Bring on the heat!

Well this weather forecast is quite interesting considering the past few weeks of rain and mild temperatures I've grown accustom to...  We're now looking at high 80s, humid but little rain, and even the big 90 on Wednesday.  I just hope that the rain forecast for Thursday comes true; I really understand now why farmers always hope for some rain-- watering is time consuming!

In light of all this, Sean and I didn't let the hot weather keep us from being productive (Maybe because it's Monday and we aren't exhausted yet) and we both found ourselves doing some laborous jobs today.  I think that we've begun to realize that our time at the ESL is ---dare I say--- winding down in weeks and therefore it is time to actually carry out the jobs that we said were on our long-term list.


I worked on redoing the paths in between the raised beds, which required cutting spare cardboard to fit between the beds, kind of like fitting puzzle pieces.  Cardboard breaks down fairly easily and will kill off the grasses between the beds to lessen the threat of weeds infesting the beds and also give it a clean look.

This cardboard actually came from the boxes that delivered the raised beds!

Once I had finished, I put hay down to mulch the paths and, hopefully with time and rain, they will become smooth and grass free!

The finished paths.  With sun the hay will turn a yellow color!

On the other hand, Sean tackled the construction of a new door for the shed.  Although he has done various projects before, he's never made a door before, so I think he was excited about the new experience. 
Here's some snapshots of the process I got while taking a break from path-making!

cutting the wood

nailing the piece together

FINISHED PRODUCT!

In other news, I also harvested some berries for Campus Kitchens today, a student-run organization that we are in the works to build a formal partnership with.  They cook dinners on Monday's at the Methodist Church in Canton for community members to enjoy, and today they enjoyed some of our garden's blueberries and raspberries!

A bag of ESL blueberries, there are still many more that are ripening 

So the mantra for this week is definitely Get going on long-term projects, Drink lots of water, Don't let the sun make us go crazy as we work, and eat some berries when necessary :)

-Sheila

Rapid Market Research!

This week I got to spend a bit more time working with GardenShare, as we carried out a "rapid market survey"at the Canton and Potsdam farmer's markets.  The Canton market is on Tuesdays and Fridays from 9-2 and Potsdam hosts it's own on Wednesday and Saturday from 9-2.  We preformed the assessment on Friday in Canton and Saturday in Potsdam.

The idea behind the survey was to find out how people were shopping and to assess ways in which to improve their experience.  Rapid market assessments follow a "dot format" to make it easy and hopefully fun for market-goers to answer.  There is a photo below shows what this looks like. 

The big 4 questions we asked were:
1. How often do you shop at the market?
2. How much time have you (will you) spend at the market today?
3. How much money have you (will you) spend at the market today?
4. What did you (will you) buy? 

This photo was taken mid-day at the Canton Farmer's Market

In addition, we would try and ask those who stopped by for suggestions on how they would improve the market and if the times worked well into their schedule. 

In Potsdam, responders noted that they would like to see more of a variety of farmers selling produce, whereas their was an overwhelming amount of Canton market-goers who called for later hours on weekdays to accommodate work schedules.  

I'm interested to see the results when we crunch all of the data, but there were some conclusions that I could draw from just two days:

- Canton's market drew a majority of retired folks, and this is chiefly due to the weekday timing

- Market-goers tend to buy more produce than anything else... they also are calling for more of a variety of farmers selling produce

- People enjoy the social aspect of farmer's market
- People tend to shiver and duck away at the word survey
- More places to advertise are in the Adirondack Park area for families on vacation and also on university campuses because students tend to forget the times
- Various visitors from places like Connecticut (and even as far as Arizona) noted that Canton and Potsdam actually have an impressive market in comparison to the ones near them!  

As I slipped in there, it was quite exhausting at times trying to get a passerby to take the survey.  I can see where the attitude would come from, not wanting to be bothered while meandering through the market, but our survey is really for the betterment of the community and the market!  In the end, those who avoided eye contact and murmured that they "just don't have the time" were only hurting themselves by not getting their opinion heard.  
On the other hand, some participants were quite enthusiastic and gave us some fantastic ideas, such as offering more prepared food and even starting a booth for people to bring their composting food scraps. 

I think that we got a good amount of data collected over the two days and I definitely have some fresh inspiration for integrating the farmer's market into the SLU student body and also helping to make improvements to play to the interests of the Canton/Potsdam community members.  

Garlic Harvest!

On Thursday and Friday we harvested our garlic.  We came up with 198 heads of garlic!  Here are some photos;

 The now empty garlic bed

 Another shot

 

 Some of our day lilies

 Potatoes are thriving

The upper garlic bed, now empty as well

 Our pile of garlic, set out to dry

 Some flowers blooming from the potatoes

 Different potato flowers

 A lot of garlic!

 Some of the bulbs were huge!

~Sean

More completed, More to do!

Although the day was supposed to be warm and skies fairly clear today, I find myself driven into the house by a sudden intense storm-- This is pretty characteristic of the unpredictable weather we've dealt with day to day. 

Luckily, I have a lot to blog about!

Sean and I are very excited about the cold frames that we put together last week, which will help extend the growing season come fall and even winter.  The cold frame came in a kit from Gardener's Supply Company, the same company that we got our raised beds from.  I find their kits to be of good quality and pretty simple to assemble.

The construction of the cold frames was generally easy, although the instruction sheet was lacking in pictures so we had to look a few up.  We made two of them and were impressed at how handsome they are, take a look.  

Starting out-we pulled out all the pieces and made sure we had everything

Sean working on cold frame #1

Look, it even has a little wood piece for an easy-up

Complete!  get yours @ http://www.gardeners.com/

As Sean said on the last post, the weather has boosted growth in both our plants and the weeds, so the majority of our hours are consumed by weeding, mowing, and also more planting.  It's quite exciting watching our garden really come to life and it makes me more determined to keep it looking healthy and weed-free. 

What we have ready now:  Blueberries & raspberries (a few are ready), red lettuce, cilantro, and garlic!
What are we doing with them: Picking some of the berries and waiting on the rest to ripen, Campus Kitchens will be harvesting our cilantro and lettuce for their weekly dinners, and we will harvest the garlic this week! 

We can tell that that the garlic is ready because the plant has sprung up and the bottom older leaves have begun to turn yellow.  Tomorrow (given decent weather!) we will dig up the bulbs, wash them, and leave them to dry on newspaper in the house.  I'll get some photos of the garlic once we've done this, I can't wait to see all of it!

-MORE TO DO
Yesterday we met with Carrie and, after realizing that there are only a few weeks left, we filled in our July calender with plans of what we'd like to complete.

Here's a photo of our June and July calenders, including planting dates and odd jobs

A few things to highlight are; all the planting that we did in the beginning of June, which we can expect a harvest from late July- late August, the harvesting of garlic that we have planned for this week and next, and the higher priority odd jobs under the July calender--

               it reads "Door (to construct for the shed) Handrails (to construct for the bridge) Weedwhack the Seed to Table area (an abandoned garden just beside ours that students started last year) and Plan poster (a final wrap up that will include our work with GardenShare)

Whew, I'm tired already!  Although, these are all exciting projects and I'm interested to see how it all pans out

If your curious about our most recent work with GardenShare, we've been involved with weekly meetings with the director, Aviva, and another intern, Laura, to help prepare for the 2013 Food Day Youth Summit.  Sean and I are compiling "tool kits" that will be handed out to the various attending high schools at the event and will inform students on everything from starting a school club to how to run a taste test.  To learn about what this Food Day Youth Summit is all about, click here.

I will also be attending the Farmer's Market in Canton and Potsdam this weekend to help run a rapid assessment market survey on attending community members.  It's exactly what it sounds like- we will be surveying market-goers on 4 quick questions and assessing their answers to find strengths and weaknesses of the market. 

This it going to be a very interesting experience and I am looking forward to seeing the results.  I'm sure that the assessment will give me a lot of material to include on the final poster about my research with GardenShare, which I will be able to share with my peers later on.  

Well, I think I'm all caught up now!

Happy Wednesday, I hope your day has better weather than ours

-Sheila

 

Back at the Garden

After the long weekend for Independence Day, we spent Monday thoroughly pulling weeds to keep the garden under control.  We have seen huge and rapid growth in a very short time span quite recently, and it is looking to be a great harvest later this summer and fall!  Here are some photos of the garden at the end of the day.

 Flowers growing well

 Our raised beds, weed free and growing strong

 The potatoes have become quite large

 A close up of the potatoes

 The end of the potato bed, with new potatoes, peas, and tomatoes

 The garlic bed, without weeds and with a new layer of hay

 The beans we planted just last week already sprouting

 "Vermont Cranberry Dry Beans"

 Our carrot bed with a fresh layer of hay to keep the weeds down

 The corn bed is now connected to the tomato and pea fences to control weeds

 The peas looking strong

 A tomato plant

 The pea and tomato fences

 Some of our blueberries have turned blue!

Almost ready to pick!

~Sean

Halfway Update

This garden has come a long way in the weeks we have been here.  From our original list of tasks, we have:

• Reclaimed several beds
• Redone a few paths
• Planted tomatoes, peas, beets, sunflowers, borage, corn, and many others
• Finished all the GardenShare donation letters
• Built 3 new raised beds, and we will soon be assembling more cold frames that we ordered
• Connected with Campus Kitchens and donated cilantro and lettuce
• Researched greenhouses, yurts and seed-saving
• Continually weeded and watered our beds and mowed the garden
• Maintained our compost bin with grass clippings, coffee, and food scraps
• Created new trails to the Opportunities sculpture and the Protest Tree and bridge
• Wrote tool kits for GardenShare, practical how-to guides for them to hand out to participants at their food day youth summit, on composting and starting a garden club at local high schools
• Thoroughly weeded out the overrun blueberry and garlic beds

The garden is looking great, and is well on its way to a bountiful harvest later this summer and fall!

~Sean

PlantPlantPlant!

Happy Monday! 

We had a lot of fun things going on in the garden today, as our big focus is getting space cleared and putting things in the ground. 

Most of the morning was spent loosening up the soil and pulling weeds.  The area between the garlic and pea/tomato beds was cleared up and ready for planting.  In that space we now have 6 rows of carrots and 2 rows of beans. 

What we'd really like to do is turn over most of the grass surrounding the current beds because it will not only make more space for planting, but also lessen the chance of weeds and grasses moving in on the beds.
Less weeds around the beds= Less weeds infiltrating the beds!  I mean, weeding out a bed can be nice... but it sure is a lot of work

Since we harvested the last of the lettuce last week and gave it to campus kitchens, I planted some beets it their place.

Long rows of carrots
3 types (left to right): Yellow, Bolero, Nectar

The tomatoes are looking good and got re mulched to keep the weeds off

Sean doing some mowing around the property

Who knew that in the midst of all those weeds was a few asparagus plants!

Here is a photo of some borage that we found had self-seeded.  I had never seen borage before and was stunned by it's very different blue color

It's great to see the garden in bloom and with freshly turned beds.  I don't think that our corn will be knee high by the forth of July... but I saw today that our raspberries are looking ripe-- I'll take it!

-Sheila