Wednesday, July 6, 2011

We haven't been in the garden for five days and everything has really grown! Carly came by twice over the long holiday weekend to water our baby parsley, feed the cat and tuck the tomatoes. She also ran the irrigation while she was here and that is really helping the plants to grow quickly. We need rain! Mitchell joined us today and will be working with us for the rest of the summer, so Jacob and Tamara taught him how to monitor the birdhouses. More baby bluebirds have hatched! Julia, Tamara and Carly spent the morning getting the dried basil out of the dehydrators, crushing the leaves and putting them into bags. They then moved on to harvesting more Dyer's Coreopsis flowers for drying and then dyeing. Edward, Jacob, Willie, Mitchell and I worked on potting up some willow saplings that were rooted in a bucket of water, watering patio plants and parsley, tucking tomatoes and weeding the herb circle. We had our first harvest of yellow summer squash and tomorrow we will make zucchini bread with it.                     -Celia

Looking Back

"Flowers are serenity" - Carly

"I love inch worms!" - Tamara

"I can't wait to make cheese!" - Julia

"Dishwashed!!" - Willie and Edward (who washed a sink full of dishes and then washed the sink too!)

"WE GOT OUR FIRST RED TOMATO!!" - Celia

Tamara & Julia strip dried basil leaves from the stalks

Carly found a tomato hornworm

Mitchell tucks the tomatoes back into their cages

Tamara harvests more Dyer's Coreopsis for drying

Tamara & Willie with the yellow squash



Thursday, June 30th, 2011

      Today we totally transformed the garden where the garlic was growing into a new space for parsley, cilantro and the next wave of cucumbers. After harvesting the garlic yesterday, we tilled the soil to mix in the leaf mulch and to kill the weeds that were growing. Then we re-formed the beds and planted parsley and cilantro seedlings and cucumber seeds. When one crop is harvested and another crop is planted in its place, it is called "succession planting" and it is one of the ways to maximize your garden's yield. Ideally, the crop to follow should be a different type of crop. For example, you could plant a leaf crop like lettuce followed by a root crop like carrots because different types of vegetables deplete the soil of different nutrients.
     A group of us were able to get the dried oregano into storage and then put the sweet basil that was drying on racks into the dehydrators. So far, we've really been able to keep up with herb harvest, drying and storage! We also started harvesting from the dye garden. Today we picked Dyer's Coreopsis flowers that will be used as a source of natural gold dye by our handwork teachers who teach our first graders to knit using the hand-dyed wool yarn.                        -Celia

Looking Back:

"I had lots of fun. I heard noises that were scary and Tamara and Carly said it was a ghost. I love picking flowers and watering the strawberries. I caught a fly named Fred and helped him out." - Trinity

"Where's the rain?" - Julia

"The sun gets brighter every day" - Carly

"Willie is a lover, not a fighter" - Edward

"Who ate the chips?" (Willie did) - Karen

"A broken hose turned into a slip 'n slide" - Willie

"We are still in search of the great organic, all-powerful, non-chemical pesticide!" - Colin

"Water fight!!" - Tamara

"My favorite memories of the day were seeing Willie gleefully running through a spurting leak in the irrigation and seeing Tamara and Trinity walking around arm-in-arm" - Celia

Carly harvests Dyer's Coreopsis

Trinity with her pet fly, Fred


Carley, Karen and Tamara harvest all the flowers for dye

Stripping the dried oregano off the stems

Willie uses his shoe to measure one foot between parsley plants!

Working to transform the garlic beds into a new garden with cucumbers, cilantro and parsley.
Notice how we worked around some beautiful volunteer sunflowers instead of pulling them out.

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

We started the day by checking the bird houses to make sure that the house sparrows and starlings weren't moving in. These two species of birds are not native to the United States and are responsible for taking nesting spots from our beneficial native birds. We were happy to see the nests of wrens, bluebirds and tree swallows. The bird box that Tamara built this spring was full of baby bluebirds almost ready to fledge! One box had a little mouse that didn't run away when we opened the box, so we let him stay.
      Today we also harvested the garlic. Garlic is harvested when it still has 5 green leaves. Each green leaf will become a paper "wrapper" that will protect the garlic while in storage. The aroma of it as we harvested made us all hungry for some good, garlicky food. It was layed out to dry for a few weeks.
      Other accomplishments for the day were; weeding the pumpkin patch, tilling the old galic beds, storing the dried Holy Basil, putting the oregano into the dehydrator to finish drying it and weeding the vegetable garden. At the end we all sampled some goat cheese and decided that we are going to do some cheese making this summer.                       -Celia

Looking Back:

"Sunscreen is your best friend" - Megan

"I love gardening because you get to eat stuff and smell stuff and there's lots of beetles and flowers that you can smell. I love sunflowers. It was really fun today. We got to pick garlic" - Trinity

"Allergies + beetles = a no-no" - Tamara

"Oregano wakes you up!" - Willie

"Sunburn is painful. Quite so" - Carly

"Carly and I would love to continue weeding tomorrow!" - Julia

"Meet me in the pumpkin patch Charlie Brown" - Karen

"The oregano is almost dry" - Colin

"I love you guys!!" - Celia

Megan, our new bird prodigy, ispects one of our 17 birdhouses


Tamara working hard


Willie, Carly and Julia weeding the veggies

A little mouse living in one of the bird houses

The garlic harvest!!

Edward and Jacob bringing up the garlic