Buckeye Lake - More Painting

We were out at the garden at Buckeye Lake this afternoon to do a little painting. I feel we are a bit behind with this garden. This is our 3rd location in 3 years, but its ok because the ministries at Water's Edge are really growing. We dug out the boxes and spray paint and got to work. Penny worked with one group while Brandon and I made a couple of runs to Lowe's for some topsoil and compost.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Painting Rocks

We decided it was time to add some color to the garden. The Sunday evening group has a blast spray painting rocks different colors. Each kid had a color and picked a word. We ended up with the following words: peace, faith, love, Jesus and health. See if you can find them in the pictures below.

Epworth Veggie Garden

We harvested lettuce and strawberries tonight out at the Epworth Veggie Garden. Most of the work at Epworth Veggie Garden is maintenance. We have a few more things we'd like to plant (mostly flowers and a few veggies), but mostly we are watering and pulling weeds.

Northwold Garden

Another big Saturday work day out at the Northwold lot. We rented the sod cutter one more time and finally finished cutting all the grass off the garden area. The sod cutter worked great this time - no trouble starting, cut fairly well and on and off the truck without much effort. We didn't have time to get all the cut grass off the garden area. We'll work on that again next week. We spread some leaf compost in the front part of the garden area. We did an initial till and then a second till to mix the leaf compost in as well. We haven't dug very deep with the tiller at this point. The clay underneath is hard and full of rocks. This garden will take a few years to get the soil in garden shape, but you have to start some where. We also measure the garden area we will be working with - 85ft by 50ft - 4250 sq. feet.  This is by far the largest planting area of all our gardens. Its exciting though to see plants in the ground after leasing this property for 3 years. We planted a number of rows of tomatoes, a few pepper plants and some cucumbers. Next Saturday we hope to  plant zucchini, yellow squash, beans, pumpkins and corn.

Christian Assembly Garden

Tonight was our first workday out at the Christian Assembly Garden. We had several folks that leveled the topsoil added by Kurtz Brothers and then we did an initial run through the entire garden with the tiller. The clay underneath the topsoil that was brought in is still very hard and will take quite a bit of amending to become a decent soil for gardening. Like most of our gardens, this is a work in progress but I've very excited we have officially "broken ground". Next Thursday, we hope to add some additional leaf compost from Kurtz Brothers, till a little bit more, put up a garden fence and start planting veggies.

Buckeye Lake - Painting

Our big accomplishment for tonight was painting the picnic table. Blue seemed like the perfect color for a garden at Buckeye Lake. All the kids wanted to paint some and as you can image it was a bit chaotic. I think most everyone went home with a little blue paint on them, but the results looks great. We also took some time to prime some of the boxes for the raised beds. Chance are (if the weather cooperates) we'll paint the raised beds next week. It's exciting to see color in the new garden area.

Maple Grove Garden - Summer Plants

We got the majority of the summer veggies planted at the Maple Grove Garden tonight. Above, you can see cucumbers that went in one of the raised beds against the white wall. We also planted tomatoes, peppers and squash. It seems as though we're getting a little bit of a late start, but the last couple of weeks we've had lots of rain. The harvest continues to be good - lots of lettuce and spinach.

Northwold Garden

Spent some time working on the Northwold garden tonight. We removed more grass and added some of the leaf compost. On Sat. we hope to have the sod cutter and 2 tillers working in the garden. We need more leaf compost from  Kurtz Brothers. Hopefully after removing all the sod and tilling in some compost we'll be ready to plant! Can't wait until we have veggies growing in the ground at this location. Its been quite a project.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Stepping Stones

Tonight, we made stepping stones with a number of the children and youth. We had a number of different jewels, rocks and shells left over along with the molds. A trip to Joanne Crafts for more cement mix, nice weather and a little water and we were in the stepping stone business. The kids did a great job and we hope to add a few of the stepping stones to the garden.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Harvest

We harvested a bit of broccoli and some lettuce this evening. This is our first harvest of the season from Epworth Veggie Garden. The broccoli seems like it was just planted a couple of weeks ago. We had more lettuce that could be harvested, but we've had almost a full week of rain and parts of the garden still had standing water.

Christian Assembly Garden

The garden area at Christian Assembly has been tilled and topsoil has been added. The next step will be to spread the topsoil a bit and then till. We hope to work on the garden next Thurs. May 27th and perhaps plant veggies the following Thurs.

Northwold - The Grass Must Go

We got serious about removing the grass today at the Northwold garden. We've been trying for several months to get someone with a tractor or bobcat to help us plow. Today we decided that we'd go back to the city method of a sod cutter to remove the grass followed by a tiller to dig down and loosen the soil. Using a sod cutter is hard physical labor. We had trouble starting the sod cutter, keeping the sod cutter running and working in areas where the grass was patchy or the ground was not level. We did make good progress today. The hope in next Sat. we can begin to plant some tomatoes in this city lot.

Epworth Veggie Garden

We finally planted the tomatoes, cucumbers,  squash and peppers this evening. We've been waiting for the evening temperatures to stay warm enough for the summer veggies to be planted. This year we put in a few "beefsteak" type tomatoes and we're trying to focus on just a few basic types of veggies instead of different varieties of veggies that might not be as common.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Giveaway

Inspired by our church monthly giveaway, we have decided to join in with our own mini garden giveaway. Each month at Epworth there is the big giveaway. Everyone is encouraged to bring in their extra stuff such as  clothes, household items, etc. Then the community is encouraged to come by and pick up anything they might need - all for free. There is always such a crowd and items disappear fast. So the garden group decided this would be an excellent way to share some of the extra stuff that we have as well - seeds, plants, etc. Most of the seeds were given away. We'll try to get the rest of the seeds down to South Ohio where they can be used by many families. We also designated our larger cement block garden as the giveaway garden (for now). Planted in this mini garden are volunteer tomato plants and chives. A few folks stopped by the garden after the giveaway to pick up tomato plants and chives.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Strawberries

The strawberries are getting closer and closer to being ready. A number of green strawberries are visible along wth blooms. We're all waiting patiently for the first ripe strawberry. In the mean time we are preparing to for our strawberry harvest. Several church members have been saving their plastic containers for us and within the next few weeks we should have plenty of strawberries to share.

Tomatoes

I'm always amazed at the plants that seem to grow almost anywhere. Cherry tomato plants  seem to pop up year and year without fail in the garden and often on other places around the church. I discovered  this tomato plant growing right in the sidewalk on  the south entrance of the church (the garden is on the northeast side). I'm not sure how long this plant will last before someone pulls it up or sprays it with Round-up. Back in the garden we are seeing a number of different plants sprout up including cosmos, thistles and more tomatoes. We'll  try to transplant many of the volunteer tomatoes and give them away.

Seeds

We still have quite a few seed trays waiting for warmer weather. For about a week the seedlings have been outside all day and night to be harden off a bit. The weather tonight is dropping down into the low 30's, so I've brought all of the warmer weather seedlings inside for a couple of days: squash, tomatoes, peppers, etc. I did leave the pansies and lettuce out. I'm really not sure why I haven't planted these plants in the garden yet.  The other plants I've been interested in are the Porterhouse tomatoes. I've been babying these plants a bit in hopes for a large slicing tomato later on this season. According to the advertisements from Burpee's these tomatoes can reach between 2 to 4 lbs. We'll see how it turns out.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Iris

The irises have finially bloomed at the Epworth Veggie Garden. We've got 2 different types of iris in the garden. The ones in the picture above are Dutch Iris and were given to the garden group by the McCoys. The iris in the picture below were given to the garden group by one of the neighbors. Thi fall we need to take some time and divide the iris so they will continue to grow for years to come.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Onions

Planted onions today at the Epworth Veggie Garden. There were 3  different types of onions - red,white and yellow. We decided to plant the onions in smaller of the cement block planters. I would have liked to planted the onions a little earlier in the season, but better late than never. 

Buckeye Lake - Fence

The fence is up at Buckeye Lake. Allen did a great job putting up this fence. We had a variety of help through out the evening.  Some of us got into a little poison ivy over the past couple of weeks. We can now move onto the next project. I'm thinking sunflowers would look great against the fence.

Maple Grove

Veggies are looking good over at the Maple Grove Garden. We have lots of  good help with watering and other garden tasks. Tonight, we harvested chives, swiss chard, spinach and lettuce. The rain barrel fills up now after a good rain and makes watering so much easier. 

 

Ascension Lutheran - Helping Hands Garden

Veggies are growing well over at the Helping Hands Garden at Ascension Lutheran Church. The strawberries have lots of blooms and even some green strawberries. It won't be too much longer before the strawberries will be ready. Lettuce has been planted in the wading pools and is being thinned and replanted. Some other veggies and herbs have popped up as well including oregano, dill and a few tomatoes.

Rethink Poverty

Today at Epworth we were blessed to be a worksite for a Rethink Poverty Event. The Council on Bishops for the United Methodist Church is holding a meeting next week in Columbus. Bishop Jane Middleton led a workshop on "Poverty and the Environment". During the workshop we filled out a questionaire to find our  "footprint." We had wonderful snacks prepared by the Epworth Women. The afternoon was wrapped up by a hands on  time where we transplanted seeds and started a few new ones. I love the red tshirts  - Rethink Church.