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

Harvest wrap up

We will be having our harvest potluck at Stephanie & Ray's on November 8 at 6:30pm. We have a lot to celebrate!


Our final harvest tally is 3886 pounds, which works out to a $7772 contribution to Interfaith Food Bank.


Some of our volunteers have still been busy. Dave has done a huge amount of work, adding 12 rotting round bales that the barns wanted rid of, then rototilling it all in along with spreading more used Cornell mix. The plan is to add urea tonight or tomorrow before the snow and then some leftover compost and/or manure from some experiments next week or the week after. Thanks for this effort.


Notes from the Food Bank:


"We were exceptionally pleased to benefit from your garden this year.  Clients are eternally grateful for the selection of fresh, quality produce, and we very pleased with the variety of vegetables they could choose from.

The Tomato Plant Project was particularly great for our client base, as it not only educated our Young Chefs about the ability for individuals to produce their own food, but also provided a sustainable option to clients in working towards their own food security.  We believe the Tomato Plant Project worked very well with our aim to offer our clients a hand up, and not just a hand out.

We found the amount and variety of the produce you chose to grow for us to be a huge benefit to the food bank and those we serve, and we are looking forward to a continued relationship with you and your group, especially as we progress past our current kitchen project, and begin working on our own garden in the future.

Thanks again to you and your team, you've done a fantastic job and we've really enjoyed working with you."

September 27th harvest

On September 27, we harvested: 
370.5 lbs of carrots; 
28.5 lbs of eggplants; 
79.5 lbs of tomatoes; 
50 lbs of peppers.


Last week we harvested: 
22 lbs of peppers; 
26 lbs of tomatoes; 
319 lbs of carrots.

It appears, to date, we have harvested 3717 lbs of fresh produce.

Next week we will finish the carrots (late seeded) and the red beets and anything else.

Little helper

Drowning in tomatoes!