by Mark Sandeen
Volunteers at the Garden
Watering the Zucchini
This Saturday, a group of volunteers from Hancock Church, Lexington Catholic Community and our local boy scout troop met at the Interfaith Garden on a beautiful spring morning to do some planting, weeding and harvesting in the garden.
We harvested all the asparagus that was high enough to eat as well as some healthy looking rhubarb and brought them to the Food Pantry.
Rhubarb & Asparagus Harvest
Rhubarb Leaves
You may not know this, but the very large rhubarb leaves on the top of those very tasty red stalks of rhubarb contain toxins. I’m told you’d have to eat about 10 pounds of rhubarb leaves before you suffered any ill effects. But just to be safe, we cut the large rhubarb leaves off the stalks and put them in the compost bin.
Last week, we put up some plastic mesh along the rows of climbing peas, so that the germinating vines would have some supports. This week, we inspected the rows of peas and filled in the rows by planting new seeds where last week’s plantings hadn’t germinated.
Peas and Onions
Eggplant and Basil
We also planted a row of skinny European eggplant next to a row of basil plants. I’m already imagining what a great meal those two together would make… Eggplant parmesan with some fresh basil on top. Mmm good.
Speaking of wonderful spices – we found lots of volunteer spices growing among the potato rows. Connie and Maryann carefully dug up the cilantro growing in the potato rows and transplanted them to their own location over near the crookneck squash hill. We also seem to have volunteer dill growing all over the garden, but for now, those sprouts are quite tiny, so we left them in place.
Everyone had a lot of fun and the chickens sure appreciated the weed greens we gave them to munch on.