Sunday Morning Gardening

This morning we worked with a new bunch of young gardens. We brought out the smaller tools and planted a number of flowers including, black-eyed susan's, petunias and pansies. All the children got a chance to dig a hole and plant at least one flower. We were a little pressed for time because the kids sang some VBS songs and then we had to be back in church for communion. I believe the plant is to work in the garden about 1 Sunday a month and then in between we will keep the plants watered. The older gardening group will help with gardening tasks in between. We are all excited about this new garden and ministry!

Epworth Veggie Garden - Path Clean up

Over the past 6 years we have just been adding new wood chips on top of the old wood chips. Now we are see more and more weeds growing on the paths as the wood chips have broken down into more soil. Seems like it is a good time to remove the wood chips, put back down the weed fabric (which is still in good shape) and put in fresh wood chips. We will use the old partially composted chips in some of our composting operations.

Christian Assembly Garden

The plants are Christian Assembly Garden are looking good. We've got several folks who work on the garden during the week. Jim B. has worked during the day, tilling and fertilizing. Antonio comes and works almost every evening. The tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cabbage and cucumbers are looking great. Antonio has been "mounding" soil around the plants creating what is know as a camellon. He has a special tool called an azadones (sort of a short hoe with a curved blade) that he uses to remove the weeds and bring the soil up around the each plant. This technique bring the moist clay from down lower in the soil closer to the plants. You can really tell a different where this technique has been used in the garden.

Northwold Garden - Corn

The garden at Northwold is slowly coming along. Ever year it seems like we are able to plant in a larger area of the garden. One of the first crops were were able to plant this year was ornamental corn. The corn will be knee high by the 4th of July which is great. We'll see if we can keep the deer and raccoons away. I wish were were able to prepare more of the soil. Slowly, but surely we will be able to plant more on this lot.

Epworth Children's Garden

This evening we started on the area that will be the new Children's Garden at Epworth. The theme for this garden is "A place where kids can grow." Epworth's nursery group will use this garden on Sunday mornings planting flowers and veggies. The Lilly of the Valley plants will be removed along with some of the pavers. We will grow veggies in the area pictured above and flowers in the area around the corner.

Potato Farm - Pullin' Weeds

Since we've had a ton of rain the weeds are growing just as well as the plants. Today we went up to the "potato farm" to pull more weeds. Pulling weeds is hard work, but since we have so many weeds and the rows in some areas are close together it is a bit of a challenge today. We had about 13 folks pulling weeds which help. In some of the bare spots we planted some beans and of course we got to sample more of the smaller potatoes we uncovered.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Carrots and Lettuce

A quick check on some of the seeds planted a week or so ago. Looks like we have some carrots coming up as well as lettuce. I'll need to take some time to thin out the carrots soon. The lettuce I'll let grow as it is and probably just pull it out when it is ready and replant instead of cutting off the tops and letting the grow several times. If the temperature gets in the upper 80s or 90s the lettuce will become bitter.




















I also planted some lettuce in between the rows of tomatoes to utilize some of the empty garden space. We'll see how it works out when the tomatoes get a bit taller.