Happy Monday everyone,
Many thanks to all of you who made it out to help in the garden despite the unsettled fall weather of last week. Rain on Wednesday and 90+ degrees on Friday and Saturday. Folks from Kaiser were out in force during the week, plus students from Valley High School on Tuesday. On Saturday teams from both Danville and Pleasanton BTC chapters, Livermore and Foothill High Schools, and Dublin High’s new Medlife Club came out to help. It was great to meet all you new comers and visit with the ‘old hands’ and folks who came out after helping with the fund raiser to work in the garden too. You all rocked it out!
Together we harvested 1,665 pounds of fresh healthy vegetables to share with our neighbors in need. Dang near a ton in one week! This includes the three beds of winter squash and two green bean beds we gleaned all the fruit from. You all weeded and laid down the green beans so they can ‘moulder in’ to return their nutrients back into the 288 sq feet soil from which they came. After harvesting the winter squash, you weeded and prepped the 300 sq ft of squash beds, then seeded one with about 2,500 carrots, one with 40 brussel sprouts, a new winter crop for us, and the next with 180 grey shallots.
During the week 327 grey shallots actually went into three beds, along with about 1,000 pounds of compost and a little organic fertilizer. As many of you know, these shallots are special to us. We started expanding the seed stock, with one pound or about 30 expensive cloves of them, last fall This past spring that pound had grown into almost 30 pounds of cloves. Now with your help we will be able to share them with our neighbors next spring and still have some left to carry on planting them for years.
We are trialing whether the shallots germinate better under agribon or straw this year by starting about half of them under each cover. I’ll be honest and tell you that when a bed is covered with agribon I seem to forget what we put under it. Out of sight out of mind, I guess. I promise to try hard to remember to check the bed regularly. We did pull the agribon off the two broccoli beds that a team from Ross planted back on the 6th. They had grown nicely and we should be able to start harvesting from them in early November.
Many thanks to all the zen weeders who helped remove weeds, including the pernicious bermuda grass and bind weed from about 1,300 square feet of beds and pathways. The pathways look so much better with the zucchini plants moved back into their beds. Thank you!
As always, I am indebted to all of you and send you all my sincere gratitude. Fertile GroundWorks could not do all we do without wonderful volunteers like you. You are all truly amazing human beings. THANK YOU!!! for enabling us to TEACH, GROW, and GIVE.
I do hope that you all will be able to come back and see how your efforts helped the garden to grow and change with the seasons.
Until next we meet, please do take care of yourselves.
Happy gardening everyone.
With sincere gratitude and hugs
Brenda
PS during Saturday’s clean up we found one Monterey ball cap, one dark blue fleece jacket, and two water bottles both blue, one with characters on it and one without. Everything is in the garden HQ, let me know if anything sounds familiar and we will hold on to them until your next visit.
Cheers
b
