A new year

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!

Tags: chautauqua, community garden, food bank, Garden, grant, harvest, langley, Langley Middle School, LMS, summer, vermiculture, volunteer, worm bin