Vermiculture and Milkshakes

This week was the first week of several things that we have planted being ready for harvest. While this is wonderful and what we have set out to do this can become too much of a good thing. Take our strawberries for example. Right now we are getting 25 lbs. give or take every other day! What are we to do with this abundance when they will go bad very VERY quickly after we pick them.We do not have lots of fridge, freezer space otherwise we could freeze them and make them into jams and jellies later or just eat them at a reasonable pace. Thankfully Victory Acres has the fridge space and we are bringing our strawberries to them so that they can sell them. They donate the money back to us and they can give their customers something they do not grow themselves. We also decided to make some milkshakes for the people working at IWU, going to camp, or conferences this week. They started out strawberry banana, then just strawberry, then vanilla. This was great promotion and we made some money off of it. They were really good. We will be doing similar promotions at IWU in the student center when we have more variety later this summer. For those of you who want to know when that starts just check out the blog weekly and I will let you know.

What did we do with our swiss chard and lettuce you might ask. Well they were all donated to St. Martins. They will be used in lunch for those who come to get a meal at St. Martin's. Often the stuff we do not use or is not taken during our promotional time at IWU goes to them. We also sometimes let the community gardens sell our produce at farmer's markets. We do not have enough cherries to be worth selling or donating so they will just go into a pie (hopefully) this week.

This week we were also able to weed, transplant, and reseed as it was dry enough to get into the ground. Some of the seeds were old and just did not take. The kale and brussels sprouts were basically total no shows and have been replaced by carrots, radishes, and turnips. We transplanted more tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, and eggplant. The weeds are mostly gone at 46th and you can see what we are growing again.We hope to see you out at our gardens soon! Please let us know if you follow us and tell your friends and family! I do not like people not knowing that we are here at IWU.Zach AringtonGarden Manager