Cover crops are planted!

The St. Mary’s and Isidore and Maria gardens help provide fresh produce to hungry neighbors who come to the St. Joseph’s food pantry.

NEWS: The cover crops are planted at St. Mary’s garden and at the Isidore and Maria garden. We only need to harvest sweet potatoes and a few peppers, okra, and beans.

We will start harvesting collards and kale very soon. Unfortunately we did not plant any lettuce for the fall. Probably we did not have any left over seed laying around. Maybe we will get that done next year.

NEXT GROUP WORK TIME: Monday, 5:30PM. This will be a short harvest. We will start clearing out some areas to get ready for a new layout for 2023.

Last week Karen, Matthew, Jason N., and Jason S. did a quick harvest. We had enough time to rake in the cover crop seed. Jason S. has been stopping in at the garden every day to water the crop.

This past Monday, Tom and Jason S. did a quick harvest. We started the cleanup of the front area of the garden.

The approximate $ value is $3/pound for many crops, $3/squash for winter squash, and $3/bunch for greens and lettuce. We do have specific quantity data that we can use to compare crop values from each year. Please get in touch with us if you have curiosities about specific crops from year to year.

Tom tilled the soil at the Isidore and Maria garden. This soil was quite compacted. We will harvest the sweet potatoes soon. After we harvest the sweet potatoes, we will spread a few handfuls of cover crop on that section to avoid a bare spot.

Jason added inoculant to the peas and vetch. He had to moisten the seed to encourage the inoculant to adhere to the seed surface. After a few minutes of drying, he mixed all of the seed together before adding it to the hand spreader in small batches. The hand spreader required some serious wrist strength.

Jason uses a hand crank spreader to spread our cover crop seed onto the Isidore and Maria garden. Tom did a follow-up quick till to make sure that the seed makes contact. We are praying for rain!