Week 3: 38th St. is Back in Action!
The rains held off this week so it was back to planting. We were able to get 46th St. completely finished. The list of what is planted there is: lettuce, spinach, kale, collards, swiss chard, onions, brussel sprouts, beets, okra, sweet corn, and strawberry popcorn. Our irrigation system is on and that saves us a ton of time by not having to water individually. Our swiss chard and lettuce are visible now but still very small. We were also able to gather and dry some of our herbs from our raised bed. Herbs are great since many of them come back year after year. Some however need to be kept in check as they like to take over other areas. (Looking at you mint!) Our strawberries are starting to grow fruit now, green little strawberries that will be ripening soon.
We were unable to get our second chicken coop and chickens this week as it was still muddy. Hopefully sometime tis week we will be able to begin work on this. On a happy note our garden at 38th got tilled! This was great for it needed to be broken up and extended from last year before we could plant anything. This also gave us an opportunity to use our smaller tiler to break it up even further. Facilities got a bit too eager and tilled our rhubarb, blackberry bush, and perennial herb patch which is saddening but we are thankful for the help they are always giving us. The wood chips that we made the pathways with are from them and they help me a ton.
We have started planting at this garden much differently then the other one. This garden has many watermelons and cantaloupes as this is what most people want and sells the best. We also have green beans and arugula planted as people really enjoy this as well. We have some tomato and pepper starts that we will continue to plant, some from the community gardens, others we started in a greenhouse. We brought back all of the starts from Tucker's greenhouse and will be planting these when they are a ready. I really enjoy this garden and hope it gets more visitors this year.
In other new we have started running the CSA for Victory Acres on IWU's campus. This is for those that have shares already but we will sometimes have stuff from our garden for you to get if you stop by.
Grace Miller is back from her trip to Guatemala and we are so happy for her back. If you see her ask her about the trip! Thank you all for reading and following us it means a lot to us here. Zach Arington Garden Manager
