Guided Work Party - July 13th

We harvested the rest of the broad beans today as the aphids were now causing serious damage, and laid the foliage down to dry out, keeping the roots in the ground to release nitrogen back into the soil.

The old garlic bed was given a good going over prior to a planned planting of a catch crop of potatoes and chard; it was top dressed with our compost.

There was lots of lettuce, bushels of  broad beans and peas, the last of the turnips and some bitter greens, and also a few strawberries which we shared whilst eating the frozen Strawberry Shortbreads left over from the Strawberry Tea, which made excellent Ice-cream Sandwiches!

Alex mentioned letting bolting plants go to seed, such as lettuce and broccoli, to give pollinators a little treat!  He and Selina also discussed the bitter greens, like dandelion leaves, in Rita’s plot which have health benefits. 

Angela

Snow peas, Snap peas and Pod peas!

Our Citizen Scientist’s (Wenwen & Elaine) reviewing their bean crop

Angela gave a brief talk on making compost, after which  the contents were given a good stir

Jan talking pea varieties.

Beautifully prepared bed ready for the Citizen’s Seed Trial of carrots

A barrowload of (slightly twiggy) compost ready to be distributed

Calendula and Fireweed are beautiful and tasty! Emily talking about health benefits of calendula tea. Selina’s calendula oil & salve. Fireweed blooms harvested to make fireweed syrup. The fireweed in all its glory, which Selina talked about after the work party during a discussion on its herbal uses, as well as Calendula. Selina and Emily talking about Calendula, whilst tasting Emily’s Calendula tea.

Guided Work Party - July 10th

Alex led his first work party and talked about aphid infestations and what gardeners can do to cope with them, bearing in mind they provide valuable food for predators! The rest of the garlic was harvested and stored temporarily in the greenhouse. We noticed that the cauliflowers had mostly bolted, despite our attempts to shade the curds from the sun, so they were also harvested, along with some broccoli that was also starting to bolt. The extreme heat a couple of weeks ago was probably to blame. Also, the red onions were showing signs of needing to be pulled, despite their small size. However, the white onions are looking good, and so are the leeks which needed further spacing. We picked the first of the berries, and are hoping for a bumper blueberry crop.

Angela

Thank you to Urban Root’s Giving Gardens for the wonderful cauliflower!

Urban Roots Cauliflower!

Alex teaching about aphids!

Cauliflowers bolting due to heat

Today’s harvest : garlic, red onions, lettuces, broccoli and cauliflower, chard, a few assorted berries, and Japanese greens!

Red onions, rather small , probably due to adverse weather

Garlic harvested!

Bumper blueberry crop

Guided Work Party - July 6th

Fantastic day for gardening! It's great to know that people both near and far can find out about and join us in the garden. In addition to our volunteers from Vancouver, we had a visitor from Maple Ridge joining us today who found us by googling "things to do in Vancouver". How wonderful!

We started the day off with a tour of the accessible raised garden beds that had beautiful bitter greens, mustard greens, cilantro, edible dandelion greens, and more! Thank you to Urban Roots for their donations of leafy greens and cucumbers that we also grow in our accessible raised garden beds. They smell great and are ready to harvest!

After the tour, we got into harvesting broccoli, snow peas, snap peas, our red russian garlic and music garlic. So many stems of garlic, over 100! Silva also brought in falafel wraps for everyone! It was delicious!

Jan

🥦 🥒 🧄

Harvesting peas and garlic!

So many garlic scapes, so many garlics!

More harvesting!

Thanks Urban Root!