After the rains cleared and the sun came out, I met a kind and gentle woman who had called about some swiss chard to be harvested from her plot at the local community garden! We snipped and chatted for over an hour and finished with great stories and 2 bins of colorful and organic swiss chard!
Thanks again Gayle!
We harvested 240 pounds of spinach, radishes, and spring mix in 2 warm summer evenings! Thanks to the Castoldi Family who graciously let us come out and glean 2 nights in a row and a huge thanks to the volunteers that helped!
Yakima had our first 2012 field glean this morning! It was small but mighty: we harvested ~35 pounds of rhubarb from the Yakima Area Arboretum and dropped it off 10 minutes later to the Yakima Food Bank just as they opened their doors to clients.
We will be partnering with Davis High School’s Gardening Club in Yakima to manage the Arboretum’s raised bed garden this year (featured above). The produce grown at the Arboretum in 2012 will go to Rod’s House, a drop-in center for homeless teens in Yakima. Check out the great work Rod’s House is doing here: http://www.rodshouse.org/
The Thurston County Food Bank received an incredibly generous donation from Grower’s Gold this month: a whole pallet of potting soil, starter pots, and tomato and basil seeds! We put these ingredients to good use, and utilized our wide South-facing windowsills to catch as much Springtime sunshine as possible. Bit by bit they are poking out, growing, reaching, and will soon be ready to hand out to food bank clients. Getting gardeners started and feeling excited about growing food at home!
Thank you Home Depot of Omak, WA, for the following contributions:
- Donating materials for 10 raised bed gardens to distribute to low income families in Okanogan County.
- Assembling the aforementioned beds.
- and donating a $1,400.00 Gift card to pay for additional needs associated with the Square Foot Garden Outreach Project.
Because of your support, ten low-income families will gain experience gardening, and hopefully continue to do so the rest of their lives. OCCAC is trying to make these experiences positive, so as to encourage continued growth, but without the assistance of the community, there is no community action.
Thank you Home Depot, for making this project possible.
P.S.
Yesterday, two people came to the gate while Kyle was working in the garden, and walked away with packets of seeds. If you, or someone you know would like to experience this phenomenon, try stopping by the garden during the week. If you see the gate open, chances are somebody would love to talk with you about what’s happening in your garden this season.
Food For All Garden May ‘8th 2012:
The photos above are our Hay Bale Experiments. The idea is to plant directly in the Hay Bale, and see if it is possible to grow while the bale decomposes. If you look at the second picture, you can see the White Clover seeds that were sown to fix nitrogen in the bales, as well as some fungi that were dormant in the bale, and came up when we started to water.
The process is exciting, and i with a little more time, and a bit of compost, we hope these bales will be ready for vegetables.
SPEAKING OF COMPOST!
Kyle built these bins yesterday out of pallets and scrap wood, and now OCCAC has a tumbler and an on-site bin; this is exciting because that means we can begin to compost our own waste here at the food bank. Compost is so vital, and recent surveys indicate that people are not doing so because it is smelly.
SOLUTION:
Layer that compost up with brown materials and green materials so oxygen can get to everything. Probably the worst composting practice in the world is that primordial soupy, anaerobic mess that was forgotten about at the bottom of the trash bin, and smelled so awful somebody vowed never to compost again. —-Please try again, and if you haven’t tried yet, please try. Compost is amazing. If you want to talk decomposition, and you can chat with Kyle about worms.
Square Foot Gardening:
An introductory method of growing intense amounts of vegetables in a raised bed.
How much can you grow in 16 sq ft?
Have a good day.
Community Foodshare is a new program at the Duvall and Carnation Farmers Markets which encourages shoppers to buy a little extra and donate it. Contributions benefit our friends and neighbors who rely on food banks for healthy groceries. The first week of the season has just completed and already Community Foodshare is a great success. Between the two markets, 73 pounds food was donated and shared among three food banks!
The farmers have responded positively, they like the efforts to encourage shoppers to make an extra purchase. The shoppers like it too, they know that food from the farmers market is healthful and wholesome and they want to share that with others who may have difficulty affording it otherwise. This fresh food drive is a great way to support communities, food bank clients and farmers alike.
Community Foodshare will hopefully draw new shoppers to the market as well. The Snoqualmie Valley is an incredibly giving community and I believe that residents will want to come down and participate in the fresh food drive.
My little hatchback was full yesterday with 18 apple mint and 33 raspberry plants, donated to Northwest Harvest by one of the Master Gardeners of Yakima County from her garden. The raspberries will be sent to a new 2-acre food bank garden in West Valley, and the apple mint plants will be distributed next week along with the leftover vegetables from the Master Gardener Annual Plant Sale. Amazed again at the abundance of our community and the generosity of our partners!
Starbucks volunteers helping prepare and plant the food bank garden at the WWU Community Garden! In just a few hours we laid newspaper and straw along pathways(to help with weed control) and planted the whole 20’ X 50’ space! Come June we will be harvesting radishes, spinach, cabbage, beets carrots, canteloupe, zuchini, beans, cucumbers and more, oh my!
A HUGE thank you to Nina for generously donating 59 pounds of rhubarb to the local food banks!
