by Amy Swanson
The Interfaith Garden’s first harvest closed on Saturday, Nov 6thand there were 4 of us there to witness. While MaryAnn and I cut the last of the broccoli, Carla and Tom sorted through donated apples to pick out the best of them for the Lexington Food Pantry.
The last harvest of the season
We estimated that there was about 1 ½ pounds of broccoli to deliver along with the 2 bags of apples. (For those of you who know that we are tracking how much is grown and delivered to the Pantry, we only added the broccoli to our cumulative total since the apples were donated, not grown at the garden! More on that in a last report.) We’ve come a long way from those busy Saturday mornings in August and Sept when we were picking, cleaning and delivering 75 to 100 pounds of produce.
Since we had time left that morning, we raked up maple leaves and spread about 6 inches on top of the First Parish garden. They will sit and decompose over the winter adding good organic material to the soil. (Hmmm, this reinforces for me that I need not rake up all the leaves in the beds in my backyard!). On Tuesday, there will be a little more cleanup for the folks from Trinity Covenant and First Parish and then the garden is officially closed for the year.
Spreading the leaves
Many thanks to Carla who has shared her space, time and years of gardening knowledge with us this first year. Rumor has it she has ideas about next year and I know for a fact that she has already planted garlic for next spring.
Can’t wait!