Getting Ready for the Fall Season

Many workers make the job go quicker, with more laughs, and generate "best ways." The four garden beds were cleaned of dried up or harvested plants and made ready for the autumn season of growth. To winterize the area, more compost and organic fertilizer was amended into the ground (yeah! for composting). We did keep some of the herbs in the garden, like our basil, as they were still producing lovely additions.

The group of volunteers planted peas, potatoes, green onions, broccoli, carrots, and spinach. A joy to plant are the daffodils which will bloom in the springtime. We also planted more sunflowers. We have harvested the sunflowers from the summer, in anticipation of drying and then roasting those seeds. Yum!

The garden may look bare, especially with how abundant it looked earlier in the year, but just wait. We will once again produce food, treats, flowers, and other garden delights.

As always, we are looking for volunteers -- who get treated for their labors with produce from the garden. Call 409-832-1906 to be a garden volunteer.

Fall Garden Prep

As the summer comes to a close, we are looking forward to the fall season by making plans for our next planting. The garden has been a success with a plethora of okra, herbs, beans, sunflowers and wildflowers harvested. We even had a few cantaloupes, potatoes, tomatoes and are waiting for our eggplants to become ripe. We survived the summer heat and are anxiously awaiting some cooler temperatures.

Over the weekend we had our first tiny taste of fall and welcomed a bit of a cool front. It is getting us excited for the cooler temperatures ahead and we look forward to planting our fall garden. Last Wednesday, in preparation for the new garden, we had a work day to remove some of the plants that have stopped producing and made plans to improve our soil with compost. We started bright and early and were able to get a lot done before it got too hot.

We removed the beans, tomatoes, cantaloupe, squash and sunflowers-turned-trees. We are now drying the sunflowers and will roast the seeds in a few weeks. We are all looking forward to that! Yummy!

After we finished our work for the day, we made a list of veggies to grow in the fall. We are working on making our garden layout and will post our plans in a few days. On the list are pumpkins, potatoes and leeks to name a few. We look forward to having some delicious leek and potato soup in the cooler months!

Thank you to all our volunteers who have helped with the garden so far. It was been so rewarding and fun! We are always looking for more volunteers, so send an email or give us a call to see how you can help.

Stay tuned to see what else we’ll be planting!

Another Great Green Thumbs Program

May 7th

• Started off with reading Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert.

• Then off to check out how well the garden has grown since the Green Thumbers planted last April. We are getting more and more vegetation each day.




• Another trip to the compost pile where the children told us new things!




• The big highlight was the Nature Scavenger Hunt in the museum's block-big garden where the children found things they could touch, smell, hear, see, but not eat.




• The kids learned about the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The kids had ever-so many ideas on what they could do with a "mess" of stuff. Before long, the Green Thumbers made or thought of musical instruments out of the recycled items.

• Did you know: Plants need nutrients to be healthy, just like people do? There are three nutrients that all plants need in order to live:
  
  Nitrogen
  Phosphorus
  Potassium
  
  Nitrogen is needed for leaf growth and to have a good green color.
  
  Phosphorus is needed to form roots and to make seeds, fruit and flowers. It also helps plants fight disease.
  
  Potassium is needed to make strong stems and to also help fight disease.

Easy's Restaurant is on board

Our good neighbor to the west of us is joining us in our recycle efforts. Easy's Restaurant will support our community garden composting efforts. Glad you are on board! Stop in for some good food, too, at Easy's. We do.

Jason's Deli will help

We are blessed that Jason's Deli will contribute to our compost. Jason's will be a good community partner.

We now have a compost container!

Thanks to Felix, Jeronimo, and Roy, our compost container is finished! It is located on the east side of the COBuilding in the gated area. Attached is a list of items that are ok to compost. So start collecting in your homes and around town at area restaurants, too!

Contact us a ccuccio@mcfaddin-ward.org for more details.

Happy composting!!

Good things to add:

* Fruit and veggie scraps from your kitchen
* Coffee grounds (the filter is fine too!)
* Tea bags
* Grass clippings
* Ash from your barbeque pits and fireplaces
* Leaves


Things that can’t be added:

x Meats, fish or bones
x Dairy products