Lexington Interfaith Garden

Volunteers from Chinese Bible Church, Follen, Redeemer, First Baptist and Hancock

Weather: Nice cool fall day. Damp due to the hour, but soon dissipated.

 Harvested today: 220 pounds including broccoli, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Swiss chard, cabbage, pumpkins, bok choy, butternut squash, acorn squash, radishes, scallions, kale, green peppers, arugula, and parsley.

What a wild morning! We had so much to take over to the Lexington Food Pantry that it required 4 carts to hold all the produce. That’s unusual. If it had happened last Saturday I wouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, last week was a catch-up since the garden had been closed the prior Saturday due to the Labor Day holiday. But we only harvested 108 pounds last Saturday vs. 220 lbs. today. Go figure. I guess it was just timing. For instance, this week cabbage and squashes
were ready.  With so many carts, it meant we had twice the number of volunteers involved delivering. 9 of us got to see the newly renovated space that the Pantry just moved back into at Church of our Redeemer. Very nice!

Janet’s back! We are glad to see her back at the Garden after missing her these past months.

What do you do after the picking is done? Weeding. There’s always something to weed.

Everything goes faster when working together.

It doesn’t seem right if we don’t bring flowers along with our vegetables to the Pantry. I thought we had cut all the flowers last week, but look at all the new blooms.

See Carla smiling? I didn’t do a very good job cutting the broccoli. Carla, as sweeper, found a lot more I’d missed. Ha! That’s the difference between an experienced gardener and an inexperienced one. Good thing there is a mix of both each morning.

Peach season is over at the Garden. It was time for Tom to dismantle the protective netting and put it away until next year.

 Volunteers from Chinese Bible Church, Hancock, Redeemer, First Baptist, Follen, Quakers and the neighborhood.

Weather: Bit damp after rain of past two days, but otherwise fine.

Harvested: a total of 108.5 lbs. including tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, pole beans, eggplant, kale, chard, peaches, green peppers, bok choy, green onions, radishes, basil, and parsley.

Every once in a while we get a work day when for a variety of reasons it is tough for the faith communities that are scheduled to work that day to come up with members who are free to work. When that happens we send out a call for help to our general volunteer list and ask for subs. The need is always met. Having a list of folks who have offered their names and emails to be part of the on-call sub list has made it so much easier to keep the work going smoothly at the Interfaith Garden.

This weekend was a time of major conflicts and we needed an unusually large number of subs. Special thanks to all the extra folks who answered the call for help. It was a great crew this morning. We had a mix of newcomers and old hands. Everything got done and delivered to the Lexington Food Pantry in time for them to set up in advance of opening their doors at 9:30am.

Yanling and her friend harvested bok choy. They taught us this week that if you just cut off the leaves and not harvest the whole plant, the plant will regenerate and be ready to pick again in 2 to 3 weeks. The same with green onions. We picked 28+ lbs of bok choy and 2 lbs of green onions.

Pam helped with the eggplant. 14 ½ pounds went to the Food Pantry.

 

Elaine and Tom tackled the kale and chard. These 2 crops of like the EveryReady Bunny of the Garden. They keep going and going. If you harvest correctly (cut the largest leaves but always leave at least 4 behind), these cool-weather crops generally last thru the Fall. Today we harvested 10 ½ lbs. of Kale and 5 ¼ lbs. of chard.

Tom delivered produce that had been picked by Tuesday’s volunteers. They gave us a leg up on our picking chores this morning

A seasonal treat—peaches! This year was a good enough year to send peaches over to the Pantry…3 ½ lbs.

And the last thing that is added to the carts? Usually a few trays of cheerful flowers.

A basket of chard. Mom, take note–Peter wants to come back in August to see how much the garden will have changed.	Heather did an excellent job harvesting the lettuce! Very little cleaning was necessary.	Only the bigger bok choy was harvested, leaving more for next week.

Parsley was just one of the herbs that was picked…along with dill, cilantro, mint, tarragon and basil.	Lauren harvested several pounds of rhubarb to add to the car

Quite a bit of garlic got of harvested this morning. You can see Betty pulling it out above and a full basket to the right. But it is not ready to be delivered. First it needs to be dried. At the right, Carla shows Maria and Heather what to do. First you grab about 3 stalks, staggering the stalks so the bulbs have plenty of air space around them. Then you tie the stalks together, usually doing it lower and again higher on the stalks. The bundles were then hung in the barn to dry and will go the Food Pantry later this season.

When was the last time you saw leeks with curli-cues?	No, that is not a red potato. Carla thought it was a giant radish since it was pulled along with the rest of the normal-sized radishes and is the same color. But it also could have been a turnip that went AWOL. It was culled from the rest of the delivery since she feared it would be pretty bitter.

Volunteers today from: First Parish, Chinese Bible Church of Greater Boston, Lexington Methodist, and the Lexington Catholic Community

Weather: lovely July morning– Sunny and 70 degrees.

The crew this morning had a lot to do since the Interfaith Garden was closed last Saturday for the 4th of July holiday. As you would expect, there was more of everything to pick. The final tally was about 77.5 lbs, bringing the total to 223.5 lbs. delivered to the Lexington Food Pantry so far this season.

Probably the last of the peas and oriental peapods were picked this morning.	After picking, came the sorting. Fat ones were peas, flatter ones were the oriental peapods.

The produce always look so nice when it is laid out and packed for delivery. One reason is that when necessary, careful rinsing is done. Normally one wouldn’t want to wash vegetables until right before using since it tends to shorten the shelf life. But with greens and vegetables that grow in the dirt, you often want to clean them up. The rule is to do it gently. Above on the left, the beets, radishes and arugula are being rinsed. On the right, the heads of lettuce are receiving a gentle shower. Today Jessie’s mother gave a tip about how to harvest bok choy so as to minimize how much dirt adheres to the base of the plant. Pull up away from the soil and then cut off, instead of cutting off at ground level.

Carla explains the weighing process to Jessie. Afterwards, Jessie’s mother keeps the pallets of picked vegetables moving forward to be weighed. After this step, the trays are moved into the delivery cart.

While one group wheeled the morning’s bounty to the Pantry, the remaining volunteers went back to maintenance chores. Some were weeding. Others worked on adding weed suppression and moisture control via the old school-tried-and- true method of spreading wet newspapers out and then covering with a layer of straw.