Christian Assembly Garden - Plowed

A big day today for our garden at Christian Assembly. The garden has finally been plowed!!!!!! I am so excited. We are working with about 14,000 square ft. They will make a few more passes going the opposite direction on Wednesday morning. The plan is to gather on Friday evening and get some plants in the ground. Christian Assembly has a large food pantry that serves 5 zip codes and feed over 200 households per month. What a blessing to be able to provide fresh veggies to folks in the community.

Northwold Garden - Cement Blocks

Thankful for Brandon and Christian's  help today with the garden at Northwold. We brought in 314 cement blocks for the raised beds. Every week this garden is getting better. Unloading all these cement blocks was tough work, but it will all be worth it when we see tomatoes, peppers and other plants growing. I hope to order some topsoil/compost for delivery later on this week. We'll round up a gardening crew for Saturday to fill the beds with soil and to bring over more wood chips for the paths. Slowly, but surely we are going to turn this lot into a garden.

Huffman's Harvest

Today was our first gardening trip up to Delaware to work with the potatoes. All the rain this spring has made a trip up north difficult until this weekend. We pulled weeds close to the potato plants and planted a few more plant. There are 16 rows of potatoes and we should have a decent harvest if the weather cooperated.

We appreciate the hospitality of Mrs. Huffman and look forward to working more out at the "potato farm".

Northwold Garden - Wood Chip

This evening we brought over another two truck loads of wood chips. I hope this will prevent any grass from growing and give a nice look to the garden when we put in the raised beds. I must say unloading wood chips is much easier than loading them.

Yellow, Carrots and Peanuts

Lots of gardening activities going on tonight at the garden at Buckeye Lake. First we brought over a bench from Columbus and Christian and Brandon spray painted the bench yellow. We'll probably need to all another coat or two, but it is a start.

Next, Penny and some of the kids prepared another raised bed and planted some carrots.

Finally, we planted some peanuts. Thanks to my dad for sending up some peanuts from Florida. I'm not sure if we will have a long enough garden season left for the peanuts to develop, but we're gonna try.

Northwold Garden - Corn and Wood Chips

The ornamental corn we planted a couple of weeks ago at Northwold has germinated. We've got 5 rows of corn popping up so now we just have to hope none of the critters damage our crop. Penny and I brought over a couple of truck loads of wood chips. We want to cover the group with cardboard and then with wood chips to make sure the grass doesn't grow back. There is still so much work to do at the Northwold Garden and it seems we are so far behind this year with all the rain. We will continue to work on Northwold and hopefully get the raised beds and other crops in soon.

Iris - Epworth Veggie Garden

The irises are now in full bloom. We have irises in two different areas up at Epworth. The irises above are along the daycare fence. A neighbor gave us irises a couple of year ago and last fall we divided the irises and replanted them along the daycare fence. The iris below were a gift from the McCoys.  They are in the main garden and after the plants bloom we will divide them and move them to another spot somewhere around the church.

Veggies - Epworth Veggie Garden

We finally got some veggies planted over at the Epworth Veggie Garden. It seems like it have rained and rained and rained and you get the picture. The ground was still a bit wet and muddy, but Penny and I planted 39 tomatoes, 24 zucchinis and 22 cucumbers. Can't wait to see what the future hold this season!

Another Seed Kit

I am really having fun with these little grow kits. Penny's mom gave us a sunflower kit. I finally got around to starting the seeds. The packet must have had about 15 or so seeds. In addition to putting some seeds in the pot with the kit I also added some of the seeds to some other containers where seeds have not germinated. When the seeds have their true leaves I'll move them out into one of the gardens.

Northwold Work Day

We worked all day today in the Northwold Garden. Gather the crew around 9AM and worked until about 5PM. We were able to remove the sod from about 4500 sq. feet. We are all tired, but it feels so good to have all that sod removed. Everyone did a great job and it was a real team effort!

One of the final tasks of the day was to plant some ornaments corn. We got in 5 rows and I'm hoping we will get some rain soon.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Tilling

Its be a few days since we've had significant rain and the soil is finally dry enough to till! Tilling has to be one of my favorite activities in the garden. The thought is to till and prep the garden this evening and get the kids together this weekend to plant. We feel so far behind this spring with all the rain. It has just been too wet previously to till much. The garden is really starting to look better - nice color and not many weeds.

Buckeye Lake - More Plants

We added more plants to the raised beds out at Buckeye Lake this evening. The kids did a great job pulling weeds and turning the soil. We planted broccoli, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Of course we had to do some watering as well. It feels good to have more plants in the ground and it appears the kids are begin to get back in the gardening groove.

Christian Assembly Garden

We had a meeting this evening at Christian Assembly to discuss how to adjust expenses with our grant money (Rye, Libby, Susannah and Jim pictured above). We asked for and budgeted $4000 for the garden at Christian Assembly. We are receiving $1200 in cash and $1000 in materials from Scott's Miracle Gro. Since we've struggled to get the garden prepared this spring because of all the rain we decided to cut back the size of the garden a little and try to get up and running as soon as possible. We'll begin to meet each Tuesday night from 6 to 8PM. Jim is joining the gardening group this year along with Antonio. Should be a great year!

Northwold Production Garden

Finally had a little bit of clear skies this afternoon, so I decided to cut the grass over at the Northwold Garden. Once again we are leasing this city lot. We'll need to build some raised beds for the edible veggies we grow. Took some measurements and it looks like we are going to build 4 raised beds - 6 ft. by 50ft with 3 ft wood chip paths in between the rows. We do have an area where we have removed the grass and tilled. We will probably grow some ornamental corn, pumpkins and possible some gourd in this area. While I was cutting the grass I noticed one of the neighbors was in a sticky situation. He has rented a bobcat and gotten it stuck in the mud. Roni and I lent him a hand along with one of the guys from MJ's next door. I'm hoping he will get done with the project at his house and come over and remove all the grass off the lot. Some how with the rain this afternoon, I'm doubting that will happen.

GCGC Meeting - May

Penny and I attending the GCGC meeting (Greater Columbus Growing Coalition) at Barley's Smokehouse. Patrick had a presentation on Franklinton Gardens. They are doing some great things in Franklinton and have several site. Check them out on Facebook, at their website - http://www.franklintongardens.org/ and vote for them in the Pepsi Refresh Project. http://www.refresheverything.com/search/?q=Franklinton They are in the running for $50,000. The top 10 project based on total number of votes (a popularity contest) will be awarded $50,000. Please vote every day in the month of May for this great project!

The keynote speaker was Shari Plimpton from the Center for Innovative Food Technology (CIFT). She talked about food safety. You hear in the news all the time about recalls from contaminated food. We learned about some of the most common ways food can be contaminated and ways to prevent contamination. Of course using raw manure is never a good idea. The manure should be composted and aged at least 120 days before vegetables are grown in the soil. Another issue that was brought up was contamination from rain barrels. The water typically comes off a roof where the water might come into contact with bird poop. When using a rain barrel drip irrigation is a preferred method so the water does not come into direct contact with the plant leaves. Once again a ton of good gardening information from the GCGC meeting. Next month the GCGC will meet at Florentine Restaurant on Thursday evening, June 2nd. http://www.florentinerestaurant.com/

Buckeye Lake - Onions and Potatoes

We have had so much rain over the past few weeks. The garden out at Buckeye Lake was too wet to do much work and there is mud all around. We did do a brief check on some of the boxes to see how the plants were doing. We planted two boxes with onions and two boxes with potatoes a couple of weeks ago. Looks like both the onions and potatoes are doing well. I'm just hoping we can do some major work in the garden soon. So many projects to do, but we need the weather to cooperate.

God's Gardeners

Tonight we had another meeting for God's Gardeners at Epworth United Methodist Church. We had a small crowd, but lots of great ideas. Libby brought up the idea of someone calling in to the radio station 610 on Saturday mornings to promote our group. We continue to reach out to other church gardens to invite them to join us. Our goal is 200 church gardens in the city of Columbus in 2012 (the 200th anniversary of the city of Columbus). We will have a gathering on Saturday, August 20th at Peggy's garden on the hilltop.

Tomato Seedlings

We've still got a few more weeks before we should plant tomatoes outside in the garden. Tonight I decided to take some of the older plants and transplant them into larger containers. I expected more roots, but the plants were not root bound. I figured in the new container I can plant the tomatoes deeper and they can develop roots from the stem. Just trying to keep as healthy as possible plants so when we do put these plants out in the garden they will be healthy and thrive. Not a bad life for the tomatoes so far under the grow lights and in the warm house.