Lexington Interfaith Garden

By Barbara Munkres

Trinity Covenant and Friends Meeting helped Pilgrim Church provide helpers at the Interfaith Garden. Thanks to liaison Marilyn Lund, an abundance of workers turned out on Tuesday to harvest, weed, and compost.  Mary Mackie of Pilgrim reported that some people were digging potatoes and teenagers put up a soft fence around the tomatoes to protect them.  One of the boys added fox urine to the soil around the tomatoes, which in addition to the fence, helps repel critters.

Mary Mackie and Carla prepared some compost to add to a new bed and Pat Rabby helped mix it into the soil. Then lettuce was planted in the new bed along with Dianthus.  Deborah Burger weeded (her specialty, she says!) along with others.  Eleanor Smith picked cucumbers and weeded.  Flowers and broccoli were treated with water and Bu-T-Grow.  Bean plants were trimmed of old stems, leaving the stems which are still producing.

Things I love about the Interfaith Garden are the chance to reconnect with old friends from other congregations and to make new ones.

Thank you to the many volunteers who came to the garden to help out on both Tuesday and Saturday of Week 21.  On Saturday, Mark Sandeen took a picture of some of the harvest and some of the workers before we walked over to the Food Pantry to deliver.  Thanks, Mark!

Volunteers at the Garden

From left, Barbara, Sarah Chu, Carla, Jennifer Johnson, Sou Chu, and Marilyn Lund.  Also present were Amy Swanson, Bob Lund, and of course, Mark.

By Amy Swanson and Marilyn Lund

We delivered over 50 pounds of produce on Saturday!!. That includes 23 pounds of Russet potatoes, 12.5 lbs of cucumbers, and 10.4 lbs of squash. You can sure tell what is in season! Tomatoes are not quite ready yet but coming soon. Can’t wait for the tomatoes. In the interest of time, we loaded up the back of the Prius and delivered a trunk full of produce. The cardboard box is full of potatoes and some of those trays are 2 deep. In the lower right corner is the tray full of Swiss chard. These greens are so good, but apparently don’t weigh much.

50 Pounds of Beautiful Produce

Many thanks to ALL of the volunteers and ESPECIALLY TO CARLA. Please stay with it. This is the time when the garden produces what we planted, and it is so rewarding and fun to work together.

By Marilyn Lund

This was the week that Trinity Covenant worked with Hancock at the Garden. It is the first time that Bob and I have been back since May, and the Garden is flourishing.

On Tuesday Grace and Kit Ling and Norma and Jennifer and Bob and I worked with Amy Swanson and Carla and two other people from Hancock. It was a large volunteer group, and we worked hard for an hour. We dug 23 pounds of russet potatoes, literally picked up a lot of beautiful onions that had popped out of the soil and were ready to go, AND we weeded and weeded.

We also dug up a lot of corn plants that had provided food for an animal who was able to shuck the corn ON THE PLANT and completely DEVOURED EVERY KERNEL without taking down the plant or removing the cob from the plant. I am really amazed! But the people did not get that corn.

By Dana Allen Walsh

Hi Interfaith Gardeners,

Our wonderful Interfaith Garden is thriving this summer and producing corn, onions, cucumbers, green beans, herbs, and flowers for the Food Pantry. With Carla’s incredible gardening skills and knowledge, volunteers have been learning how to grow vegetables organically and getting their hands dirty for a good cause.  On the overall, everything is going well!

But I need to ask for your renewed commitment to the Interfaith Garden.  As liaisons, please look ahead to the schedule and find volunteers from your faith community to work on the days you are assigned.  We now have two work days a week – Tuesdays and Saturdays (occasional Sundays) and we need to use that valuable time to harvest, weed, and maintain our Garden.  If you can’t find people from your faith community to volunteer – don’t sweat it – but follow through by emailing the volunteer sub list: gardenvolunteers@googlegroups.com because many of them are eager to volunteer.

The hope of the Interfaith Garden is to have the opportunity to meet people of different faiths and have a chance to work alongside of them.  Let’s help to make that a reality by following through on finding volunteers from our
faith communities for the weeks we are assigned.

You can see the volunteer schedule by clicking on the Calendar button at the top of this page.

By Amy Swanson

I went to help with the harvesting this morning.  What a bounty!  As we walked over to the Pantry, Carla, Theresa and I were guessing that maybe close to 30 pounds was harvested. Here are the items I remember that we picked and some of the associated poundage.

Cucumbers (~ 9lbs)

Corn (~5.4 lbs) — The first of the corn was picked, with its fresh grassy smell.  There’s some animal who is also after the corn so we’ll see how much gets left for the rest of us!

Onions…red and white  –Beautiful specimens

Basil

Flowers

Green beans (~ 5lbs)

Squash blooms

Rosemary

We walked over to deliver the produce to the Pantry and I must say that the tableau was beautiful (and fragrant!).  We wheeled most of it layered in a garden cart with trays of squash blossoms and flowers and basil and rosemary on the top layer.  (You can see it below.) We had enough produce that it did not all fit in the cart so Theresa and I carried the overflow.

Harvest Produce on July 17th

And guess who we met working at the pantry?  Our Joyce Greif!

FYI, Carla is expecting to harvest potatoes, peppers and more onions next week. Speaking of onions, here is what I learned this week–after the 21st, most of the onion growth goes into the bulb and if you were to visit the
garden, you would see these beautiful bulbs looking like they just been shot out of the ground.