Wonderful day at the garden with volunteers from LDS, First Parish, Redeemer, Chinese Bible Church and Follen!
To the Lexington Food Pantry…
At the Garden: June 11, 2016
Volunteers: from Redeemer, Grace Chapel, Hancock, St. Nicholas, First Parish, First Baptist and Lexington High School
Weather: cool and dry
Harvest: Lettuce, mint, tarragon, oregano, Bok choy, dill, broccoli rab, rhubarb and arugula
Tasks: Harvesting, weeding, planting carrots and beets in small garden, planting bok choy in seedling trays and LOTS of mulching.
Isn’t this one good-looking mulched garden? Carla advocates investing the time to mulch early in the growing season in order to avoid a lot of weeding later on, as well as achieving better moisture retention. This picture is the “after” picture…all accomplished on Saturday.
Here are the steps we followed to mulch:
First things first. You have to weed, weed, weed. Best to start with a clean bed before mulching.
Then you prep the bottommost layer–wet newspapers. It’s an inexpensive, commonly found material. Consider it another way to recycle.
Janet, Amanda and Pauline are dunking newspaper in buckets of water to thoroughly wet them.
Next, Carla explains to the volunteers that they should put down about 6 layers of wet newsprint. That’s about the size of a typical newspaper section nowadays. 
Between good overlapping and making sure the paper is really wet, you should avoid having them all blow away on those blustery days we have been experiencing lately.
Elaine and Amanda then put a top layer of salt marsh hay over the wet newspaper. 
After we left Carla was going to wet the hay again to make it less vulnerable to being blown away. Carla prefers to use salt marsh hay as the top layer since it doesn’t have seed that would later sprout grass.
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At the Garden: May 21, 2016
Volunteers from Hancock, First Baptist, Sacred Heart, Chinese Bible Church and the community all pitched in.Weather: sunny and warm
Almost 33 pounds of fresh produce was picked and delivered this morning. It included bok choy, arugula, lettuce, radishes, herbs, green onions, asparagus, rhubarb and spinach.
Here is how the garden looked in May, You can see some beds yet to plant. Seeds and seedlings planted in the beds were peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and some flowers.
It took a group effort to harvest the bounty of greens.
Elaine and Lisa trimmed the rhubarb.
potatoes that managed to get overlooked last season suddenly sprouted. Unfortunately, these volunteers were in inopportune locations. Carla had us carefully dig them up, trying not to disturb the surrounding young plants. Do you see the potatoes that Tarla dug up?
ine took a turn at the weighing station.
The new bee hives arrived. I think I heard that each hive has a queen and 200 young bees. They have taken up residence in a new spot on the side of the barn. According to Carla, they seem very happy—lots of activity, which is a good sign.
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At the Garden: April 23, 2016
Volunteers from First Baptist, Chinese Bible Church, and Hancock helped this morning.
Weather: drizzly
Potatoes were planted here in the gullies of the hill piles above. Each week volunteers will check to see if the potato plants have started to poke through the soil. If yes, they will be buried again with the soil from the hillocks beside them.
Seed packets are organized in the barn, waiting for their turn to be planted.
You can see the progression of paths which now are defining more of the beds as they have been established. Poles in the back half are where the peas were planted.
Our excellent path builders. First put down wet newspapers and then cover with a layer of straw.
One of our volunteers shared something new with us—how a weed we would have blithely tossed away is used in other cultures. The feathery green this volunteer is holding can be cooked along with ginger and soy to create a broth that sooths the tummy.
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At the Garden – April 2, 2016
Volunteers came from the Chinese Bible Church of Greater Boston, Hancock, and Grace Chapel.
Can you see the first stalks of asparagus? It won’t be long before they are harvestable. I wonder how much later we see the evidence of the cool weather crops (peas, greens, etc.) that were planted by Tuesday’s crew.
If you haul enough manure you don’t need a coat to stay warm! Friends from Grace Chapel help feed the soil.
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