A Look The Community Garden Plots!

Now, in the peak of mid-summer, the garden is flourishing! The community plots are bursting with produce...

Blah Poe's Plot

Chandra's Plot

Ismet's Plot

Albert's Plot

Tulasa's Plot

Punya's Plot

Fata's Plot

Fatma's Plot

Karna's Plot

Mai Mai's Plot

Mensura's Plot

Monica's Plot

Solomon's Plot

Double Digging and Potato Planting!

This week in Garden Club, the Kindergarten through 2nd Grade class planted potatoes. I collected old tires by searching the free section of Craigslist and keeping an eye out for them by the side of the road. We positioned the tires on top of used cardboard, to keep down weeds. Then, the kids stuffed wads of newspaper into the walls of the tires. The idea is that the newspaper will soak up excess water after a heavy rain and store it until the plants need it during a drier spell.  Then the children shoveled a mixture of topsoil and compost into the tires, positioned the potatoes snugly in the dirt, and then filled the tires the rest of the way with compost.

We also watered our raised beds...

And the 3rd through 5th Grade Class were delighted to see that the swiss chard they had planted in a recycled plastic container two weeks earlier had emerged! 

We also had a great group of volunteers on Saturday, April 16th. An English class from U of L rolled up their sleeves to double dig a new garden bed where the children will soon plant squash and watermelon. Double digging is one of many techniques used to prepare a new bed for planting. It entails loosening the soil to a depth of two spade heads as opposed to one. It is a labor intensive technique, but it does a lovely job of aerating the soil in a relatively short period of time.

Planting Veggies and Learning About Worms in Garden Club

We have had a busy couple of weeks here at the Americana Community Center Garden. In After School Program we planted in our raised beds: turnips, carrots, peas, kale, cabbage, collards, beets, lettuce, radishes, and onions...

Our garlic plants have emerged strong and healthy...

We also learned about earthworms, and all the hard work they do in the soil to help our garden grow...

The First Seeds of the Spring

Work begins here in Americana's Community Garden! We will welcome eight growers back to the soil this season, as well as five new families. This year the garden represents the countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Myanmar, Mexico, Sudan, and The Republic of the Congo, not to mention all of the countries from which our youth participants in the Children's Garden come.

Over the past few weeks, many hands have begun turning and preparing the soil for the first seeds of the spring. In our after school program, we have tested our catalog of donated seeds for productivity by rolling them in moist paper towels and leaving them inside plastic baggies for a week or so. The vast majority sprouted! We have also started some of our slower seeds--tomatoes and peppers--in cardboard egg crates and we will carefully tend to them until May. Our early crops will be sown in our new raised beds--constructed by Youth Build out of salvaged wood--over the next few weeks. First in the ground will be lettuce, radishes, turnips, peas, beets, carrots, collards, kale, and cabbage. As our veggies sprout we will taste them all! Two very important rules in garden club are to get our hands dirty and try new foods.