Hi All,
I hope everyone enjoyed the respite from the heat because now it is back!!! It is looking like it may end up helping our tomatoes to ripen, fingers crossed! There are so many green tomatoes on the plants right now. We may all need to figure out green tomato recipes to send in with our harvest!
Our Washing Station pop up got a new cover, thank you CW! Our old one had definitely seen better days. During the week our harvesting crews got to utilize its shade while they washed & packed produce for delivery and Kaleidoscope utilized the shade it provides to prep the sage leaves they harvested for our tasting event. During the event Lance used it for standing under while teaching the You Pickers on how to harvest their veggies throughout the garden as well as used the area it covers to weigh everything that came in.
The front end got a little face lift, first by York who came in and raked & swept up the wood chip that was on the pathway leading in. They also tied back some of the kale in bed F01 that started to block the pathway. Next, LP got to take out the chicory plants in bed ARB1 and planted some red onions in their place. After all that JR came in and trimmed up the cardboard/wood chip cover around the ARB beds and finished with a final sweep.
York and Kaleidoscope got to feed and water the worms. Kaleidoscope also shredded paper, covered the worms with it and added a layer of compost for the worms. The compost areas NE bin was fed more tomatoes and greens, the SW bin started getting sifted and the rest of the branch pile was wood chipped. We’re going to be able to use the FGW compost on some of our beds this fall!
OUR WISH GARDEN! 15 holes started getting dug by State Compensation Insurance Fund work group last week! These are for all the tropical plants you see by our Washing Station. Some are tall trees that will make cover for the plants that will go into their understory! Another crew finished 6 holes and started even more! The garden keeps growing thanks to all your efforts!!!
Everyone worked hard last week helping us to get the garden ready for the Squash Tasting Event, which was a success! Volunteers cleaned out the old sunflowers that were just lazing about, tomatoes got trimmed so people could actually walk down the paths between the beds, weeds were pulled (I know, that is a weekly thing but it counts!) and yes, The Weed Annihilator was back out! RB took care of the weeds over by the gate leading into the fields and hacked those weeds back between the compost pile and the fence line! The people who showed up for the event had no problem walking around and finding the veggies they wanted to harvest and enjoyed the garden in all it’s beautiful glory thanks to the hard work you guys put in
During all that hard work we all had to stop at one point and admire the Praying Mantis egg case that was found by DH, from the SCIF work group that was out! We took a picture of it and I included it in this email today!
All that work done and we harvested 710.1lbs of produce for our neighbors!
Thank you everyone:)
Take care
Lori
