Update: Week of August 30th

The garden is producing pounds and pounds of veggies! Everyone should feel free to pick some tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, or onions to bring home. Peas and broccoli are starting to grow in beds 4 ands 5. Try to weed around them and keep them growing.

Hopefully, the cafeteria will soon be serving garden vegetables at school lunches. However, the cooler is no longer in the hallway by the greenhouse, so please don't harvest anything you plan to store there.

Note: A lawn-mower mishap broke one of the hoses, so for now, there's a new system for anyone who wants to water the garden. First, grab the usual loop of hose from inside the greenhouse and unravel it as far as it goes. To your right when you walk into the greenhouse from outside, there's a spool of hose on wheels (the spool is grey and the hose dark green). Roll the spool outside, hook it to the first hose, and unravel the spool to hook the dark green hose to the hose by the garden. Then turn on the spigot in the greenhouse and proceed as usual.

Update: Week of July 5th

Below is the task list for this week. Make sure to read about watering under step 5. But first, some important info in available vegetables:

There's lots of romaine lettuce in beds 1 and 2 that can be picked (by the leaf, not by the whole plant!!) and taken for salads, and today I saw about 5 or 6 ripe cucumbers, so come check it out and take some fresh vegetables. The spinach is pretty much done, but anyone who wants to take whole plants or leaves, feel free.

Important: Please document any and all vegetables you take from the garden and where you picked it/them. We will be getting a scale soon, at which time you should weigh and document anything you pick, but for now just write down what you picked, how much, and from what bed. Vegetables to be donated go inside the school, in the cooler just inside the inner greenhouse door (which is open on weekdays).

TASKS: Week of July 5th:

1) Hoe/Dig up large weeds from garden and bed edges. Strew more hay where necessary.

2) Weed the 6 raised beds (priority: beds 3&6 and row P6 (cucumbers) and anywhere there is bindweed)

3) Hoe/weed potatoes and potato isles. Then rototill and hill (Patrick will do that last bit)

4) Hoe/dig up row P5 (the failed beans)

5) Water, water, water!!!!

-Slight change! To turn on the drip system, just attach the hose end directly to the end of the black tubing. We're no longer using the green module. Then turn the spigot handle half-way (45 degrees). This seems to work nicely. For watering the potatoes or particularly dry spots, just detach the hose and attach the regular hose nozzle (which is stored in the greenhouse) and turn the water on all the way.

Tasks: Week of June 21st

• Water on dry days. See the "Watering the Garden" page to the right for details.
• Weed flower beds X and Y, rows P5 and P6, and the row of tomatoes and peppers in Otto's section.
• Weed additional raised beds as needed.
• Mow/Weed wack around the garden edges.
• Pull up weeds from bed and row edges.
• Rototill/ rake potato isles and hill potatoes.

Questions? greengreylock@gmail.com.

Scroll down for photos!!

Spinach!

On June 16th, we picked and donated to the Greylock cafeteria 4.8 pounds of fresh spinach leaves! This was our first donation of food from the garden.

Judy Richardson used half to make a delicious spinach quiche and the other half to put out as loose leaf spinach for salads. The photos are below.

"Where Are We?" Day

Many thanks to all who helped out on the Williams Center-organized "Where Are We?" Day in the Garden workshop. We had fun and got a lot done! We installed a new drip irrigation system, planted the two garden flower beds with zinnias, amaranth, and cosmos, did some weeding and haying, and tested the soil in certain beds. I posted some photos below. Mr. Payne and his son Finn even stopped by to help pick rocks!

Tasks: Week of May 31st

Garden Tasks for the week of May 31st:

(To be performed by Patrick, Katherine, and Y.E.S., as well as any volunteers who stop by)

1. Weed everything (but primarily the 6 raised beds)

2. Spread mulch hay around the tomatoes and peppers

3. Water everything (especially on rain-free days)

4. Rake the isles in between potato rows free of rocks so the rototiller can get through.

5. Start weeding the two flower beds in prep for the June 9th flower planting.

Garden Update

Thank you to all who attended the orientation meeting on Saturday!! We're hoping to hash out a more solid weekly summer schedule starting in mid-to-late June. To see what weeks are already taken, take a look at the calendar (link on the sidebar to the right)

Here's an update about what's planted in each row/bed and how it's doing. For a diagram of the garden layout, see the sidebar to the right. There you can also find a chart of all plantings (with dates and notes) thus far.

Bed 1:

A: Cucumbers (4 in one row). Growing nicely but need trellises!

B: Parris Island Romaine Lettuce (planted in 2 rows). About 1 inch tall currently, but healthy.

Bed 2:

A: Carrots (danvers 126, in two rows). They've all sprouted for the most part and are battling the weeds.

B: Freckles Romaine Lettuce (in two rows). A bit sparse, but the ones that have sprouted are quite healthy. About half an inch tall.

Bed 3:

A: Carrots (two rows). Hardly any have sprouted. Odd, as they were planted only one day later than the ones in bed two and with the same level of compost and watering.

B: Cherry Tomatoes (alternating red and yellow) from Gr. River Farms. Planted sideways and doing well.

Bed 4:

A: Spinach (Bloomsdale Long Standing, two rows). Spinach is up and thriving, largely due to the generous dose of compost added while planting and the Reemay sheets to keep off direct hot sun.

B: Heirloom Red Onion Set (two rows). Growing beautifully

Bed 5:

A: Spinach (Bloomsdale Long Standing, two rows). This spinach was planted one day before bed 4 and without compost. The leaves are noticeably smaller and thinner, and the plants are more sparse.

B: Heirloom White Onion Set (two rows). Growing beautifully.

Bed 6:

A: Cherry tomatoes (alternating red and yellow, one row). Donated fr. Green River Farms. Planted sideways. Doing well

B: Green Revolution Bell Peppers (one row). Doing well. Loving the heat.

Excess cherry tomatoes and peppers were planted along the North side of Otto Wied's subsection of the garden.

Row P1: Purple Majesty potatoes. Planted a few days before the rest and growing like crazy, far faster than the other potatoes. More weeds by far in this row than the others as well. Planted in the trench of a small hill.

Row P2: Adirondack Red Potatoes. Planted to the right side of a mound-row of soil. About a foot apart. The plants are starting to pop up. Some are a few inches tall, some have just come up.

Row P3: Green Mountain Potatoes. Planted in the trench of a small hill. Results largely the same as p2.

Row P4: Mixed Potatoes. The remaining GM and AR potatoes. Results largely the same.

Row P5: Blue Lake Bush Beans. The crows ate the first round of beans, so we replanted and covered with Reemay to ensure a smooth germination. We'll see what happens.

Row P6: Four "Cucumber Volcanoes." Mounds of soil with large basins in the top. Two cucumber plants are planted on opposite "slopes" and water is poured in the basin to irrigate the plant.

BACK HALF: Buckwheat. Just starting to sprout.