Thursday, June 12, 2014

Summer Garden Projects

Summer is the best time in the garden! Heat and sunshine make everything beautiful. On Friday students from Dave Martin's class joined our new Garden Coordinator, Sky Myers for a work party. Dave led a group of international students in the construction of a new bin for last year's maple leaves that were in one of the raised beds.
First, they took the fence apart and removed the netting. Beneath the surface, the leaves were already beginning to decompose. We worked some of the leaves into other beds and used some as mulch. Leaf mulch helps retain water as well as keeping the weeds down. The new bin was constructed entirely from recycled materials. It will allow us to turn the leaves regularly to expedite the decomposition process.
Meanwhile another group of students worked on clearing out an area where we will later build a trellis. Students also created a new small bed along the fence and planted some sunflower starts and cleared ivy from around the gingko and fig trees. Ivy is terribly invasive and requires continual maintenance to keep it at bay. 

After a break, Sky and a few of the students worked on the drip irrigation system. An afternoon of hard work in the garden left us with smiles on our faces and sense of accomplishment.

Garden Coordinator, Sky Myers is in the garden on Friday afternoons; stop by and say hello or pitch in for an hour. She always has projects going. Next up? Planting the raised bed that formerly held the leaves.
Can you believe these are onion flowers?!
P.S: It's almost time to harvest strawberries! Please come and check how great they are! If you find some red ones, you can taste them! Definitely better than what you buy in supermarket!

1 comment:

  1. Stopped by the garden on 7/10, blueberries are getting ripe, one of the buckets was flooding. Also I watered the goji berry plant because it was starting to wilt and looked like it had been missed, the sunflowers & raspberries, and some container tomatoes that were begging for water. The garden looks great everyone. You all have been doing a splendid job!

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