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NEW SIGNAGE, new map, new . . . tenant?

9/8/2014

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ONE NEW BIG THING: We have two paying customers – Tesoro’s Café on upper Union Street and Moon & River in the Stockade. They each want to buy weekly from us. Tesoro’s needs a Thursday delivery; M & R has more flexibility. It’s great to have customers as well as opportunities to donate produce – we sold to both cafes last week and still donated about 40 pounds of produce to the City Mission. The income is a big help, since I have covered all the incidental costs and Rennie has sucked up the cost of gas for the tractor all year. We had $150 in donated supplies from Home Depot in the spring, plus lots of seed donations. We need to buy seed for winter cover crops, supplies to start seeds earlier indoors, and could use money for other things that come up. Two hoses sprang leaks last Friday and I used our new income to pay for some clamps to do the repair.
                                 

THE OTHER NEW (not so)BIG THING – I grabbed Charlotte’s idea for making it easy to prioritize the watering and know what’s planted where. Beds or rows that need more water now are marked with white slats from venetian blinds, labelled WATER in blue.  Knowing where things are planted in the garden has not been easy, so I am attaching a map with areas outlined in blue that have seeds or young plants and need more attention. I am hoping  we’ll have greens thru most of the fall and into early winter. Since I can't put the map up on the website as a PDF (why? no clue) as an attached file at the bottom of this blog entry. Take s minute to open it - I think it makes things easier.

Sept 3 Wednesday evening’s group work time had a good turn out – Charlotte, Linda H, Philip, Rennie, and Karen did some weeding & harvesting, checked on some plants & mulled what to do about a couple of things.  NOTE: It is too early to harvest the winter squashes, even though they SEEM ready. In order to store well, they need more time on the vine to thicken their skins. Summer squash vines are still producing, despite the powdery mildew. The vines don't look so great, but the squashes are fine.

Friday afternoon, Sept 5th, we had 6 students from Union College – IN THE HEAT  ! ! ! We mostly harvested and did some weeding, but not the big weeding project I was hoping for – it was just too hot to get that much done. But they were good pickers and it was a nice afternoon. Thanks to the UC people who braved the heat to join us for the day! We hope you’ll come back again!

A NEW TENANT?  Twice, when I got the key for the water out of the lock box, I jiggled it, and A MOUSE POPPED OUT !! There are good sized holes in the bottom of the box for her to crawl in and get out of the weather. It would be good if someone could clean up the mouse turds and plug those holes. Just sayin’.

THINGS YOU CAN DO

WATER – We didn’t get the promised drenching last Saturday and there is little rain forecast
          for the next 10 days – please water and let me know so I don’t feel like I HAVE to go do it.

WINTER SQUASH BED - arrange to work with Charlotte to get diseased leaves out  
WEED
COFFEE GRINDS & EGGSHELLS - Save them for the mulch/compost pile
CHIVE BED – needs weeding badly – SOO neglected ! ! And we DO want those chives to come
     back up next year. Start at the end near the individual plots and work down the row. If a
     lot of people do some regularly, it will make a big difference.

JUMPIN JACK'S PICKUP - Stop by at the back of the kitchen, pick up a bag of cabbage leaves
     and onion skins and bring them up to the mulch pile

WATER        WEED        WATER        WEED        WATER        WEED        WATER        WEED   . . . . .


WE WILL HAVE AN INFO TABLE AT AGUDAT ACHIM'S CARROT FESTIVAL THIS COMING SUNDAY. OTHER IDEAS FOR PLACES TO DISPLAY INFO ABOUT WHAT WE DO?
              
 
Cathy   

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR THE GARDEN MAP

map_sept_2014.docx
File Size: 74 kb
File Type: docx
Download File

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