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