Welcome to the Garden!
If you have any interest in learning more about gardening, or just eating
some
delicious organic produce, please come join us. Email [fordhodg] or me ([calischs]), or just
come to our next workday.
News
A bunch of us met today to talk about plans for next year's garden. Basically which beds
are what and new stuff to add. Check out the plan Hart wrote up under the documents list to the
right.
The season extenders are still doing great. Here is a picture from inside the hoop
house, where lettuce shoots are taking off. Within a few days, the garden should get some more
clear plastic to finish off the other houses to protect the other seedlings. 
Today the
garden
got another large cold frame to protect the chard. It looks like a rabbit had been nibbling on
a few of the leaves, but this new frame should protect against animals as well as cold. The
other large cold frame is doing great. Here is a picture inside, where beets and carrots are
kicking it. I can't wait for fresh produce this winter.
The cold weather hasn't stopped some garden work in the past week. I went to CERA last week
and helped disassemble an old bridge in exchange for some of the massive 2x12's for the garden.
This weekend, quite a few people came out to work, fixing the hoop houses and making some mini
houses with tomato cages. Both cold frames are working admirably so far, creating balmy
conditions inside when the sun hits them. There are plenty of green onions for the taking right
now. They made a great chili for me on Sunday night.
This morning I drained the rain catchment system to keep the pipes from bursting. Make sure not
to close valve for any reason, otherwise melting snow could re-freeze and ruin the plumbing.
Thanks to
some fall break work, the garden now has a larger cold-frame (3.5 by 5 feet) and
the start of some serious hoop house action. The cold frame uses almost exclusively
recycled materials thanks to generous donations of storm windows and used lumber from CERA.
These
additions came just in time,
in light of
this morning's frost. We're really excited to learn about 4 season gardening this winter, and
hopefully get some fresh veggies as well. 
Larissa Mottl from CERA has asked a few of use to come out sometime this
week to take the rest of the used lumber and get some native berry bushes. Send me ([calischs])
an email if you're interested.
The garden now has lumber supplies to build cold frames. Thanks a ton to Larissa Mottl and
CERA for hooking us up. Saturday's work day went well, too. Along with the usual weeding and
turning compost, we planted kale (the -10 degree kind) and added another cardboard layer to the
lasagna composting bed. Molly's parents even came out to help for a while.
Nice job Jordan on salvaging supplies for the garden. We now have a new watering
can, another trowel, a weeding fork, some white wood trellis material, and a clay
bust.
We more people than ever this weekend at the workday. Elissa did a great
compost presentation and got our bins back on track. After the workshop, we planted chard
and carrots for the cold frames, and did some more weeding. Also, we hung up the colorful
new sign people painted last week. It was great to see so many sets of hands in the
dirt!
If anyone knows (or wants to find out) how to make [garden] a student group, go for it. We
seemed to reach a consensus in favor of that this weekend.
Another
workday, and a
bunch more done.
Thanks to all who showed up. We painted a
spectacular new sign, weeded and mulched some of the paths, and acquired some limestone
flagstones. The compost bins are still rockin; we witnessed a passerby depositing some food
scraps, too. Big thanks to Chris for making trips to the city compost facility and donating the
limestone. The garden's looking great.
Thanks to Hart and some willing helpers the garden now has a bunch of straw and manure for
use.
The first workday of the year went well (at least from what I saw). We moved the 3
bin compost container closer to the garden for easier access and fixed it up a bit. We put our
first load of dining hall scraps into it and will soon have some straw to add. People also
worked on fixing up a garden sculpture, and clearing out some beds that had been taken over by
weeds. The shed got a sweet cleaning, and the tools were inventoried. Check out the pictures
page for a few shots from the day. If I'm forgetting
anything, let me know.
The garden now has one small cold frame (i.e. mini greenhouse) for late/early
season harvests. We have also obtained 10 used storm windows to make more cold frames, so we'll
have a whole fleet soon. See the Upcoming Projects section for more details.
The garden is currently in the process of obtaining an email and plan, so look out for
that.
Today's (9/2/07) meeting was a big success. A ton more people than we expected showed up,
and lots of interesting ideas were thrown around. We worked on setting up workdays and
getting a
budget drawn up. Hopefully more to come soon.
Upcoming Projects
- Dinner Saturday (Nov 17) with the left-over veggies from summer plantings. Come to cook, eat, and plan out the direction the garden should take this winter and next spring/summer.
- Garden Expansion Workday with Ami Freeburg
Tasks (i.e. What can I do?)
Have an extra hour? Come over to the garden and get your hands dirty:
- Weed! There is lots of weeding to be done, but be careful not to pull up newly sprouting plants. The paths between beds especially need some work.
- Draw up your ideas for the garden expansion: more beds, berry patches, a pond, whatever you thing would make the garden a better space. Here's a link to some things to think about when doing permacultural design. CERA has some native blackberries we can transplant, and now is a good time of year to do so. If someone looks up a couple nice companion perrenials (ie. ones that help the blackberries) and writes up a plan, we could make the tranplants.
- Bring your kitchen scraps to the garden's compost bins. No meat please. A good idea for someone who attended Elissa's workshop is to make a sign that tells people what to do with their scraps (ie what bin to put in, what to cover it with, etc.)
- Be on the lookout for good lumber being thrown out. With all the construction around Grinnell, there's a lot of good stuff being tossed. We need all the wood we can get for cold frames. Hinges would also be really useful is you spot some.
- Make some treats to bring to the next workday.
- Contact one of the project leaders above to help them out
- Contact [fordhodg] for more specific tasks.