Gardeners: Make the Climate Connection

An invitation from the NC Interfaith Power & Light, a program of the NC Council of Churches, to all church-based community gardens:

Gardeners: Make the Climate Connection.

The garden’s birthday

The garden is two years old today.

I’m declaring the garden’s birth date as its dedication day, Pentecost Sunday, 2011.

The story of Pentecost, in Acts 2, tells of the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples and giving them the gift of communication in many languages and forms, so that they could better go out and spread the gospel message.

I hope that in its two years of being, the garden has spoken to members of the Westminster community in some way. Through it, we have striven to help our brothers and sisters needing the services of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. We have endeavored to teach children, youth, and anyone else who would listen about ways to care for all of creation by eating well and using nontoxic methods of garden management. We’ve tried to convey how difficult it is to grow large quantities of food safely, to raise awareness of the rights of farm workers, and to teach about other concepts of food security.

Thanks for your support of this mission over the past two years. We hope that, if the garden speaks to you, you will join us there as we continue to teach and serve our community and our neighbors.

Rethink What You Eat

Rethink What You Eat.

Watch the video recommended by the North Carolina Council of Churches.

Three sisters are growing up

There won’t be a harvest this week; we’re letting the carrots get a bit larger.

A few weeks ago, the preschool children planted corn, squash, and beans in the garden. These are known as the “Three Sisters,” because they grow well together, providing benefits to each other, and are nutritionally complementary to one another. Beans fix nitrogen, which corn consumes heavily as it grows. The beans use the corn stalks as natural trellises. Squash provides a natural mulch. At the end of the season, their crop residues can be turned under to improve soil quality for the next growing season.

I anticipate the first harvest from these plants around mid-June…say, in time for a Father’s Day cookout.

Weekly harvest

Bring your goodwill donations and your ranch dressing!

Planting progress

The preschool children have planted okra, pumpkins, and nasturtiums. They are also refining their watering technique.

This Sunday, we should see our first harvest in several weeks. We’ll have herbs: thyme, chives, lemon balm, and cilantro; we will also have our first carrots and a few beets…but Nancy has dibs on the beets.

Chive blossoms are edible, by the way, as are the stems. Put them in a salad to go along with your baked potato.

Ponies planting

We don’t have a harvest this week (the carrots and beets are coming along well, though!), but the Pony Pal class ensured that we will have veggies to enjoy this summer.

They began by preparing old vegetable leaves and stalks for the worm bin.

The worms nest in a layer of damp shredded newspaper, and will migrate up through the tower to eat the discarded garden scraps. In their place, they will leave their castings, which are one of the best soil additives and organic fertilizers we can provide. 

Then, they planted seeds of corn, squash, and beans.

Thanks for your help, Pony Pals!