The start of our 2017 growing season

Most of our garden is in the ground. We have cucumbers to seed and melons to transplant. Here's what's in the ground

April 13 - seeded radish and spinach
May 3 & 4 - transplanted onions
May 8 - seeded lettuce
May 11 - transplanted 540 pepper plants and 175 eggplant
May 16 - seeded carrots and beets
May 23 - transplanted 50 tomato plants

Frost last week

A bit of frost singed our garden last week. Greenery was damaged but most fruit was saved.




Eggplant

Frosted peppers

Carrots

Harvest update

We have harvested 1911.5 lbs of produce with a value of $4778.75. Our biggest vegetable contributor to this total is onions. We've harvested 910.5 lbs so far!

July 13 harvest

We harvested 22.5 lbs of green peppers and 5.5 lbs of lettuce.
Our delivery totals to date are 158.5 lbs of produce valued at $396.25.

June 6 - our first harvest

Early this morning volunteers met and harvested 95.5 lbs of spinach and 35 lbs of radishes. Lots of the radishes were negatively impacted by herbivory but the spinach was superb. We're watering the garden now in preparation for the 34C heat.

Spinach

Radish 

A start to 2016

With garden plan and soil ready, we've begun our 2016 seeding. We've planted radish, spinach and lettuce seeds.

We're also very proud of volunteer David who has been honoured as the “Gardener of the Year” by the Lethbridge and District Horticultural Society.

Gardener of the Year

2015 Harvest Total

Our final harvest total for 2015 was 2098.5 lbs of fresh produce delivered with a final value of $5246.25.

From 2010 through 2015, the Lethbridge Research Centre Food Banks' Garden has produced 18200.5 lbs of produce with a value of $40849.75!

Harvest update

Our harvest total for so far this year is 963.5 lbs valued at $2408.75!

This includes 1 watermelon!

Progress

We have harvested all our beets and carrots and a second round has been seeded.

Onions

Baby Watermelon!

Straw mulch has been added to our tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to improve soil moisture retention and inhibit weeds.

First Harvest 2015

We harvested our first vegetables this week - radishes and spinach. Some of the radishes had been attacked by insects. Interestingly, these were in the rows nearest the trees. Our spinach is beginning to bolt so we pulled out the entire plants. We'll seed carrots in these rows next.

Spinach is starting to bolt

In the Garden 2015

In the LRC Food Banks' Garden for 2015, we have:

Beans
Swiss chard
Lettuce
Spinach
Watermelon
Eggplant
Tomato
Peppers
Beets
Radishes
Carrots
Onion
Cucumber
Raspberry

Soil Amendment Workshop - May 1, 2015

The Kinsmen Open Community Garden is hosting a FREE soil amendment workshop on Friday, May 1, 2015.

Spring 2015

We have our garden plan established and some early seeds in the ground. We're hoping to try a couple new crops - watermelon, onion....maybe even sweet potato!

Final total

This year we donated 3175 lbs of produce to the Interfaith Food Bank. This was valued at $7937.50.

In the five years we have been growing, we have donated over 16000 lbs of fresh produce with a value of $35,600.

Thank you to all our volunteers!

September 16 Harvest

Post frost - we're still harvesting!

We have now reached the grand total of 2300.5 lbs of produced delivered (valued at $5751.25).

Eggplants

September 16, 2014 Harvest

Harvest Update

Last weeks deliveries (lbs)

Beets	62.5
Beets	10
Eggplant	3.5
Carrots	3
Beans	1
Zucchini	1
Peppers	7
Lettuce	21.5
Tomatoes	1.5
Swiss chard	4.5

Total = 266 lbs ($665)

Fried Purslane !

One of the most prolific weeds in our garden is Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). It propagates readily and a good amount of our weeding effort is dedicated to Purslane.

But maybe we need to look at purslane differently? Check out this blog posting by Ashley from Lethbridge on Fried Purslane.
https://blog.etsy.com/en/2010/edible-weeds-fried-purslane-with-off-the-hooks/

Ashley's recipe

Fried Purslane
Serves 2

2 cups (500 ml) fresh purslane leaves (and stems, if young), washed
2 Tbsp (30ml) butter or olive oil
1/4 cup (50ml) dry white wine
2 Tbsp (30ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Freshly grated parmesan cheese to taste

Bring water to a boil, add purslane, reduce heat and simmer for 3-5 min. Drain.

Melt butter or oil in a heavy skillet. Add blanched purslane, wine, and lemon juice — cook until liquid reduces slightly. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper, grate fresh parmesan cheese on each serving.

Serve hot and enjoy!


And here's a recipe for Purslane Salad from Amy Chaplin.

Late spring purslane salad with flax chive dressing

5 baby turnips, cut in ¼’s
5 radishes, cut in ¼’s
5 baby carrots, cut in half lengthways
10 sugar snap peas, trimmed
2 large handfuls purslane

Dressing
2 tablespoons flax oil
Juice of half a lemon
½ teaspoon tamari or shoyu, or more to taste
Black pepper
6 chives chopped

Place turnips and radishes in the basket of a steamer and steam 2 minutes. Add sugar snaps and steam 1 minute more. Remove from heat and spread out on a platter to cool.

http://www.coconutandquinoa.com/2010/06/12/purslane-salad-with-flax-chive-dressing/

Harvest on July 14

On July 14, we harvested:

Peppers  2.5 lbs
Lettuce  39.5 lbs
Kale  7 lbs
Swiss chard  16 lbs
Beets  63.5 lbs

This brings our total to date - 150.5 lbs valued at $376.25.

Our first harvest

Yesterday (June 23), we harvested our first produce - 22 lbs of spinach!

Weeds!

We pulled weeds yesterday - purslane, red root pig weed.....

Our emergence is patchy for some crops and will require some reseeding.

Beans

Spinach and beets