Bricks and Gather-in-the-Garden at 10:00 a.m. Saturday

Hello Garden Gang,

Two quick notes:

1. We're meeting in the garden tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. The Neffs attended the spring gardening class on Thursday and will share information on dealing with insects for this potentially "buggy" spring season. We'll also talk about watering guidelines, soil amendments, and natural ways to keep our plants healthy. I'll share a short devotion and we'll pray for the gardens.

2. The children's ministry is going to build a butterfly garden and we're in need of bricks. If you, your neighbors or your friends have extra bricks, please bring them to the garden this week. If you need help transporting them, let me know and I'll bring my truck. If you have Facebook, you might post this need as your status and see if anyone you know has bricks they can donate. Builders in Park Glen often leave extra bricks in garages, so the treasure trove we need might be all around us!

See you tomorrow in the garden!

Cheers,
Britta

Winter Gardening--Yes, It's Possible!

We just returned from checking on the garden, with good news to report. The cauliflower and broccoli are doing so well. We harvested our first batch of broccoli on Thanksgiving day, and it was so tender and delicious. We have yet to taste the cauliflower, but it looks good so far. The spinach was struggling in its current spot (hidden from sunshine behind the enormous broccoli and cauliflower plants), so we transplanted it closer to the Western side of the bed.

If you've seen the garden lately, we "winterized" it by adding thin pvc piping with a "planket" to cover for a freeze. So far we've only had to use it once, with excellent results. The pvc piping keeps the planket off the plants, because I'm told that if the cover freezes and sticks to the plants, the plants freeze, too. Who knew?

New seedlings for carrots and lettuce have come up, and we planted a few extra radishes today since they come in so quickly--22 days! We hope to have a batch available for the first garden party meeting, which is tentatively set for 2:00 on January 22 at AUMC. More details to come soon.

Look for a ministry moment from Britta about the garden at each of the Sunday services at Alliance UMC on January 8. See you then!

The Test Bed is Born!

Today we built the first test bed for the Alliance Community Garden. We met at the church at 8:15 a.m. and had the planter built, full of soil, planted and seeded by 12:00 p.m. Way to go, teamwork!



For supplies, we used:

*52 cinder blocks from Home Depot
*3 yards of premium soil from Silver Creek
*5 bags of concrete-grade sand from Home Depot
*2 bags of mulch from Home Depot


We built the beds in a rectangular formation (4 blocks wide, 9 blocks long, 2 blocks high), lined the bottom with newspaper (free--the Colemans are proud Star-Telegram subscribers) and added a layer of sand to help thwart the weeds. We had additional bags of sand available in case we needed help for leveling the first row of blocks. Thankfully, the patch of land we picked was fairly level, so our sand use was minimal.

For plants, we brought several starters we had planted at home and transplanted them into our new garden. Though we're a bit late in the season to start, we wanted to see how far we could go with radishes, beans, okra, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach. To help ward off unhelpful bugs, we planted a row of marigolds to surround the bed. For fun, Dan added a few sunflower seeds to the very edges: that boy has grown sunflowers since he was itty bitty.

For irrigation, we attached two super-hoses to our existing waterline, and have plans to build a water-saving rain barrel soon.



Many thanks to David and Beth Fitzpatrick (and helpful pooch Romo), Kern and Dan Coleman. We hope this test bed will be "a sign unto us" and an encouragement to those who would like to join us for spring planting. We'll have details on how you can reserve your spot in the garden soon.

And for those attending the AUMC Lord's Acre Festival on October 29th (you're all invited!), we'll have special opportunities for future gardeners.

Again, if you'd like to participate in the garden, please let me know!

Cheers and Blessings,
Britta