Good Friday update
Good Friday St. Mary’s garden update: Thank you for helping support St. Mary’s garden! Our mission is to feed hungry neighbors who come to the St. Joseph’s food pantry.
UPDATE Organic Farming and Gardening Field Day on Thursday 4/18. Pre-registration is open online until 4/18, but you can register in person. Lunch will be served. This sounds like a cool way to get acquainted with the Organic Crops Unit of the East Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center.
Last Monday we had work crew that thinned carrots, weeded beds, and worked on some flooding problems. Some of us planted some radishes where other plants did not survive. Here’s what the garden look like this week. Thanks! Ceci, Luchi, Olivia, Erin, Walter, Tom, Kathy, Jason N., Maisie, Martha, Jason S.
Seedling news:
Special thanks for Kiersten and George for donating the remaining cool weather seedlings to the gardeners. We may some good use of those. St. Mary’s, First Presbyterian and Scarboro gardens benefitted from these cool weather seedlings. We look forward to the tomatoes and peppers on the way.
Next Monday:
This coming Easter Monday, 4/18 6pm we will work on weeds and tidying. If the mulch is delivered we will work on pile maintenance and pathways. If we get very industrious, maybe we will do some compost pile maintenance or compost innovations. Please bring a shovel or pitch for just in case.
Wish List Update:
-Leaves and shredded yard trimmings for compost
-Landscape fabric for the compost setup
-T-posts or rebar (5-6ft long) for trellis supports, used and rusty is OK
-Stirrup hoes or collinear hoes like these at Johnny’s: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools-supplies/weed-control/hoes-cultivators/
Harvest totals:
Everything that we are harvesting right now is a survivor of our winter. Next year we need to plant more spinach! We have a lot of cilantro growing back for a weekly harvest.
Here is our total so far:
These totals are an underestimate of the dollar values based on farmers’ market prices. Some of these vegetables are taken home by the gardeners.
Compost update:
We are we taking on different methods to figure out what works best for our garden.
-Compost tumbler: It’s full and we turn it daily. It never heated up, but it is decaying. Earth works from the garden are propagating inside. Sadly we have a small fire ant population in there, too. Tumbling is not what we hoped for…yet. We will keep trying.
-Big turned pile: We have a big pile of mixed material. It was turned once or twice. It did not heat up. It is irrigated with drip line. Maybe we will turn it this week. We will monitor this pile as it ages.
-A “static” option: Some if us are exploring various forms of bioreactor, passively aerated compostering vessels that will not need to be turned. Soon we will settle on a design and assemble it.
