Tuesday Work Party

The best reason for getting through Monday… ©

Composting

The Composting Crew’s Home Opener starts tonight “just after” 6 PM.

If you ever wondered what was going to happen to that mountain of bagged trees leaves stacked up against the east fence in the Communal Garden all will be revealed this evening!

I’m told that a Compost Crew consists of  3 members… and that generally there are at least a couple of crews…so there is a sort of leisurely rhythm to the practice which may belie the fact that there is some strenuous physical activity involved… however the more volunteers, the more crews and the more volunteers, the less strain! [I think that’s how the math works.]

I asked Kelly about Compost Crew scheduling and here’s what he emailed back to me …

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kelly Eberle
Date: Mon, May 26, 2014 at 12:58 PM
Subject: Compost Crewsday

Shawn,

I think we tried to meet weekly in the past few seasons. A lot of green material accumulates towards the end of the growing season so we ramped up to twice a week for a while, something like Wednesday and Saturday.

It is best to have 2 to 4 people for each compost session. Any more than 4 and you are usually tripping over each other.

Early season composting mostly involves mowing the grass in the green space next door to make compost. The bagging mower that was donated last year helped a lot with this.

Kurt had organized the Dream Center folks to help with mulching up the brown material and storing in the bin by the east fence of the Communal Garden. This helped a lot in cutting down the time the composting group had to spend each session. Usually we can clean things up pretty well in 1.5 hours to carry over for a week.

Maybe I’ll capture some of these notes and other “tips and tricks” we have learned over the past few years.

Kelly

Planting in the Communal Garden

Loads of beds were prepped on the weekend so it will be full steam ahead for the planting program in the Communal Garden.

The prepped beds are in fine shape and planting them is about as close to “real gardening” as it gets!

Prepping Beds in the Communal Garden

I know that after the previous paragraph you’d think it’s clear sailing in the CG but in fact there are 17 or 18 beds yet to be turned over and weeded… this too is ‘about as close to “real gardening” is it gets’ but with a little more strenuous activity thrown into the mix.

Some of the beds yet to be prepped have suffered the depredations of moderate to severe Quack Grass infestation and may present a challenge to the dedicated weeders amongst us.

 Unload bags of soil amendments and store

Garden Retreat will be delivering the second load of Promix and Sea Soil to the Garden and help moving the half-ton truck load would be much appreciated.

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Monday, May 26, 1440