Gardeners: Make the Climate Connection.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

We have a small harvest this week, but please do take part.

Broccoli, a cool-weather vegetable, is starting to flower, so we harvested small shoots from the sides of the plants. The Pony Pal and Turtle classes will then uproot the plants and feed them to the earthworms in our new worm compost tower, loaned to the garden by Mrs. Morris.

When broccoli flowers, it is time to pull it up and add it to the compost.

We harvested broccoli, a few onions, one very fat radish, and lots of cilantro. Carrots and beets are coming along nicely, and the WSYC children will soon plant squash, corn, and beans, and possibly some pumpkins, too. They got their hands dirty this week, pulling up the spent collard greens to make room for new plants.

The preschool children pulled up the collards and will be feeding them to the earthworms.

We have lots of herbs available for cutting: bronze fennel, lemon balm, thyme, oregano, chives, and cilantro. These won’t be on the harvest table, but just grab a garden committee member and ask for help. We will be glad to share them with you.

Hope to see you at the harvest table on Sunday!

The Westminster School for Young Children is going to be helping with planting and tending the garden this spring. They will be learning about the “Three Sisters” approach to vegetable planting, a Native American technique that involves co-planting squash, beans, and corn.

We hope to use the blog this spring and summer to keep the congregation up to date on the weekly harvest. If you have particular requests, please let us know and we’ll try to accommodate them.

The garden has seen a kind of renaissance as well, as the summer plants were taken out and fall and winter vegetables planted in their place. The middle school youth have helped in the garden, as we have been talking about food justice and its many related issues.

The youth removed plants and mulched the paths in September, and in October, they planted garlic, spinach, lettuce, kale, and cilantro.

Those crops are growing beautifully, and are almost ready to harvest.