Kids Fun Day at the Garden!

Our 3rd annual Fall Social for kids at the Community Garden was a great success! Over 40 kids participated in mini-pumpkin decorating, a pumpkin rolling relay, a sunflower seed spitting contest and the hilarious corn-on-the-cob eating contest. The kids also enjoyed a free lunch of hotdogs, fresh fruit and lemonade. Several helped dig up potatoes in the children's bed and pick some cherry tomatoes. A few even tried to plant some pumpkin seeds from the relay pumpkins. It will be funny if one of the seeds germinates next year!

A big thank you to our volunteers (Dot, Gail and Craig) for helping keep things moving and FUN! Kids of all ages had a great time and we'll undoubtedly see many of them next spring for the garden's next fun day!

Community Fall Social for KIDS October 13th!

September Garden Work Day

 

What a great way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning - hanging out with friends in the Community Garden! Over the last month, the tomato plants grew SO much. We had our work cut out for us finding the paths between the beds through the tomato plants. With our fearless garden leader unable to work with a broken foot, the rest of us got the mowing, weeding and trimming completed in plenty of time for lunch.

While some plants didn't fare so well in the beds and community areas this summer, others popped up unexpectedly. A volunteer tomato plant grew up through one of the tables and a beautiful zinnia plant decided to grow in the middle of the mulch path (pictures above.) While pulling the remaining corn stalks we found a hidden watermelon just ripe enough for us to share at lunch. Serendipity!

Thanks to everyone who pitched in today, and we look forward to our final workday of the year next month. Speaking of October, we'll have our Fall Social for kids at the garden in two weeks!

August Work Day

We had sunny skies for our August Work Day this morning. We did a lot of weeding and building up the mulch around the perimeter of the garden beds. We also shredded about 10 bags of leaves and early summer plant remains for the compost bin. We'd like to thank Peter and Peggy Carson for letting us borrow their shredder for the summer. That makes such a difference!

After a morning of hard work in the heat we thoroughly enjoyed our potluck lunch. We were treated to a delicious Mexican dip, spinach and apple salad, pasta salad, potato salad, cheese and crackers, cookies and cherry pie. Most of us were ready for an afternoon nap after that!

Thank you to our gardeners (Sue, Julia, Gail, Ed, Linda and Dot) and our friend Angelique from the Robert-Superior Community Garden for all your work and camaraderie today!

July Garden Work Day

After cancelling June's work day due to 100+ temperatures, we enjoyed a modest break in the temperatures to spruce up our community garden. We're grateful that we have a water source that has helped with the almost non-existent rain and very high temperatures this summer. Sadly though the heat has taken its toll on several veggies.

We spent the morning weeding around the garden. Weeds apparently love the heat and don't mind the dry weather. We all noticed that ants have been crawling on vegetables that we haven't seen before. Apparently the drought has forced them to seek alternate water sources. Anybody know a good rain dance?

We ended a little early and enjoyed a salad-themed potluck. Thank you to everyone that braved the heat and here's hoping for a little rain and a "regular" summer for the next couple of months!!

3rd Annual Spring Children's Fun Day

We had perfect weather and a wonderful turnout of both kids and volunteers for our 3rd annual Spring Children's Fun Day. Thank you to EVERYONE who participated!! Kids decorated pots and planted flowers for Mom, and they also helped plant tomato and pepper plants in the Children's plots and 2nd food pantry plot. While we had them rolling their sleeves up and "digging in" they helped plant eggplant, pumpkins, watermelon and the first 2 rows of sweet corn in the freshly tilled communal area. Workers of all ages were treated to hotdogs, fruit, carrots, homemade cookies and lemonade.

We view the garden as a place to learn for many reasons. After giving the garden tour to several adults, two decided to try their hand at a plot. We look forward to cultivating new friendships!

Another learning experience came in the form of a personal apology: one of the neighborhood kids got caught pulling plants out. His mother sent him over to apologize while we were there. After he admitted what he and other kids had done, we gave him lunch and set him up to decorate a pot for his mother. We even asked him to look out for the garden to make sure no one else messed with it. He assured us that he would. It's good to know we have another new friend of the garden helping out!

We look forward to our fall social for the kids in October!

Our Garden is Growing - Expanding!

What a busy April work day at the garden! We are excited to announce that we have expanded the garden by 3 beds. This means that the two people on the waiting list don't have to wait any longer and we now have 24 full size beds. We got the three beds constructed and filled two with dirt and compost, we got the strawberry beds and potatoes covered in straw, and we tackled a ton of weeding. After a great work day we enjoyed a pot luck lunch and got out of the garden in plenty of time before the huge storms blew through.

The garden experienced a bit of vandalism a few weeks ago (kids had pulled out some of the young plants in several plots), so it was good to get everyone together pushing forward and renewing our sense of why we come there to begin with.

We are looking forward to the Kid's fun day in the garden the day before Mother's Day. We hope to educate more neighborhood kids about the importance of our community garden while giving them the opportunity to make a Mother's Day present!

Opening Garden Work Day for 2012!

Our opening garden work day was beautiful and sunny and the perfect setting to get us started this spring. Our wonderful group of volunteers met and tackled the following: weeded the orchard, weeded around the knock-out rose line, dug up all the strawberry plants to fill the beds with more dirt and replanted the strawberries just a little further apart, and filled several of the individual plots with more dirt necessary after a few years of settling.

This year we decided to change how we do lunch. Instead of one person bringing the lunch for the workday, we all brought a dish to share. We had a wonderful assortment and enjoyed each others' company after a morning of hard work.

Thank you to everyone who helped today and here's to a new season full of opportunity!