Planting Day April 17

Snow Peas and Snap Peas

Planting Peas


Proud Pea Planters

Scouts pull sprouts

Girl scouts pull sprouts.

These tiny sprouts show that the bales are being kept moist enough!

We found the garden nice and wet today. The sprouts are from leftover seeds in the straw bales. The recommended removal method is snipping them with scissors, but we just pulled them out. This is about as tough as the weeding gets with straw bale gardening! No trouble determining "weeds" at this point as we have not planted any vegetables yet.

SF

Robin Guarding Garden

I stopped by to check on the garden Friday morning and found this robin guarding the tipi.

JK

The Bales Have Landed

Saturday a lot happened in the garden.

Many people came together to install weed suppression in the form of cardboard and wood chips, and place the bales. The Tipi trellis was also installed. Not much is going to change in the garden for a while.

Daily watering of the bales is necessary to start the decomposition of the straw.

If you can’t wait to see what happened Saturday, you can go to Flickr to see some of the pictures that participants have posted.

Flickr: Your Photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barkhamstedgarden

JK

Visit tomorrow and/or sign up to help!

Help us grow!
The Barkhamsted Garden needs volunteers.
The garden will begin taking shape this weekend.

Stop by the town hall tomorrow, between 10am-12noon to see what it's all about.

To volunteer, email p.welles@snet.net

or log on to lotsahelpinghands to sign up.

Site work has begun!

Garden looking West towards Barkhamsted School

Garden looking South

The garden site was prepared yesterday by Ms. P and the Northwest Regional 7 students. Now we are waiting for mulch! Saturday we will install the straw bales.

Photos by Lisa Candels

Straw pickup

Hay!

Well, actually it is straw.

Straw is the byproduct of grain harvest.

It is the stalks left over after grain is harvested and should have little to no seed left.

Straw - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We have the straw for the garden.

JK

Garden Planting Timeline

Double click on above image to enlarge.

Gardening Timeline created by Jennifer McGevna

Seedlings

Somewhere in the greenhouse behind this sign, Erick and his students have started the seedlings for the Barkhamsted garden.

I peeked in to look for seedlings.

J.Krug

Pushing veggies

This Barkhamsted garden committee member was caught red handed, pushing vegetables on Cub Scouts, amidst a sea of sugar, at the Barkhamsted pack 40 pinewood derby bake sale. In a stunning display of audacity, this person can be seen supplying vegetables to an impressionable young boy. Luckily, the young scout’s face is covered to protect his identity. What will the committee members stoop to next ...teaching children to grown their own ...vegetables?

J. Krug

Garden Design!

Garden Design by Evelyn Betz, Landscape Designer

2010

Wish List

The Barkhamsted Garden is a not for profit community group. We don't have the formal documentation yet to let your donations be tax deductible, but we are still happy to accept gifts.

Some of the items we could use are:

Eleven saplings: 13' high. 2" in diameter. These are for the tipi.
28- metal stakes/rebar or wood to tie tomatoes & peppers
Blood meal
Peat pots
Organic potting soil
Fish emulsion
Compost tea
Broken patio stone
Clean mulch
Straw bales (14, tight, can be old and/or damp)
Scissors
Trowels
Hose
Soak hose
Nozzle that has a shower like end
Rain barrels

You can contact us at barkgarden@aol.com if you would like to help us out! Thanks! :)

Last night's meeting

Last night's meeting took place at town hall despite the stormy conditions. We firmed up installation and planting dates, discussed our goals and objectives and made plans on how to achieve them.

After the meeting, several committee members checked out the garden location. Some grading will need to be done. We plan to set the straw bales out on March 27.

Seeds have arrived!

The Fedco seeds arrived yesterday and were delivered to Erick tonight. He will be potting them. He already started the broccoli seeds which Evelyn purchased earlier. Just about all the seeds are organic. Zucchini and sunflowers are back ordered.

Our current planting list is:

Chard
Tomatoes: Orange banana paste, Heirloom mix, Cherokee purple
Black cherry tomato
Matchbox hot pepper
Peacework sweet pepper
E yellow squash crookneck squash
Poona Kheera cucumber
Rainbow Lacinato kale
Oregon Giant Snow pea
Cascadia Snap Pea
Lettuce Mix
Par-cel cutting celery (parsley)
Whirlybird 7-Color Nasturtium
Aurora orach mix (spinach)
Amsterdam #2 carrot
Multi colored pole bean mix
Blue cocoa pole bean
Tiger eye bean
Calypso bean