Spring 2013

Yesterday we hit record setting highs in Southern Alberta. Lethbridge touched 21 deg Celsius.

The garden is waking from its wintery slumber and our seed order is in.

Stay tuned for our initial volunteer meeting!

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!