Thursday Alexandra, Sarah and Stephanie had a productive working meeting at the GANG with the help of fellow neighbor José.
We were thrilled to see the seedling so bountiful… but wanted to thin out some of the ones that really sprouted up, like the cilantro and basil, so we cleaned out some potters with herbs and re-planted the little plantlings. We also put some into the garden tower (more on that to follow!) With the recent frost warning, Ann had been taking the plants in overnight, so they are still alive and kicking. Now, we have been covering them with plastic overnight to keep them safe.
Then we decided the pouty, wilty arugula was ready for a re-planting, having outgrown its little container. So Alexandra and José weeded out a bed in the garden,
then José got a giant bucket of manure
and together we spread the nice, mulched horse manure over the bed.
Stephanie went to check how far apart to plant the arugula (about 6 inches) and together with Sarah, we re-planted the arugula plants in this bed.
Sarah also had fun planting and trimming the Garden Tower.
Stephanie added some amendments to the raspberry bush, from a mixture of liquid fertilizer (all natural, of course).
We hope these changes make the plants happy!
We made a final circuit around the garden, and Stephanie showed us the successful results of our de-weeding experiment:
in March, we had put black plastic over a bed with a lot of weeds and clover that needed to be er one bed that was completely covered in clover and weeds that needed to removed before planting there. The black plastic, held down by rocks to keep down, would kill the weeds (with the help of the sun!) to free us of weeding. Stephanie lifted up the black plastic, and we could see the effect! Here you can see, too, the clear line where the plastic left off, and how nice and weed-free the soil is underneath the plastic! We left the plastic on, and will remove it when we are ready to plant.
Until next time, GANG!
