Final harvest tally

Our final harvest occurred last Friday - October 19. Dave had planted some late season radishes and he harvested 3 lbs of the "sweetest radishes ever".

That brings our final harvest total to 3337.5 lbs. This is valued by the Interfaith Food Bank at $6675.

Thank you to everyone who helped out this year. Rest up for a few months and we'll be recruiting again spring 2013!

Final harvest totals by crop (in pounds):

beets	454
carrots	1124
eggplant	108.5
green beans	118.5
green peppers	121
hot peppers	60
lettuce	135.5
swiss chard	99
tomatoes	1114
radishes	3

Carrot harvest

 Last Tuesday we had about 17 volunteers to help harvest. This made it go quickly and we finished just before the big dust storm hit.

Tomato harvest

Harvest update

We have now harvested something from each of our planted vegetables, except for our beans. In total, we have delivered over 600 lbs of produce to the food bank. Our lettuce is nearing the end but our tomatoes and peppers are just beginning.

Fusarium in our peas

Beets & carrots - our first beet harvest occurred this week

Tomatoes, marigolds & beans

Peppers

Our peas began to wilt and looked unwell. Derrick and I took a sample to our crop pathogen expert, Scott, and he has suggested they have fusarium. Because this has been such a wet year and because of our rich soil, this was likely unavoidable. He suggests rotating the peas and seeding earlier so the plants can get a jump start on the fungus. Dave has since sprayed them out. 

Diseased pea roots

Diseased pea stem & leaves

The Economic Value of a Rooftop Community Garden

I recently read an article on the economic value of a community garden by Ngaio Hotte. This garden is located on the rooftop of a YWCA in Vancouver. The learning and interacting that occurs with these types of collaborative projects is known as "building social and knowledge capital" and has an actual dollar value.

The author of this article valued the service-learning, increased property value, volunteer effort, boost to corporate revenue at several thousand dollars. (For example, Employee Volunteer Programs have been show to boost company revenues by 0.5%.)

A community garden is worth much more than the harvested vegetables!

http://www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca/PDFs_&_Docs/MagazinePDF/FFCF%20Spring%202012.pdf

First harvest

We have harvested lettuce and swiss chard for 2 weeks now. We've delivered over 50 lbs to the food bank.

June updates

Wow. What a difference a week makes. In the last week, with a bit of sunshine, our garden has exploded! Our veggies have grown. And so have the weeds. We harvested our first lettuce and swiss chard today. Three Rubber Maid tubs full.

In the past couple weeks, we've also planted donated raspberries and strawberries. (Thank you to Cheryl and Jake for donating these.)

We've planted out our tomatoes and marigolds and finished seeding beans. We've seeded more lettuce as well (Odyssey mix). (Thanks to the social committee and Tom for tomato plant donations.)

We've also potted up our tomatoes and delivered our lettuce growing kits. These will allow Food Bank clients to experience the thrill of growing their own food.

Potting up tomatoes

Potted tomatoes

Planting out marigolds

Tomato planting

Last week our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, marigolds and okra went outside....

Seedlings are up!

Dave tells us that the red beets, swiss chard, peas and lettuce are up!

UN food envoy decries 'shocking' conditions in Canada

Canada needs to drop its "self-righteous" attitude about how great a country it is and start dealing with its widespread problem of food insecurity, the United Nations right-to-food envoy says.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/food+envoy+decries+shocking+conditions+Canada/6626850/story.html#ixzz1v9jXIPRo

Spring Seeding

Spring seeding - What's in the ground?
Peas (4 rows of Edible Pod Super Sugar snap Peas from TnT Seeds)
Carrots
Beets
Lettuce
&
Swiss Chard

Hunger Awareness Week

May 7-11, 2012


Hunger Awareness Week is a week-long initiative that challenges Canadians to learn more about the issue of hunger in our country and to take action to make a difference for those in need.

Canadians can help in three simple ways – Give It Up, Give a Shout, and Give It Out:

Give It Up:        Give up your meals for a day, lunch for a week, or a staple food item. Walk in the shoes of hunger to begin to understand what it means to go without food, experiencing the effects of hunger first hand.

Give a Shout:    Share your experience by going online to show your support via Facebook, Twitter or blogging.

Give It Out:       Donate food, funds or your time to a local food bank.

http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/default.aspx

2012 Garden Plan

We expanded east for a larger garden and room for perennials!

Western Canada Permaculture Convergence, 2012

A three day (August 24,25,26) coming together of permaculture enthusiasts, to share information, inspiration and learn a few new skills.


Also - Skills Workshop in July

• Rocket mass heater shower installation
• Cob Oven Building
• Site design and Garden installation
• Timber frame Structure building
• Composting Toilets and creating a humanure compost

http://abconvergence2012.blogspot.ca/

2012 Volunteer Meeting

LRC Food Banks' Garden Volunteer Meeting

Wed. Apr. 4

12:15-1pm

Cafeteria Conference Room

Danielle from the Interfaith Food Bank will be speaking on how our garden's donations benefit the Food Bank clients. In two years, we have donated $12,000 worth of produce to the Lethbridge Interfaith Food Bank. All are welcome to join to hear about the success of the LRC Food Banks' Garden. Snacks will be served.

2012 Planning

Over the fall, Dave (our magic soil guy) has been amending our soil. His amendments prior to the 2011 growing season improved our garden tremendously. It was joy to work in and almost doubled our bounty. He has added rotting bales and used Cornell mix for our 2012 growing season.

We're also in the process of ordering our 2012 seeds, planning our potted vegetable donation. And we're recruiting volunteers! Volunteer effort is our limiting resource. Want to help? Email us!

Cornell mix

Rotting bales