It has been really cold and windy this spring, so we decided to give the chard a little protection to keep it warmer. Floating row cover was clipped to hoops made out of poly pipe. Simple and effective!
We’ve been growing lots of starts, and they needed to get in the ground. A big thank you to David Melman, applicant for the Community Gardening Leadership Training, who came up from Seattle and helped with the planting, and making the cloches.
Let the growing begin! Bok choi, kale and chard!
It’s 2011 and we’re back in the garden after a bit of a lapse, renovating the beds and getting ready for the new season! Most the beds are now ready to plant, and we even transplanted some overwintered, but crowded chard. Soon we’ll be putting starts out.
Our work parties are MONDAY AFTERNOONS, 1 – 4 pm. Come join us in the garden!
For more information, or if you have any questions, email Cary Peterson at garden@goodcheer.org.
STAY TUNED to more developments in the garden!
We’re not able to keep the blog updated right now, but rest assured that the LMS community garden is alive and well. Come by and see what’s happening!
The LMS Community garden is coming to life for its second growing season, and we have some exciting events coming up for March:
Our spring work party will be March 14th from 1 to 3. Projects include: finishing bed preparation, putting soil amendments and compost on beds, putting up more chicken wire to keep out those hungry bunnies, and (weather permitting) staining the gate.
Polly Schmitt ties down chicken wire at last fall's work party
There will also be a solar panel and water pump installation/ demonstration on March 14th. From 10AM until 3PM. This is a free demonstration of how to install a small solar panel and water pump. Local Solar & Wind expert, Kelly Keilwitz, will lead the installation process (see his website at: www.whidbeysunwind.com).
Students from the Langley Middle School Adventure Ed. class will be doing preliminary garden bed work and preparing the pathways for cardboard and gunny sacks this spring. They will also be pulling out all the old tomato plants from the greenhouse, getting it ready for a new crop.
Kimmer with December's tomatos
While this blog has remained in 2008, our little garden project has continued forward. Let’s catch up on the last few months:
October:
During our work party in October, 11 volunteers came out to build raised beds, line the pathways with cardboard and gunny sacks, put up chicken wire to help keep the bunnies out, and create hanging racks in the shed for all our donated smocks. We use gunny sacks to keep the weeds down both because they are extremely effective and because they are a reusable byproduct from the Northwest’s booming coffee industry. Many of the larger coffee retailers leave tremendous piles of these burlap sacks outside their warehouses for gardeners like us to take, and we’re happy to help.
Evan Callahan hangs up the new smock hooks in the shed
October gave us a harvest of over 65 pounds of squash, carrots, beets, turnips, beans, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and bell peppers. We also had several flats of donated Fall starts to plant – cabbage, celery, Swiss chard and kale.
November/December:
Students continued to harvest the remaining beans, lettuce, tomatoes and bell peppers through December. The tomatoes were still going strong in December until a long cold spell (with about 15 inches of snow, an amazing amount for Whidbey Island) blasted us. So the students harvested all the tomatoes before the cold killed them: red, orange, yellow and green. The yellow and orange ones ripened in Kimmer’s home, then were brought to the food bank for the holidays.
Kim Drury and Damien Cortez, manager at Good Cheer Food Bank, hang chicken wire to protect our precious crops
We cooked the green ones into pies mixed with apples. Unfortunately, the snow caused havoc with school schedules and the students didn’t get a chance to eat the pie.
January/February:
The garden project received a grant from South Whidbey Schools Foundation for $1,000 to purchase and install a solar panel and water pump. The solar panel will generate enough electricity to power a small pump so that the garden’s rain barrels will have water pressure (yeah!). This means we will be able to use hoses, sprinklers, and a variety of watering devices instead of just using watering cans, a long and tedious task. And we add yet another sustainable solution to our beautiful community garden! Check back for updates on the installation.
Laurie Keith and Commissioner Helen Price Johnson hang chicken wire to deter rampaging rabbits
Look for updates on spring events soon – we can always use your help!
Emma helped us during a big harvest in August - here she is inside the hoophouse with our first ripe tomatos. We also harvested carrots, beets, peas, cabbage, broccoli, turnips and onions that week.
Through a mixture of good luck, dedicated staff and community volunteers, our garden at LMS made it through the summer in great shape! We’ve officially been operating for a year now, and have donated over 250 pounds of produce to Good Cheer, the local food bank. We’re continuing to grow and look to produce even more this school year. New classes, new kids, new crops – here’s a look at some of the highlights from the summer:
Aqua Chautauqua, the traveling circus/ community group based out of Port Townsend, came to Langley at the end of July for a performance. As part of their visit, they organized classes, lectures, and exchanges for the community before the official show in the auditorium. Bob Effertz from Langley organized an attempt to gain the world record for number of didgeridoos played simultaneously (somewhere over 200). The weather didn’t cooperate, though, and only about 50 people showed up, so he went for the never-before-attempted record of most people playing digeridoo while hula-hooping. I think we hit 44, which smashed the previous record of 0.
I love didgeridoos and luau parties as much as anyone, you’re thinking, but what does this have to do with the community garden? Well, we joined in the festivities by hosting a worm bin workshop. About a dozen people showed up to learn about the benefits of vermiculture and how to build a bin out of wood. Our red wrigglers have been at work these past two months digesting our food scraps and producing amazing compost for the garden. We hope to fill all three bins soon with scraps from the middle school cafeteria.
Tools required: an electric drill and saw, screws
See the plan we used on Seattle Tilth’s website here (in PDF form)
Anza prepping the corner supports
Savannah’s crew preparing the lid for one of our three boxes
Marcia is readying the sides for the worm bin
We received a grant from the city of Langley’s new Neighbor-to-Neighbor fund that paid for the materials for these new additions to the garden – come by and take a look at how our worms are doing!
