by Amy Swanson
Volunteers from: First Parish, Follen, Islamic Center of Wayland, assisted by other volunteers from the community
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144 pounds. That was how many pounds we delivered to the Lexington Food Pantry on Saturday! Plus a dozen fresh eggs from the resident hens of 5 Harrington. This week’s delivery number was boosted by Carla setting aside some goodies that were ready to be picked earlier this week. If you recall, the garden was closed last Saturday so the garden was super ready to be picked!
Carla was out of town for the weekend, but she left us well armed to execute in her absence! She left greatly detailed instructions about what was ready to be picked and how best to ready the produce for delivery. Yet again, I learned a few new things… one of the benefits of working at the garden. For instance, did you know…
- You should keep potatoes to keep out of sunlight? When you don’t, they turn green and that’s bad. If you find your potatoes at home have turned green, it is best not to eat that part of them since not only do they not taste as good, but they can be toxic. Saturday’s potatoes had actually been dug up last week and left in the barn to dry off. On Tues other volunteers cleaned off the dirt and covered them with double layers of newspaper to keep them out of the light. That’s when we heard about the negative effects of allowing further photosynthesis.
- Many vegetables should not be washed until ready to eat. Once you wash them, it accelerates the aging process so they go bad much earlier. We had instructions not to wash a number of the vegetables and that would include pole green beans, potatoes, crookneck squash, cucumbers, eggplants, and tomatoes.
- Swiss chard—did you know that it is best to leave 3 leaves per plant when cutting chard? That leaves enough to keep the chard regenerating so you get more out of each plant.
- Parsley—similar to the chard, the best way to pick parsley is to thin the plant, not completely cut it back.
- Lastly, it takes two wheel barrows to cart 144 pounds to the pantry
We needed two carts to get everything to the pantry
One for sugar pumpkins and one for everything else!