More Lettuce; Isidore and Maria Update; Bioreactor Wish List
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, 5/23 at 6PM
Wednesday, 5/25 ~845AM (after mass)
We will start routines for Saturday harvest when the summer crops come in a few more weeks.
Last Monday work day:
Volunteers and Master Gardeners planted a zinnia bed and sunflowers. We did a lot of weeding. Children picked peas. It got hot, so we did a lot of resting as the sun went down. Thank you, Lord, for all of the helpers.
The garden is looking a little dry on Friday, 5/20. Irrigation is down for an unknown reason this morning, but I have been told that it’s working again now.
Next work day:
We will weed the southern side of the garden outside the fence.
We will continue hoeing and weeding main beds.
It might be time to add some tomato trellis lines.
We will do a second corn planting.
We may need to re-seed the cucumbers and squash that have not emerged.
If the peas are done, then we’ll be ready to plan more beans in their place.
Our teenage volunteers planted this first planting of pole beans. The beans have started to emerge!
Harvest Totals:
We had a $200 harvest on Wednesday! We had a record 47 heads of lettuce that we delivered to the pantry and to friends and staff at St. Mary’s. Next week we should have another good harvest. We also delivered greens, beets, turnips, and cilantro. Thanks to Walter and Deacon Gary for helping out.
Value estimates are based on these “prices”: Greens, lettuce, beets $3 and cilantro $2. This chart only shows the last two weeks of harvest and the year-to-date total.
Four beautiful bunches of beets.
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
-We are trying to build more than one Johnson-Su Bioreactor (an interesting composting method). We are looking for the supplies listed on their site: How To Build Your Own Bioreactor
Here’s the list of bioreactor supplies. I am sure that we can find most of these locally.
These supplies are for one reactor. We hope to make multiple reactors.
Landscape cloth (woven, minimum 5 oz.): Piece One: 13’ x 6’, Piece Two: 6’ x 6’, Piece Three: 6’ x 6’
One standard, sturdy shipping pallet with dimensions of approximately 40” x 48”
Wire re-mesh (6” x 6” x 10-gauge wire), used to create a 5’ x 12’ 6” supporting wire cage. This type of remesh is normally used for reinforcing concrete. Be sure to use re-mesh as horse fencing or other similar wire fence products have insufficient vertical strength to hold the cage in position as you fill it.
Four 10’ lengths of perforated, bell-end, 4” septic system drain field piping
Tie wire (normally used to tie rebar together)
-If you wish to make a financial donation please mention the St. Mary’s Community garden in the comment section of the donation page at St. Vincent de Paul Society (St. Joseph Food Pantry) .
We do not need any seedlings at this time. But we can help you find a home through our network of growers.
Update for the Isidore and Maria Garden on Dutch Valley Road:
We’ve tilled, covered, and installed irrigation. It was hard work! We plan to grow long season winter squash and sweet potatoes in this space donated by Alice Lay. If we can provide winter storage crops, then we can feed our neighbors longer into the winter. We plan to plant butternut squash varieties and sweet potato slips by the first week of June for a September/October harvest.
Friday, 5/13, Tom Thornton using his John Deere garden tractor to knock down the weeds.
Tom is nearly finished with the job.
Kathy Hackworth, Walter Dykas, and Jason Schmidt spread ground cover and installed irrigation lines on Tuesday, 5/17 before the weeds could grow back.
