Happy Tuesday everyone,
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and succeeded in staying cool. We had new and regular volunteers out from Workday, the National Charity Leagues, the Boy’s Team Charities, Young Men’s Service League and CSF working in the garden last week. Many thanks to all of you who braved the heat to come help in the garden.
We harvested 354 pounds of fresh vegetables to share with our neighbors in need last week. We were able to share our first tomatoes!! YAY! I think with the heat and warm nights coming on we will soon be harvesting tons of tomatoes.
Weeding continued garden wide as we pulled weeds from about 3,880 square feet of beds and paths. Plus we got all the seed packets sorted and put back into their storage boxes by accession numbers many thanks to RH, AH, LH, MH and AL for their patience and wonderfully legible handwriting! We even found a spot to transplant four sweet delight melons and homes for many of the orphan plants in the hoop house. It is a bit late to be planting them but fingers crossed for a long summer and fall and they will have a chance to produce.
Sigh, the warming weather has helped the aphids and squash bug populations a boost. We spent a lot of time on Friday and Saturday squashing bugs and removing plants that look to have been killed by bacteria carried by squash bugs or a soil borne fusarium bacteria. We pulled the potentially infected plants and have started disinfecting regime for all clippers used on our squash plants. We are in squash bug hunt mode now, looking daily for the little buggers and squashing them and their eggs as we find them. Right now the bugs seem limited to four beds. Keep up the good work bug hunters and lovely lady bugs!
This year also seem to be a bumper year for gophers. We lost about a third of one zucchini bed to these furry buggers last week. Not much to do but keep on setting traps and hoping the new owl box and cats will be able to help us keep these beasties under control.
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
feel better LP and JP!
