Hi All,
Chilly but beautiful weekend. Tod and I went birding yesterday with a mom and her son we met last Sunday! They came out to Livermore and we met them at Marlin Pound Park over in Springtown, one of our favorite local bird walks. The young man, 10 yo, was trying out his new camera and we all got to share our birding stories! It is fun being able to share with the kiddos!
We are excited to announce we hired on 2 new people, Enrique M and Qaadira! Enrique is still in school so he is working the Friday and Saturday shifts for now. Qaadira will be here with us at every shift. There is also Kelly who will be coming on as a volunteer and may join the team at a later date. Enrique has 2 Friday/Saturday shifts under his belt right now and Qaadira and Kelly will be joining us tomorrow for their first official day in the garden!
Salesforce was out last week, and speaking of kiddos, there was a young lady who came out with her dad and kept up with the whole crew! They decided to join us in the Big Hoop House and help to lay out over 1,200sq ft of cardboard and wheelbarrowed in over 9,00lbs of wood chip to cover the cardboard! All this in a matter of 2 hours! This crew meant to get things done when they showed up to the garden!
Lance was so kind to refresh the marks on the crates as well as the weights to make stacking and weighing easier! He has also been busy helping to keep the mallows at bay. Last week he noticed there were a couple of patches of weeds we need to attend to in a couple of the higher up AB beds. I will notate those beds on the chores list for this week.
York was out and helped us continue our germination tests, this time on some lettuce seeds. We need to take a look at them tomorrow and see what germinated. LP, KM, Brenda & I are all in agreement about making a lettuce patch over by the fence line that they just cleared out of the strawberry gutters with LA. LA was able to get the poles out of the ground last week so go check out the new area we have to create a lettuce patch!!! Hmmm…we will probably have to share with the bunnies, lol!
CW finished up the new hand rails for the worm bin stairs! It looks so good and now the kids have something to hold onto when going up and down the stairs to give them more independence in their movement! He also added more height to the side rails which offers more safety when standing on the platform!
Some main lines in our beds needed help with all the leaks that were happening and JR got in there and fixed them all up while LA got out and fixed leaks within the lines on some of the beds! This week G02 needs some help getting a line or 2 switched out so if you are interested in learning how to fix a leak let me know and we can get you out there!
The Orchard crew continued with the pruning of the trees last week. Friday we had DH, a Garden Coordinator from one of the Livermore schools, dropped off 6 fruit trees he was able to get donated to the garden! The Saturday crew dug 6 holes for them to be planted this week! They are currently resting in some compost waiting to get planted into the Orchard:)
There were poppies weeded out of some of our beds and then there were some poppies planted in the Native Hedgerow on the Eastern fence line, lol! I just heard the irony in that as I started writing about it!!! The seeds that were planted in the hedgerow are some of the pink poppies Brenda found last year in the Orchard and we are hoping to continue having them in the garden:)
The Compost Area is receiving all kinds of attention, it is so wonderful! We have been keeping track of the temperatures of the bins, we have continued to feed the bins and some crews are also sifting out bins and getting the pile ready to use as we plant new beds. For now with the weeds not flowering continue to save them back to feed the bins. Bindweed is still a no go so throw them in the green bin out front but everything else, as long as it is not flowering, we can use to feed the bins!
OK, wow, this is getting long-radish seeds were sown in bed M02, bindweed was weeded out in bed N15, seedlings are still being potted up (140 last week) as they continue to get too big for the 6 packs they are planted in, seeds are still being planted for the Plant Sale as well as the garden (over 1000 seeds planted into 6 packs) and the worms were taken care of as well, by little fingers Miss CA and mom:)
All that, definitely more, and we harvested almost 72lbs of produce for our neighbors!!! Lots of bok choy in that harvest, it is doing really good this season!
Thank you all for showing up and giving it your all when you are out in the garden with us!
Take care
Lori
