Garden Update

We made our first produce sell from the Garden of Happiness- two bags of “greens” and a bag of micro mustard greens totally about $4! Hardly a dent on the water bill, but it is a start. Next week should be better! We have access to arugula while ours continues to grow and with this rain the kale, chard, and spinach should be ready to go.

Update on Berto’s and Alice’s gardens. (from Jaime)

Hopefully we have some seedlings going at the Dept of juvenile Corrections. Tami definitely has some as well, or we can plant from seed, but it is going to limit what we plant.  At Berto’s we have a few potato tires planted, and the bathtub full of prepared soil. We put some iris bulbs in the ground around the tub.  We have a piece of fencing half buried and erect to use as a trellis.  We would like to add one or two more raised beds with the wattles.  The earth below where the wattles will go has been dug down into and loosened up so we just need the wattles and probably some fill.  We have some manure and compost that we can amend it with.  Potentially we can take the fill from another part of the property but I am not entirely certain. The wattle beds will be oblong and I really don’t have dimensions but this 1-2m wide at most, preferably about a foot up off the ground – just that much should make things easier for Berto. We don’t have irrigation installed- we need more supplies in order for that to happen.

At Alice’s we wanted to start with a keyhole garden bed at ground level in the mid-back of her yard, and a more visible raised bed along the north side and part of the front of her yard.  Along that side of her yard there is a chain link fence, and the water line runs from the street to her house through there.  Now, technically, if we were careful of our depth we could dig down to plant there, but I have no faith that the line is at proper depth, and our wonderful volunteers have been known to dig over vigorously.  I don’t want to touch it except maybe to just use a claw or something to break up the surface.  Options for raising that side would be to use wattles, pavers of some sort, or to build boxes.  I have never built boxes for planting before but I can get dimensional lumber usually, I have some screws and nails, Nicholas has awesome power tools, I have a skillsaw and a totally weak drill, 3-4 hammers, etc.  Wattles still might be our best bet though. Digging the keyhole shape garden will take all of about 15 minutes for these kids so we will need to plan more than just that.  The boxes are a bigger project but with more potential for learning.

We are collecting donated, burlap bags from Cartel Coffee, which can be cut and sewn together and stuffed to make wattles.  I know burlap is cheap but I want these kids to start thinking about what resources are available to them absolutely free and this is a good example.

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