May 1, 2010

This morning The Groovy Growing Gardeners met in the Salvation Army's Meeting room to discuss their garden plans. The kids learned about spacing of the plants in their garden boxes. They had to make some tough choices on what they where going to grow. They also discussed when they would be planting seeds or plant start out in their garden boxes. They discovered that each type of plant has it's own needs that have to be met. Some need to be started earlier inside and then transplanted out and some are best to direct sow. Vegetables are not all grown the same.


With all the rain we have been having they also learned why you shouldn't step in the row even when weeding. The soils we have here in the Willamette Valley are made up of a good percentage of clay. Even with the little bit of pressure from stepping in the rows to weed the soil packs down the soil very tight and makes nice clods that won't break up easy. We did manage to get a fair amount of weeding done. The 2 rows that the children are going to be planting with watermelons and cantaloupe in for the Food Pantry are weeded. Now we need to get some compost put on the row and wait for the rains to stop so we can cultivate it.


Here is a picture of what the Food Pantry rows looked like before we started weeding.


Here the kids are getting the work done. We finished weeding these two Food Pantry rows and some around the new picnic table. The season is starting!