It rained hard all evening yestiddy and most of last night, but your hard work creating raised beds and heavy mulching made the garden easy to work in and no mud! The rich dark loose soil was full of earthworms. See some of the pix below.
Wes, Stephanie, Jane and I worked with Lisa McGhee and the Crosswinds Elementary School Roots and Shoots Club to plant over a hunnert more sets of Texas Sweet White onyuns from Dixon Dale Farms in TX. The kids worked hard and did an excellent job under direction from Stephanie and Jane.
ALL the new onyuns are standing up straight. The children also did a fine job of getting rid of the henbit weeds in plot 5 and getting the residual plant material out of the two inner beds of plot 1. http://www.better-lawn-care.com/henbit.html#axzz2q7ZUy3AG
Note: Master Gardeners can record today's hours as Teaching since we were showing the children how to do their work.
The previously planted onyun sets were doctored with extry soil, but they have had a hard time with the deep freeze and two torrential rain storms. We'll give them another week to stand back up and replant if needed. I told them they have one last chance. We now have about 413 sets planted. Last year we had 300 sets and harvested almost perzactly 300 pounds.
We follered http://www.dixondalefarms.com/ directions and made a six inch deep furrow and put fertilizer therein and covered it. Then we made two shallow furrows on either side and the children placed the onyuns and patted the soil around them (them being the onyuns not the children.)
Wes put the straw bales in place and put composted soil on top for seasoning and made holes in the bales so we can try growing maters in those bales.
We now have a mason bee house to hang from one of the trellises. Now we need to buy four more cattle panel trellises and set them up. http://www.gardeners.com/Mason-Bee-House/37-481,default,pd.html
Next major work day will be around St Paddy's Day when Southerners traditionally plant red taters, sweet peas, cabbiges, and first stab at sweet corn. I would like for us to try the new prolific bush style sweet peas instead of along the fences. All ideas and improvements are appreciated.
Please keep Jerry and Sue Butler in your prayers as they relocate to Georgia! Like the others in the previous entry, they will be sorely missed.
Our request for funding for two more sets of raised beds in plots 2 and 5 was denied by the Master Gardening Association. While the Victory Garden is considered a CoRe Project by the Master Gardeners, the Plants for Humanity Project which shares space with us was taken off the CoRe list. This is just a bookkeeping point for us MG'ers. We have to get so many hours in each of several categories.
We should have adequate funds for our normal annual supplies. If we can raise $1,200, we can make two sets of raised beds with double stacked cinder blocks.
If anyone would like to be the Chairman or CoChairman please let me know. This is just an official Master Gardener need to continue to qualify as a CoRe project, but in any case we will continue as is except for the information the Master Gardener Association needs.
Thanks,
Ain't God good!
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| Jane and Stephanie and Roots and Shoots Club |
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| Roots and Shoots Club hard at work |
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| Wes preparing bales of straw for seasoning |
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| Raised beds doing their thang after hard rain all night |
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| Roots and Shoots Club planting onyuns |
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| planting onyuns |
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| Lisa McGhee hard at work |
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| Fertilizer furrow for onyun sets - see our beautiful loose rich deep soil after a hard rain all night. |
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