A harvest party

The weather was perfect and the food was delicious!

Some people worked... some didn't.

Some just stood around looking good.

Linda made her amazing apple-less apple pie. Who knew zucchini could taste so good!

We divided up the gold and Russet

... and picked beautiful tomatoes.

What a great night.

Meeting Minutes

Click on the link below to see the minutes:
March 7th MEETING MINUTES

Garden Meeting

We will have our Garden meeting this Sunday, March 7th at 7:30pm at the Arne's home. Rick and I are working on the final layout plans and hopefully I will have those posted in the next few days. We look forward to meeting on Sunday! If you have any issues that you would like addressed, please contact Rick so we can add it to the agenda.
Thanks, Janet

We have an incredible group for our garden this year. We have reached our maximum of twelve groups. They are as follows:

1. Arnes and Hansels
2. Andersons
3. Blues
4. Cannons
5. Fernandez
6. Lighthearts
7. Palmers
8. Parks
9. Russell and Eagars
10. Shields
11. Spencers
12. Wilders and Katherine

If any other invitations have been extended, we'll have to wait until next year to see if the group can handle it. This is going to be a great year. Welcome to all the new families.

Strawberries on Monday

If the weather remains the same, we will be planting strawberries Monday at 12:30pm. Vicky and I will be getting soil in the morning and then we will meet at the garden to plant. Thanks to Keith Johnson from fourth ward for some beautiful strawberry plants. We went Friday afternoon and dug up LOTS of them.

Keith suggested that if the pear farm grounds are wet at all, that it would be best to drive down the gravel road, park at the bottom and walk over.

A few items

Strawberries: will have to wait until later (maybe Saturday) because of the wet conditions. We learned last year what a mess it can be working out there in the moist soil.

New Families: Welcome to the Shields and the Hansels. Invitations have been extended to two more families. We're still waiting to hear back for sure.

Email notifications from the blog: The email notifications when a blog entry is posted are only allowed for up to 10 emails. With the extra families, this will no longer work. I have created a distribution list in outlook so whenever an blog entry is posted, I will receive an email and then forward it on to the group. So you can continue to contact the group this way if desired.

Contact Information: I have updated the contact information to the right on the blog. Please look over it and verify your information with me.

Thanks to everyone for all you do! We're looking forward to another great year.
Janet

STRAWBERRIES!!

First off, could you please notify me if you receive the notification that a post was made so I can follow through with those who were not notified.

Cyndi purchased 100 strawberry plants. We are planning on planting those on Monday. We will meet on Monday, February 15th, at 12:30pm at the garden (WEATHER PERMITTING). We need to get some soil to add to the plants. Do we want to get a truck load like last year or just use some bags of soil? Let Cyndi know what you think.

Minutes from meeting February 7

Minutes from Garden Meeting
February 7, 2010
Present:
Neff and Vikki Russell
David and Cecily Spencer
Lou Arne
Ken and Janet Lightheart
Rick and Linda Fernandez
Lynne Wilder
Steve and Cyndi Cannon
Pete and Heidi Blue

Discussion about last year’s garden
Last year, after a month or two into planting, we decided to divide the responsibility of overseeing individual crops between families. Each family was in charge of a crop or two to oversee as shown below (from the minutes from our meeting held last year)

Assignments:
The garden has been divided up by plants and has been assigned to different families. These families are in charge of the following concerning their plants and area surrounding the plants:
• Planting (any remaining planting)
• Weeding the area surrounding the plants
• Placing stakes with information of type of plant and other pertinent information
• Fertilizing (research and application)
• Pesticide (notification and application)
• Any other needs for the plants: researching, applying poles or trellises, etc.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT EACH FAMILY WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE WORK. We will continue to work together as often as allows. When help is needed the whole group will be notified and all who are able to help should be there. We will also continue to have times scheduled for all of us to be there together.

After much discussion, it was determined that we will proceed with making a plan for the garden and then divide the plan into individual crops just as we did last year. It will differ from last year though by having each area covered by two families instead of just one. This will help with vacation coverage and sharing workload.

Two families will not be in charge of the same two sections though. The sections will overlap so families will have an opportunity to learn about the crop from the family who had the crop the previous year. Therefore, each family should be able to have two years to learn and become “experts” on that crop before they move to another one.

For example, if we divide the garden into 10 sections (1-10), with 10 families (A-J), each family would overlap with two different families as shown.



Finances
Paul was not able to attend the meeting, so actual numbers will need to be discussed at our next meeting. The following items to purchase were discussed:
1. Shed (Craig’s List, Lowes, have someone build)
2. Fencing for Beans (Lou to contact Quality Fence)

Current Seed Supply
Rick will assess the current seed supply. If anyone has any seed left from last year, please notify Rick.

What to plant
We discussed which crops to plant more of, the same, or less of as follows:
PLANTED TOO MUCH LAST YEAR (we should plant less this year):
Cucumbers
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Cherry Tomatoes
Peppers
JUST RIGHT:
Corn (the same amount but in stages)
Pumpkins (it was determined that we should plant about the same amount but make sure we pinch the growth off to improve the size of pumpkins)
PLANTED NOT ENOUGH LAST YEAR (we should plant more this year):
Cantaloupes
Peas
Green Beans
Watermelons (Bro. Neilsen should be contacted to determine how to grow a better crop)
Onions
PLANTS NOT TO INCLUDE:
Carrots (not the right kind of soil)
OTHER PLANTS TO INCLUDE:
Strawberries
Banana Squash

What needs to be done right now or soon:
Strawberries: Cyndi to look into purchasing strawberry plants. We will try and get those planted next Monday.
Peas: In about a month (Rick to look into)
Onion starts and lettuce

More Families
It was decided that we would like to include about 4 more families in the garden. Lou will contact other families discussed and let us know who else will be joining us.

Next Meeting
Our next meeting will be help Sunday evening, March 11th. Time and location yet to be determined.

The garden is being watered Tuesday evening, so it will be too muddy to work in tomorrow morning. I guess we can knock out some hours across the street instead.

Cyndi

In light of the heat and youth pear picking tomorrow evening, should we gather to harvest and weed Wednsday morning instead of evening?

Cyndi

Recipes

I have added recipes to the right. Please email me your recipes and I will add them. I believe the consensus was to continue harvesting as possible on Monday nights, Wednesday nights, and Saturday mornings. There will be some more items that will need to be harvested all at once (like the tomatoes and corn). When this is the cause, everyone will be notified. We pickled over 100 pints of pickles and relish yesterday. There are still a lot of cucumbers left. I believe the plan is to get together again on Friday (possibly at Wilders) and pickle some more.

Harvest News!

We will be gone for a week, but here is our assessment of what is going on at the farm (what we know about any way). We wish we could stick around to help.

Canning Day: I am planning on having a canning day at my house a week from Tuesday, August 11th. We will start at 8am. I hope we will be able to can some more beans, pickles, and pickled squash. I have a lot of cucumbers at my house that the kids harvested today. There are plenty more.

Harvest give away: We were discussing what to do with our abundance of food at our last canning day. It was suggested that we allow the children to give food to those in need or as gifts to others. Anyone that wants to can try to sell them.

Beans: There are more bush beans to harvest. (The beans that are by the peppers). These should be picked to can. These are the beans that were too small to pick last time. I would hate to see those go to waste. If someone can pick them, we will plan on canning them next week. There are also pole beans to harvest. (The beans that are inbetween the potatoes and corn.) We can pick those to can or to eat fresh. The pole beans will mature over time, so they are for good for eating fresh or canning.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash: The zucchini plants need to be harvested every few days if small vegetables are desired. We harvested a LOT of large zucchinis today. Cyndi has them at her house. Katherine said the squash can be cut and frozen for later if desired. There are still more zucchini plants and yellow squash to be harvested.

Potatoes: I harvested almost a full row of Red Chieftain potatoes today - two bucket fulls. (Cyndi has these at her house). (The Red Chieftains are the ones in the middle of the potato patch - about half of the rows. They are the shorter plants that are inbetween the Russets and the variety potatoes.) They are beautiful and there are about 6-10 potatoes from each plant. We can leave these in the ground until we want to eat them (unless they start to get too many white spots which indicates too much watering). The green leaves on the top will help pull some of the water out. The best thing would be to decrease the watering on the red potatoes, but we can not do that selectively so we can leave them in the ground for now and just watch them. If anyone wants potatoes, you can just go dig them up as needed. The Russets won't be ready until about the middle of September. They store better than the reds and can be kept in a dark bag throughout the winter.

Peppers: We didn't harvest any peppers today. They can be harvested at any time. They can be cut and frozen. Katherine has instructions on how to do this.

I have harvested several more pounds of yellow squash. I will bring them to the garden on Saturday morning. I know there is more lettuce to harvest as well. Perhaps some tomatoes will be ready also? If you can't make it Saturday morning, and you want veggies, let me know.

Cyndi

Harvesting

We propose that we gather every Sat. morning @ 8:00 to harvest. That would make distribution easy. If you can't make it, you could ask another family to pick up your produce. Summer squash and lettuce are coming on strong, and maybe a few tomatoes.

Janet, is there a way to list in one place on this blog all that we have learned so far about gardening? It would be nice to record findings as we go, before we forget them.

Steve and Cyndi

Compost and Lettuce

We started a compost pile in the middle of the garden by the tomatoes. Rick has done some research and found that the weeds work great in a compost pile. If you leave it long enough, the seeds will all die.

Also, the lettuce needs to be harvested before it goes to seed. You can just cut off the lettuce leaves an inch or so above the root and it should grow back and be able to be harvested later.

Should we meet again and talk about how we will go about harvesting? Where and when would be a good time.

The garden is looking great! Thanks for all your effort and time!

Watering Schedule

Pete talked with John Neilsen about the watering. The ideal days for us to water will be Tuesday and Thursday because those are the days which the pump is running so we will maximize our watering. We will also be watering on Saturdays in the evening. There will not be as much pressure on Saturday so we water longer - also because it will be the longest between watering days. This will also allow us to get and work in the garden on Monday evenings and Saturday mornings which seem to be the best times for everyone.

WATERING SCHEDULE: (to be overseen by Pete and Larry)
Tuesday am
Thursday am
Saturday pm (For 2-3 hours)

White Bucket

I took a white bucket to the garden today. Inside is a laminated plan for planting which includes the families in charge of each area. Also, taped to the inside of the lid is the list of contact information for everyone. There are also some stakes and tape for labelling the plants.

Update on planting

I planted the bush beans and the peppers this morning, fertilized with some Miracle Grow, and then turned the water on. We will be turning it off tonight before Stake Conference.

I will be going out Monday morning to start the soil preparation for the potaotes. We are hoping to get out Monday evening at 6:00pm to plant those and the pole beans. So if anyone wants to join us that would be great.

I have Katherine's Mantis if anybody else needs it. I will be using that Monday morning. Thanks, JAN

What kind of Peppers do you want?

What kind of peppers would everyone like? I purchased a variety of sweet bell peppers today, but I wasn't sure if anyone wanted some hot peppers and if so, what varieties?

The Garden Shop over on W Main by Thunderbird still had some seed potato and some other great plants if anyone needs anything else.

JAN

Seed Potato

I checked with my brother in Idaho and he has 2 boxes of Norcota Russett Seed for us. Leslie Fernandez' new brother-in-law will be bringing them when he comes for the wedding next weekend. I also ordered a box of red potato seed from Klamath Falls that should arrive on Friday. With the father son campout this weekend and then Stake Conference we won't be able to do anything at the garden this weekend. Our plan is to go and do some planting and/or preparing for the potatoes and beans next Monday night.

Is the water up and running? How do the pumpkins look?

Lighthearts