Grow And Share

Well, our tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, and beans are in flower and there are small veggies starting to show on the plants.  We're hopeful that within the next 14 days we'll be able to start harvesting.

All of the produce from our 2-acre "Sharing Garden™" will be donated to local distribution centers.  These specially chosen distributors will give the food away to any family/individual who shows up and says that they need food.

Hard times call for all of us to contribute however we can.  This is us doing our part.  I ache, and I'm sometimes tireder than I can believe, but I feel good about the food there will be soon to give away.

Grow And Share is holding a fundraiser: a music festival September 6 2009. There will be music and vendors, and we will offer a limited number of free vendor booths to farmers. Farmers chosen to use the free booths must be willing to talk about farming, demonstrate how they supply food, and even provide samples. You may also sell during the event (some guidelines/limitations). Contact info [at] growandshare [dot] org for more information.

Well, things at the Bunn Sharing Garden are popping!  The flowers on the tomatoes and tomatillos have made way for tomatoes hanging on the plants.  We're hopeful tomatillos will soon follow. 

Tomatoes hanging despite the Colorado Potato Beetles that attacked!  We attacked back today with some Bonide chemicals (one of the better, hopefully less toxic ones) and hand-removal of the larva from the plants.

We also saw some flowers coming up on the Hatch's chile peppers.

Okra, cucumbers, watermelons, peas (many rows), beans (several types), cantaloupe, squash, and more are growing taller and taller in the garden.  We put some good fertilizer on the 2 acres today; a suggested 10-10-10 plus extra minerals including iron.

Mr. Groundhog continues snacking on plants, but a small percentage have been harmed... and the good news is that the plants he nibbled are growing new leaves.  We're hopeful that many of them will recover.

So.... anyway, with tomatoes on the plants and flowers spreading, we are hopeful we are on track to start giving food away (free to all comers and food banks) by the middle of June.

We planted a row of turnips which, at the first rain, all washed to one side of the row. :-) Now we have a thick, thick patch of beautiful turnip leaves. We are thinking we will harvest some of the patch to eat as greens, and then let the rest grow.  Frank loves turnips!

Last weekend, we planted the two acre Bunn community Sharing Garden.  Everything grown in this garden will be given away to local families and local food distribution centers.

We planted the tomatillos, tomatoes, and Hatch's chile pepper plants that were left over from the Garden Plant Giveaway (an event through which we provided local gardeners with free plants so that they could grow food to give away too).

Then, Frankie spent 3 days planting seeds for radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, cucumbers, cantaloupes, peppers, beans, lima beans, peas, and more.  With a few hours of help from Jan A., he planted about 36 rows of seeds!  Not bad for a city boy. :-)

Yesterday (Friday), we stopped by to check things out, like we to pretty much every day.  We had a lot of rain this week, and we have been watching to ensure things didn't get washed away.  All held like a charm, and very little soil movig was needed to cover exposed seeds or plants.

We actually got excited when we saw that the beans were popping through the surface... I'll try to post the picture I took of the 2 inch high bean we found in one row.  I guess the rain on and off since last Saturday gave the seeds a good drink and got them growing.

The turnips are also coming up in droves!  I have a picture of that as well and will try to post here.  There are many, many little turnips all along the row.  We did a full, 200 foot row of turnips, I think.  (I better check with Frank, as he was on that seed duty while I was planting some of the garden plants.)

Anyway, all is going well.  Hopefully we are on track to start harvesting and giving away food by the beginning of June.

A local news channel -- WRAL-TV -- came out to talk with us about what we are doing with Sharing Gardens -- getting more local food available in the community and getting more people growing larger gardens.

We gave the reporter, Stacy Davis, the Local Harvest website as one of our favorite resources.  So, she included a localharvest.org link on their channel's website!

The story and link are here -- http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/5053449/

What a fun yet tiring day!  We gave away more than 1,500 garden plants to local gardeners.  In return, they signed a pledge that they would share a part of their harvests with family, friends, strangers, and food distribution centers.

We're hoping this will help many folks in the area share food and keep more tummies full.

Well, the summer squash we started from seed are overgrowing their 4" peat pots!  Some of the leaves are also looking a bit yellow... wonder if that is normal or if the soil is missing some nutrient.

Either way, I'm about to transplant the little "seedlings" into larger pots.  Time to get my hands dirty! :-)

This is hopefully the first of many posts on our movement...www.growandshare.org[Read More]