Look for Google Group Email + We need harvest help this Wednesday, 6/1
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.
Look for the Google Group Email
Those who receive our updates and notices via email will start to receive emails directly from a new Google Group called St. Mary’s Garden Oak Ridge. Please check your spam folder and “un-spam” these messages so you do not miss our news.
Google Groups gives you complete control over how you receive message from St. Mary’s garden. You can unsubscribe at any time by scrolling to the bottom of the email.
If you get text messages from Jason, you will still receive those texts. Please let him know if you want him to remove you from text messages by replying directly to him.
I hope that you continue to enjoy the St. Mary’s news!
Next Work Days
Monday, 5/30 ~6pm, Memorial Day - weed management, corn planting, compost turning
Wednesday, 6/1 ~8:45AM (after mass) -weekly harvest and delivery to the food pantry, lettuce, kale, collard, cilantro, beets, turnips, carrots, radish
SPECIAL Monday, 5/30 ~930AM at the Isidore Maria Garden - planting winter squash and butternut. Please reach out directly to me for directions.
Work Day Reports
YES, RAIN! Our crops are loving this rain especially the tomatoes. It was too rainy to work this past Monday. We will most certainly have a lot of weeding to do this coming week.
Crop Value Estimates
This week lettuce takes a clear lead. We will have more lettuce to harvest next week. Collards and kale will soon dominate the harvest totals.
The value estimate is a rough “price” assigned to each item. For example, a large head of romaine lettuce is assigned $3 compared to a bunch of 5 beets at $3. The smaller items like a bunch of cilantro have a $2 value. We can use our harvest data pivot tables to evaluate the productivity of each crop based on each crop planted area.
We harvested about 13 bunches of collards this past Wednesday. I expect more will be ready for this coming Wednesday with all of the extra rain that we have had recently.
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.
