns instead of the 3rd stall. Looks like we may need a new battery.
Our Orchard guys continue their work in the Orchard. Last week they got some weeding done and they covered the citrus trees with the frost clothe. If you are really wanting to get in to the garden and weed they could definitely use our help weeding out the bindweed over by the apple trees. The guys tried to get the Patriot chipper working. I need to ask them about that…
Speaking of weeds, there were a few other areas that got some pulled last week; the Big Hoop House, beds N12-N15, the Native bed and the Berry Patch. SM cleaned up the powdery mildew leaves of the kale plants in beds M15 & M16. Brenda and New Volunteer, KS cleaned up the sorrel plants in K18. We are noticing that a lot of the leafy plants need to start having their entire stem pulled off, there is a lot of food being left behind when we just cut the leaves off. If you need more direction please come find me so I can explain. I mentioned earlier that seeds were planted but there were also labels created for those seeds. In the Office even more seeds were found to continue planting for the Plant Sale.
Board Member Barbara stopped by to pick up some brochures and banners for an event she was attending this weekend. Beds M14, K05 & K06 were mulched. K05 was cleaned up a bit and our volunteers found shallots on the South end that we ended up planting back in the South end to see if we can get more to grow.
Oh, and beds AB29 & N10 were planted with ~764 garlic, M01 was planted with the last of the chard plants in the North end and bed M04 was planted with the last of the beets we germinated in 6 packs over the winter.
Wow, and I am sure I am not getting everything we did into this email!!!
A total of 226.7lbs of produce went into our food pantries…remember, it is greens season and they do not weigh a lot but 226.7lbs is definitely nothing to scoff at. When you are back in the garden check out bed H01 with the bok choy that is just doing amazing! We are also taking the entire leaf when harvesting the individual leaf thanks to new volunteer SG who showed me where we were going wrong when harvesting it!
Thank you all for coming together and not only helping us to get this produce into our community but for also sharing your knowledge with us. We love sharing our knowledge but we are also open to learn from you as well.
Take care
Lori
