Produce Delivery Picture in Enterprise

Hey all!

Check out this picture from the Enterprise that Kathy Weigel took after delivering some of our lettuce and broccoli to the St. Mary's Caring Soup Kitchen! Great stuff Kathy!

We've been a little short on help recently, but still have LOTS to do! Our tomatoes and peppers need constant watering and the tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and could be staked and tied again!

If you or your church group want to help out- please don't hesitate to email me (Aaron) at french.aaron@gmail.com

Thanks!

Updates, Work Days and More!

Hi all,

Though it's been a while since the blog has been updated, ALOT has been happening!
We've harvested almost all of our cabbage and broccoli and donated it to 3 Oaks, St. Mary's Caring and the HOPE food pantry, along with a couple pounds of delicious red lettuce!

The tomatoes are coming in strong now, and the potatoes we planted a while ago are a couple inches high now! It's absolutely beautiful (albeit incredibly hot) out in the garden nowadays!

Starting this week, we'll be doing weekly work days on Thursdays at 6:30 pm. Unless it's thunder storming or any other sort of serious weather, we'll be out planting, harvesting, watering and maintaining our garden! We hope to see you there!

Below are some pictures one of our volunteer-extroadinaire's, Kathy Weigel, took!
Enjoy and see you in the garden!

Potato Planting Successful!

Hey everyone!
Our planting party last week went really well, followed up by some great planting by some St. Mary's students.

Check out some pictures!

Potato Planting Tomorrow!

Hey all!

We've finally reached the point where we're ready to start planting all the beautiful potatoes that Ms. Behnke donated.

It's all happening out at the garden at 6:30 pm this Thursday (the 19th)!
Not only will we be planting an amazing amount of potatoes, but we'll also be welcoming some new folks into our project! A group from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will be joining us to lead the work day...but we'd love for people from other churches to join us as well!

No need to bring anything but yourself, a pair of gloves and a friend or family member!
See you tomorrow at 6:30!

Feel free to call me at 402-990-4170 with any questions!

Progress!!

Hey all!

It's now full on spring (and almost summer too!) and our garden is making beautiful progress!

We've had a lot of folks helping out from the college recently, as well as some other people coming out to plant tomatoes and lettuce on their own. I'll apologize for the lack in coordination on organizing work days etc...but now that I'm back in the swing of things look for more info on work times soon!

To update everyone on our progress, I've included this updated map of the garden. The Red Check marks are things that have been planted already (or at least partially planted already), and the blue checks mean that the entire bed has been weeded of wheat and is ready to have mushroom soil spread on it and hoed up! Here is the map:

So, priorities for work to be done are (in no particular order):
1. Finish planting the first 5 rows. We'll have our pepper and tomato seedlings really soon- they just need to get a little bigger in the greenhouse. We have had lots of tomato plants be donated though- which is amazing! and theyre looking fabulous!
2. Pull up all the wheat for the rest of the long beds...then move on to the wheat in the 3 sisters, melons, corn and potato field plots. We can put the wheat in a large pile next to the four new compost bins (not actually in the compost bins though...)
3. WEED EVERYTHING!
4. WATER EVERYTHING! - as summer gets hotter and hotter, we're going to need to be watering these plants everyday to make sure they produce really nicely.

Thats all for now...but I'll post soon about upcoming work days. If you feel excited about going out to the garden- don't feel like you need a person to direct you out there in order for you to work! Experiment with things, try new stuff...and even if you're not comfortable with that...pulling up the wheat is a pretty self explanatory job!

Sorry for the long post!
Thanks to all for their help!
See you in the garden...
aaron

Work Day's This Week and Weekend

Hi all,

After a weekend away, I know I'm ready to jump back into the garden. Our plot is looking better than ever, but still has a long way to go! This week I'm planning on building a garden kiosk- where we can post announcements, a garden map and a to-do list. If you'd like to help out, shoot me an email!

Also, proposed work days this week:

Wednesday: 5:30 pm
Thursday: 5:30 pm
Saturday: 10 am
Sunday: 2 pm

Friday I'll be presenting about our work at the Campus Community Farm and our garden at a conference titled "Eating Green" at American University in DC, but it'd be great if people could meet out at the garden to plant carrots and other things, as well as create more beds. I'll post a garden map out in the shed and on the blog, so everyone can know where things are going!

See you in the garden! Feel free to email or call me with more questions!
Aaron

Work Days and Enterprise Article!

Hello!

It's been a beautiful sunny week, and although it's not looking to fabulous out now, it's still going to be a great weekend for gardening, so come on out to our two work days this weekend!

FRIDAY at 4:30 pm

and

SATURDAY at 10 am

 As always, any sort of help is appreciated! We'll have the tools and supplies...just bring yourself and a friend!

 

Also, the Enterprise just put out an article about our project, with great photos and quotes from some of the folks involved! 

You can read the article either in the Friday (4/9) paper, or online...here! 

See y'all in the garden!

Aaron

       

Work Day Tomorrow!

Hey All!

Weather permitting, we'll be out at the garden tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 10am, planting things and getting some beds set up!

You can check out the new tab "How to Get to the Garden", for information on where it is, and where you can park once you've arrived!

A reporter and photographer from the Enterprise will be there as well, so let's try to get alot of folks out!

See you tomorrow!
Call Aaron with any questions (402-990-4170)

Here are some photos the photographer from the Enterprise took of this work day!

 

-All photos taken by Reid Silverman for The Enterprise-

Article in the County Times!

hello!

The St. Mary's County Times newspaper did a little feature on our project with some great photos from our work day! You can read it here on page 15: http://countytimes.somd.com/read/

It looks like we'll be having a meeting on Thursday at 6:30 (tentative time), out at the garden to begin to plan out our bed/path structure. We'll also be having a work day on Saturday, tentatively at 10am.

Check back for more info!
Aaron

Photos and Updates

Hello all!

Here are some great photos from our work day last weekend!

In other garden news, the rest of our plot will be tilled up early this week by the great folks at the facilities department of St. Mary's College. This means that towards the end of this upcoming week we'll be out in the garden planning the structure of our garden, planting our cold weather bed and much more!

Check back for more news!

Work Day Success!

Hi all!

This past Saturday, around 10 of us went out to the garden for our FIRST work day!

Kathy Weigel from Church of the Ascension generously rented us a tiller to till up a small "cold weather" plot...where we can plant veggies that do well in cold weather, like lettuce, kale, other greens, cabbage and broccoli. After tilling up a small patch we spent the rest of the morning clearing the patch of the wheat that was planted there previously...almost filling up our whole compost bin!

We'll have the rest of our land tilled up early this week by the generous folks at the facilities department of St. Mary's College and then we'll be ready to make beds, paths and start planting!

I'd also like to immensely thank the several folks who have donated seeds and seedlings as part of our Seed Donation drive:

-the McCoy family of Good Samaritan Lutheran Church, who donated lots of seed packets!
-Leon Dean of St. Cecelia's Church, the owner of New Beginnings Farm in St. Inigoes, who donated two flats each of well grown cabbage and broccoli
-Kathy Weigel of Church of the Ascension who donated lots of seed packets!
-Anita Goehringer of Good Samaritan Lutheran Church who also donated lots of seeds!

Look for pictures and more work day announcements soon!

Meeting Thursday! Come one and all!

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to announce our next meeting here on the blog.
We'll be meeting in the:
Trophy Room (Rm 105) of the St. Mary's College Campus Center this Thursday at 7pm

Below you can find a map of where the campus center is and where you can park if you are interested in coming to the meeting. They have been small so far (myself and usually 3 other people), but we're as we go further and further into the growing season- the need for more people at these planning meetings will become more apparent! The agenda is not set yet- so any suggestions for ideas to talk about would be more than welcome! Otherwise we'll probably be talking about: funding (where we can "house" our money, and how to raise it), a garden plan (I'll have more specifics on the actual square footage on Thursday) and hopefully scheduling some more Sunday church visits!

Thanks all!
For the map: RED is where you can park and BLUE is the building itself.

Meeting Today!

We had a great meeting of our little coordinating group today. In attendance were Rick Tarr from Good Samaritan Lutheran Church and Kathy Weigel and Kae Clark from Church of the Ascension, along with myself- Aaron.

We talked about our current funding issues and decided that we are still looking for a place to host our funds and also a non-profit (501 c3) tax ID number so that we can have a safe place to keep money we raise and also help with our solicitation of in-kind donations. If you work with a church or community organization that would be willing to host our funds, please get in touch with us!

We also began to discuss garden plot plans (how our garden will look and what vegetables we will plant), as well as a general time line for the rest of the spring.

We agreed that our garden land will be disced (roughly tilled) by the 15th of March, and we're looking to get a crew of people out on Saturday the 19th to till and do general prep out in the garden...more details to come!

We are currently looking for a roto-tiller to use in preparing our garden beds for planting, so if you or someone you know has a roto-tiller that could be borrowed or even donated- we would sincerely appreciate it! It would help us along in our project immensely!

We're also seeking donations: monetary, in-kind and volunteer hours (Geraldine from St. Cecelia's refers to it as "time and talents") from anyone. We can't offer a tax deductible right now, but we should have that worked out fairly soon. If you work at a business that sells gardening tools, we would love to get in touch with you!

See you in the fields...

Welcome to the St. Mary's County Community Garden Project!

Hi there!

This site is currently under lots of development! Check back soon for more details!
If you or someone you know would like to get involved with the project, feel free to email Aaron French at
french.aaron@gmail.com !

thanks and we'll see you out in the garden!