From: Marilyn & Bob Lund
Here are some pictures from last week. Isn’t early spring so beautiful with that special light green that one sees at this time of year? These pictures make the garden look like the special place it is.
Click here to see the photos.
From: Amy Swanson
Big news –Taxes aren’t due today! Only kidding, we don’t care about taxes. But Barbara did drop off the new scale and we got to play around with it. It’s a small sleek electronic gadget that can speak metric or American, as well as tell you the temperature…in Celsius. Barbara put it in a white box, marked “Interfaith Garden” on a shelf in the barn, ready to use on Saturday when Carla expects to pick a bit more of the asparagus and scallions before dropping them off at the Lexington Food Pantry. One caution is that because this is a “precision piece of electronic equipment”, it should not be used near cell phones since the RF might interfere with its operation. And for fun, there is a tape measure that pulls out of its side so you can measure the size of that zucchini that didn’t get away!
In the picture below are 2 of the more productive workers from today, Heidi and Kelly, with little green onions that were harvested. We learned that harvesting them now makes them scallions. Had we waited, they would have grown into onions.
Harvesting Scallions
Good thing we prepped the onion bed on Tues, because Carla was able to find dormant live onion plants for us to plant. So red and white onions were planted, as well as some leeks. Sorry I don’t have much more to report since I spent more time fooling around with the scale in the barn than working in the garden! We did find out that chickens live about 7 years and are most productive in their first 2 years. Also, the egg-laying cycle is fascinating . It takes about 27 hours for a hen to lay an egg, but she won’t do it after 2pm. If she is approaching her 27th hour and is about to lay an egg but then 2pm comes, she will not lay the egg until the following morning. Their bodies are very regulated to sunlight. That’s why they lay fewer eggs in the winter, when there is less daylight.
Volunteers arriving at the garden
From: Amy Swanson
Planting and Watering Lettuce Seedlings
Another beautiful day (week) in the neighborhood. Mr. Rogers wasn’t there but we were. Here are some of what was accomplished on Tues and Thurs:
– planted lettuce seedlings
– planted broccoli and cabbage
– composted another bed by the back fence
– put down more paths
– put in a bunny fence (bunnies beware!)
– hoeing between the rows of new pea plants
Volunteers from Temple Isaiah and Grace Chapel
Each day Carla took us on a tour of the garden, serving to remind us how much can change in a short time frame, especially with last week’s warm weather. Already there is talk about what might be pick-able next week. We were challenged to find the asparagus spears. I thought they looked like soldiers standing at attention.
What I learned:
– Why putting paths in are so helpful. Not only do they nicely define the borders of the path, but they really are helpful in preventing the unobservant of us from trampling the seedlings by reminding us where not to step!
– How smart the head farmer is in planning ahead to optimize the life cycle of the garden. For example, lettuce seeds were planted in Week 1 (??) And lettuce seedlings were planted in Week 4. By the time the lettuce seedlings are fully grown and picked out, the lettuce seeds will have grown to the point of producing round 2 of salad greens.
– To prevent the cut worms from eating the broccoli and cabbage plants, you cut off the bottom of a paper cup and shove it below surface level and then plant the broccoli/cabbage in the cup in the dirt. The embedded cup provides a barrier to the cutworms confusing the dickens out of them.
Looking forward to Week 5 to see if the first produce is picked and also to see if those chickens are better behaved. Last Thurs, they kept making a beeline to the barn to play in the straw. Here are some other photos from week 4.
Hancock Volunteers
Preparing the soil
Hancock Volunteers
Interfaith Garden
From: Barbara Munkres – SATURDAY, APRIL 3:
Another beautiful, warm day. My lasting memory of the day is of children racing joyfully around Carla’s big backyard or enjoying the play equipment. The chickens were allowed to play outside their pen, also. They wandered quietly about, feeding and getting into mischief repeatedly in the barn where they scratched about in the straw…….. Carla explained that earlier in the week they had spread it all over the barn floor! So work was interrupted now and then to chase the chickens out of the barn.
Our chores included planting potatoes, which had arrived from a certified seed potato grower in Vermont: Russet Burbank, Katahdin, and Red Norland.
Here’s how it goes:
~prepare the soil by loosening it with hoes and rakes
~scatter blood meal with a hand “spreader”
~scratch the blood meal into the soil with hoes and rakes
~mark straight parallel lines 3 feet apart from one side of the plot to the other.
~dig a trench about 8 to 10 inches deep along each of the parallel lines.
~at the same time someone can be cutting the seed potatoes into pieces.
Each piece should have 2 eyes (dormant buds) from which the new plants will sprout. I learned that the potato pieces can go into
the soil about 1 foot apart. They don’t need to be oriented any special way. They know what to do (stems grow up, roots grow down!) In all we planted 4 rows of potatoes and marked their variety on stakes.
After the potatoes were planted several people continued to remove rocks and grass along the edge of the garden. It was a wonderful day in the garden.
From: Barbara Munkres – Pilgrim Church
TUESDAY, MARCH 30: You probably remember: RAIN, heavy all day! Garden work cancelled.
THURSDAY, APRIL 1: After the second big storm of the spring, the sky cleared around noon and by 4:30 the sun had dried the garden quite nicely.
Carla reported that the soil tests had come back with good results!
The soil is in excellent shape: no heavy metals, and only slightly low in nitrogen. She had already purchased some urea and blood meal, both of which provide nitrogen, which will be worked into the soil. Work for the day included removing hay from the strawberry bed and putting on fresh manure. Some workers continued clearing grass and rocks along the garden’s edge. Carla is experimenting by growing some onions in pots this year before setting them out. Her instruction booklet explained that their leaves will thicken and grow stronger if they are trimmed to about 3 inches at this point. So the onions were thinned and trimmed.
Lettuce seedlings ready to be planted
The First Parish plot had been prepared for planting already. Rows of radishes and onions and lettuce were planted there. Later, squash will be planted in that bed, but the radishes and scallions will be grown and harvested before that time.
