First Harvest of 2011

 The "off-season" is officially over and the gardening season has begun for 2011.  We had our first work day on Feb 17th.  It was a great day as you can see.  After our morning breakfast session with the Seniors, it was off to do some garden maintenance.  The mini-composters we had established in the tomato cages were emptied and the contents moved throughout the garden beds.  The composting was not really complete, but we wanted to spread it all so it would mulch the open beds, and get rained on in the next week or two.  The contents of the 10 cages filled nearly every bed.  

The best news of the session was welcoming several new volunteers to our crew.  Marcia enlisted a Rogersville gardener to join us for the breakfast and the work session and Judy Penley brought another master gardener, Connie to join us for coffee.  Christine B joined us for the garden work a bit later.  With the weather in the 50's it was time to get growing. 

There are a few signs of growth in the garden and in our area.  The spinach we planted last Fall looks very happy in 2001.  Judy and Christine picked some leaves for a salad.  This year's first harvest was THREE months earlier than last year. 

The garden has been adopted as a project for a Church Hill Boy Scout as he works to attain his Eagle Scout badge.  I met with the Scoutmasters and Scout last week and we have a second meeting to finalize the project on Monday.  More on this next blog.

We have also received a Blue Bird house for the garden.  Carl will receive our first new Thank You card collage.  He has also volunteered to make a bench for the garden. 

The epic tome about establishing the garden, From Dirt to Dinner, The Art and Science of Producing a Garden, has been finalized, uploaded and is now for sale at www. Blurb.com.  Marcia has purchased some initial copies for review and presentation to the library and some of our major donors.  The Church Hill Library has also scheduled a Firends of the Library meeting that will discuss the process of writing, editing and publishing a book.  Brian will do the presentation on May 12th.  

It has been less than a year since this whole process began.  While we have had some frustrations, we have also had some very remarkable achievements.  With so much of the infrastructure in place, we can build on our seccesses and focus on our 2011 goals and growing. 

From Dirt to Dinner

The blurb book, From Dirt to Dinner, The Art and Science of Producing a Garden,  is in the very final revision stage.  Since the last post, all the text and pictures have been funneled into the Blurb software.  The formatting that was lost has been restored.  Marcia has been diligently correcting my exuberant use of bold and underline and we are now finalizing the remaining 50 or so pages.  With the Appendix, the book totals 114 pages.  The format is a pocket book size with a color cover.  All inside pages are  black and white.  The illustrations we chose were from the CHSC garden, victory garden posters from WWI and WWII, and  Fred, a handsome garden toad.  It was a very engrossing project that might even prove useful to others.  As insane as it sounds, we have been collecting quotes for Vol 2.

We have been working on our 2011 goals and have contacted the local school principals about including the garden in the school lesson plans.  The intermediate school has forwarded our letter to the science teachers.  Perhaps a bit more followup will be needed with the elementary principals. 

 

 There is an interesting development in gardening called High Tunnel beds.  We are considering requesting a grant from the USDA to erect a demonstration tunnel for farmers in our local counties.  Since we are an organic garden we seem to be on a very fast track for approval of 90% of the construction costs. As often is the case, our reservations are about the amount of available help for a project like this.  We would need lots of bodies not only for construction, but ongoing gardening work to plant, maintain and harvest.  There would also need to be quite meticulous records about tunnel temperatures and humidity levels.  The tunnel would also have to be opened and ventilated nearly warm day.  The tunnel extend the seasons considerably and provide farm income from late/early salad crops, berries, or flowers.  It would be a very exciting adventure, but may be too much project for the amount of labor we can attract.  The application needs to be completed in early March and there is much to be considered and completed if we are going to try to qualify for the money this year.  

Our first garden work day is scheduled for Feb 17th.  We are going to do a bit more cleanup and then spread the compost from the mini-composting stations (tomato cages) and tackle the big bin as well.  By spreading early, any material that is not fully composted can be exposed to the weather and finish in place.  Our winter has been unusually cold and snowy (for Tennessee).  It will be interesting to see how the piles have "worked" over the last few months.  

We have also been talking with our local scoutmasters and have a scout that would like to assist the garden as his Eagle Scout project.   We are still finalizing the details, but hope that a garden bench and flower bed surrounding the sign might be part of this project. 

Finally, the Fiskars Orange Thumb grants will be announced February 11.  All we know now is that our submission was accepted and received before the deadline .