Happy Sunday everyone!
I hope this finds all of you enjoying the day. These past few weeks remind me of Goldilocks- first it’s too cold, then too hot and finally just right. You all have made it out to help in the garden no matter what the day was giving us. THANK YOU!
The regular troops have been joined by teams from Schnitzer Properties, the ELITE Academy, YORK, Dublin HS, Breaking Beariers, two chapters of Promoting Leadership Among Youths and Rise& Shine members. You all have rocked it out!
Together we have harvested and shared 1,720 pounds of produce with our neighbors in need. WOW! We also got to meet and share with folks from the Livermore Homeless Refuge. What an amazing group of folks, they specialize in bringing food to people who can’t get to the pantries. I hope some of you get to meet them in the flesh, their energy and smiles will bring joy to your day.
On top of all that harvesting and produce washing, we have been very busy in the garden too. Gleaning winter crops from 17 more beds, amending 14 of them with fertilizer and about 17,750 pounds of compost, then planting summer crops into 17 amended beds and adding companion herbs to 15 beds. Some of the things we planted were 240 eggplants, 121 kale and chard, 40 melons, 20 summer squash, 132 peppers, 172 tomatoes, 17 sunflowers, 3 giant Farmer Don’s pumpkins and sowed 100 beans and 32 cucumber, 18 summer squash seeds to replace previously seeded spots that were not thriving. All these plantings, means that we now have 42 of the 94 beds planted in summer crops YAY!
Out in the garden we have also had the help of Creative Landscaping (CL) who designed and built a very cool tomatillo fence as an alternate to the tomato cages we used in a couple other beds of tomatillo plants. We have all been busy caging 363 of the 417 wily tomato planted all throughout the garden. The orchard area has also been a hot spot of activity. Many thanks to JS, JP, DB and RE of RnR Construction, for all their help mowing and clearing up the oft forgotten area. Thanks too to RE and his partner RC for installing the 330 ft of the Eastern leg of the orchard spigot line. Later this year these water lines will feed water to the bees and the hugelkultur mounds to be built by an Eagle Scout. Thank you all for making my life so much easier.
As always, my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to all of you for everything you do to help the garden be loved and productive. Your efforts truly make the world a better place for all of us to live in.
Until next we meet, please do stay safe and keep loving the ones you are with.
All my best
Brenda
PS please do share your favorite recipes for our new cookbook at https://www.fertilegroundworks.org/recipes/
