Happy Thursday everyone,
Once again time is just flying by and you all just keep rocking it out in the garden. I hope you all had safe and yummy Thanksgiving celebrations. Even with short holiday week, and holiday induced Covid caution, that kept most people at home, we got a lot done these past two weeks. All us regulars had tons of help from a Kaiser team, families from Boy’s Team Charity , BSA Troop # 888, Breaking BEARiers Youth Leadership (BB), California Scholarship students and new individuals. It was great!
Despite the cold induced slow growth of all the seedlings and seeds we have put out since September, we were still able to harvest 104 pounds of fresh beets, radishes and greens to add to 209 pounds of shed stored squashes and crate ripened tomatoes to share with our neighbors. I hope folks were able to make lots of pumpkin pies for their Thanksgiving dinners.
The garden still looks like a field of agribon and straw while we prepped another ten beds with 4,500 lbs compost. We only have 9 beds left to prepare and plant. They will receive fava beans and grains to help replenish their nitrogen and soil tilth. We are now officially caught up from the mouse buffet of 1,500 seedlings a couple months ago, as out in the big garden we sowed another 3,700 seeds and sets including beets, shallots, leeks and onions and planted 1,376 seedlings lettuces, the last of the brassica including the seedlings started by the Young Men’s Service League. Thanks YMSL! The favas and oats the YMSL families planted in the new beds they created, in October., are up and running. YAY!
In addition to all that veggie garden work, we also started working on the native hedgerows, by digging holes along the fence lines and starting to plant out a variety of native plants listed on Dr. Grodon Frankie’s best plants for bees list. You can get a PDF from his lab’s website http://www.helpabee.org/index.html . For all of you who have dug holes in your own back yards or in the orchard you know what a hard chore digging in our native cement like clay soil can be. Many thanks to ZC, PL & AL for the Breaking BEARiers for digging all those holes! On top of hole digging we pulled weeds out in the orchard to make room for native wildflower seeds to be broadcast and flourish. We still have some weeding to do out in the orchard and kind of waiting on predictions for some steady rain before we broadcast the seeds. We also created a agribon tunnel to protect the bay citrus trees out in the orchard. It may not be pretty but so far it has worked and the citrus trees are doing well.
As always I want to thank all of you for your help in creating a wonderful garden that helps so many of our neighbors. Fertile GroundWorks could not do what we do without you all. You truly make the garden a wonderful place to be. THANK YOU!
With gratitude,
Brenda
