Collards, Lettuce, and Wednesday Harvest Help

Greetings St. Mary’s Gardener: Thanks for keeping up with our news. We are doing our best to serve our neighbors at the St. Joseph’s food pantry with freshly grown food from our garden. Please enjoy our news and stay in touch. Please note our wish list toward the bottom of this message if you would like to donate to our cause.

Next work days: 

Monday, 5/16, 6PM

Wednesday, 5/18, ~845AM (after mass)

Father Pontian and William Gwin planted these collards! 

I have already started harvesting collards for the pantry. They are very tasty. I hope we have a lot more to come! 

These are delicious collards!

Help! We have a lot of lettuce:

Take a look at this lettuce! Please come help us harvest some of this lettuce on Wednesday for the pantry. Our neighbors tell us that they like our lettuce! 

This picture was taken last Tuesday. These romaine lettuce heads are much larger. I hope that they can make it until this coming Wednesday.

Last Monday review:

We planted cucumbers, zucchini, straight neck yellow squash, and 1/3 of the corn bed. In a couple of weeks we hope to plant more corn. We did lots of weeding. 

Photo from last Monday: 

We also spread a lot of cardboard to help keep weeds down in the pathways.

Next Monday: 

We need to keep weeding. In fact, you are welcome to come weed whenever you want to work. Our number one weed problem right now is nutsedge. You might want to do some research on the best ways to remove nutsedge. Please do not spray herbicides on or around the food crops.

The grass-like weed is nutsedge. I usually have some success uprooting it with my fork. But you have to be careful not to disturb the basil!

Cotton?

We had a cotton seed donation so we got busy preparing this bed to try some cotton just as an experiment. I did a little bit of research. I expect that we can plant seeds about 4” apart in rows spaced about 30” apart. There’s one major problem: we may not be “allowed” to plant cotton due to ongoing efforts to control the boll weevil. I have a question about cotton growing restrictions at the Anderson county extension office. I hope that we hear back on Monday.

Crop Value Totals:

We passed $600 already.

Cilantro is still in the lead with $172, but it is slowing down. Lettuce is already a close second with $159. Lettuce will win out next week for sure!

Wish List

-We need leaves, shredded yard trimmings, and hay for compost and mulch (no sticks, no herbicide)

-Work gloves for little people and children

-Landscape fabric for a future compost setup

-Financial donations can be made to St. Vincent de Paul Society (St. Joseph Food Pantry)

If you donate please mention the St. Mary’s Community garden in the comment section of the donation page.

We do not need any seedlings at this time. But we can help you find a home through our network of growers.