Hi All,
Well, the rain held off and Tod and I were able to enjoy a bird walk up at the Mokelumne Fish Hatchery! It is truly a beautiful spot for birding, walking, fishing, picnics. The weather was perfect and we stopped in to one of his buddy’s homes to check out his & his wife’s native garden in both their front and back yard for inspiration! Thanks to that Tod and I have decided to go with an elderberry in our yard instead of a ceanothus for height. We will be adding a ceanothus but will go with one of the low growers.
Last week in the garden we planted over 5,000 seeds for both Plant Sale and the garden as well as pricked out and potted up almost 1,000 seedlings into larger pots mostly for the Plant Sale. Del Valle Culinary Arts students were out to help with that as well as helped out with weeding the Berry Patch, planted sunchokes with RL, cardboard & wood chipped with AL and also washed & packed produce for the deliveries to the pantries!
A couple of more beds were planted this week. Like I mentioned above, RL and 2 students planted some of Ms Julia’s sun chokes in bed K18 to the North of the sorrel. LP brought in a 6 pack of some lettuce she seeded up, got those planted in the JAS2 bed near the Berry Patch and then LP & MB planted carrot seeds in bed F01! There are a few other beds we are looking to replace with new plants within the next couple of weeks or so.
York was out too. They helped to place cardboard and wood chip between the 2 produce washing sinks to be sure our other volunteers had somewhere dry to stand! While out they also took the bees wax, that was scraped off the frames and foundations and added that to the right side of the rotating composter we have been experimenting with. Anyone with compost knowledge, I would like to take you over to the rotating composter and show you what they have brewing in there! We may need some help in directing how we continue forward with it.
Tuesday & Wednesday crews worked hard at taking out the crab grass in front of the C01-F01 beds. A couple of young ladies on Friday’s crew weeded out the pathway over by bed AB10. CL & a few of our other regular volunteers worked on weeding out beds E02/D01. I notice this morning over in K07 how the bindweed is starting to take over…always weeding to be done!
Thanks to volunteers clearing what we walk on we are able to come in and lay down cardboard and wood chip to keep these areas free of weeds…at least for a little while. You can see around the produce sinks how it all looks once we lay the cardboard and cover it with the wood chips. There are a few other areas covered as well but the produce washing area is the most recent area covered.
Orchard crew continued their pruning. Hoop houses were inventoried. Tags were made for all the seeds being planted and the seedlings being pricked out. Kelly tractor in a couple of piles of wood chip for easier access. Saturdays crew ended up helping him out with clearing out some weeds that started taking over the church’s garden area:)
We harvested over 200lbs of produce to send in to our neighbors last week! Thank you all for getting heading out and helping us to harvest what we can from the beds. If there are any questions about how we have been harvesting lately please feel free to ask as many questions as you have!
Take care
Lori
