Seeds, mulch, and a well, oh my!

Gwen gets a closer look at some escarole seeds as Rebekah shows her where to plant them

Caroline and Stephanie worked on the herb spiral while the kids (Luca, Elijah, and Gwen) had fun playing in the dirt!

This past Sunday we planted some more seeds, got our herb spiral planted, built some bean teepees, moved some mulch, and got the well up and running!

We stopped working around 2pm and had a little rest before our evening "Mexican Potluck" meeting.  There was so much good food and camaraderie!  Following dinner was a productive, successful, consensus based meeting that, although it lasted a while, I think everyone felt good about.  As folks departed for the evening they were sent home with our first harvest - sunflower sprouts!  (courtesy of the Muolos)
I will post notes from the meeting soon!

More plants in the ground!

Meli and Steven stopped by tonight with the cucumbers they started from seed and we did a little impromptu garden work.

We dug out and sifted some landscape rocks (thanks to previous homeowners I guess!).

We got cucumbers and lettuce transplanted in various areas of the garden, planted some borage and marigolds, and replaced a couple of tomatoes that didn't make it.

Yay for lovely little plants!

Plants in the ground, plants in the ground, acting like a fool cuz the plants are in the ground!!!

So, not everything is planted, but we got a lot accomplished yesterday. It was a LONG day! We started around 10am and finally stopped and got cleaned up around 6pm (with a break for a delicious potluck lunch around 2pm).

Jeremiah, Roger, and Adriano were the rainbarrel champs! They got our beautiful rainbarrels hooked up and ready to collect water (we even had a well timed, though brief shower to test them out!)

Andrea, Vickie, and Terry went to Vickie's house and got a large load of wonderful mulch! Caroline and I worked on moving the pathway near the fence and it was ready for the mulch when they returned from their trip. We also got lots of boxes from Jessica's and layed out some of our future paths in the garden.

After our delicious potluck lunch (Joe made spaghetti and vegan parmesan, we had a few types of hummus, some italian seasoned squash, popcorn, and lots of veggies and fruit), we worked on our planting beds.

We reused our old chainlink fence to construct a trellis for our tomatoes and nasturtiums. We also attached some of the fencing to the wood fence at the back of the garden for pumpkins, beans, and cucumbers to enjoy!

It was a happy day for everyone as we got tomatoes, nasturtiums, more peppers, corn and sunflowers planted in the ground.

It was a long and exhausting day but everyone enjoyed themselves :) We will do it again next Sunday!!!

Backyard Garden Co-Op

On August 22nd we broke ground on our backyard garden cooperative. About 15 people showed up, we removed sod and played in the dirt.

Since then we have formed a small community of people working together to grow our own food. We have hot peppers, eggplants, and pumpkins planted and lots of tomato seedlings ready to go in the ground. We also have two herb spirals - one will be for non-edible plants and the other for medicinal and culinary herbs. It's a very exciting endeavor but it's also keeping us quite busy.

Sunday we will be installing rain barrels and irrigation, putting up a privacy fence, and planting some more vegetables in the garden.

Eventually we plan to get chickens and bees too!