Kids day.....

The PING workshop today at Covenant Community Garden in Fuquay-Varina was all about the kids. They spent the morning harvesting, mulching beds, hauling coarse mulch for walkways, and preparing an old bed for a new crop. After a pot-luck lunch and an afternoon worship service, the younger kids went off for a reading of Stone Soup, and the older kids stayed with the adults who were taught about urban market gardening by young folks from SEEDS.

Chris Burtner, garden manager of Covenant Community Garden, and Slate Gray and Jeff Daniels.

Kane Martinez, Slate and Jeff harvesting carrots.

Michael Martinez - not at all camera shy!

Lisa Martinez, Jeff and Slate sorting out the bad from the good carrots.

Susan Greene (co-manager of Seagrove Community Garden) and Lisa working in the herb beds.Ricardo, Markyse and Anthony, youth from SEEDS in Durham, pointing out one of the features of the urban, market garden where they are employed. Here's a blurb about SEEDS from the Durham Farmer's Market web site.....
SEEDS Community Garden has been an oasis nestled between residential and industrial neighborhoods in Northeast Central Durham since 1994. The produce we bring to the Durham Farmers Market is raised by the Durham Inner-city Gardeners (DIG), a youth-led urban farming leadership development program that has been a part of SEEDS for the past 8 years. Our quarter-acre market garden is a former parking lot that is now a balanced ecosystem of plants and pollinators.
DIG empowers teens by teaching gardening, sound business practices, healthy food choices and food security values. The program emphasizes sustainable living and growing practices, ecological balance, and the natural recycling of organic materials for plant health and nourishment. DIG youth are paid a stipend to cultivate the fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers and mushrooms that they sell at the Durham Farmer's Market. We also sell our produce to LocoPops and the Durham Food Co-op.

The green invasion.....

Gardening is an experimental enterprise, a constant learning opportunity, with it's own learning curve. You can ask 25 gardeners the best way to grow tomatoes and receive 25 different answers. What works in one garden might not work in another. On top of all the things we can control, there are always things we cannot control. This spring has been ideal for a burgeoning garden, and a mix of experienced, novice, organic and non-organic gardeners. We have had plenty of timely rain, followed by plenty of warmth and sunshine. Consequently, our garden is becoming pretty lush, and our battle with weeds (green invasion) has become an ongoing process. We are having plenty of successes, and our failures have been minimal. We are also learning from our mistakes, growing as individuals, as a community, and as gardeners. To top it off - we get to eat better food simply because it wasn't imported 1,500 miles, it's pesticide and herbicide free, we are invested in it's production, and we're having fun while doing it.

Debbie Dowling after spending a considerable amount of time thinning out the Swiss chard.

Tim Greene pushing Slate Gray pushing the lawn mower.
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Several of us will be attending a PING workshop this Saturday in Covenant Community Garden at Fuquay-Varina UMC. The focus of this workshop is "kids and youth in the garden." Call Claire at (919) 542-1396 x 207 for more info, directions and to register.

Monday night in the garden.....

We accomplished much last night - Benjamin Burns brought his walk behind bush hog and cleaned up the area surrounding the garden, while his wife Bonnie, and her daughter Lisa and grandson Michael twined peas and mulched. Slate and Jeff arrived in time to haul mulch and covered up some beds as well.

Twining and mulching

Our first jalapeno.

A rare shot - Slate not talking and Lisa leaning. They must be tired.

The Romas are looking good.

Weeding, thinning, planning and first tomato.....

With all the rain we've had this past week, interspersed with plenty of sunshine, our garden is really taking off! So are the weeds. We spent some time in a planning session, trying to chart a more defined course for our next few workdays, and some time thinning out the carrots too. Even though our numbers were few, we got quite a bit accomplished. Hmmmmmhhh, chopping weeds while conversing with both new and old friends is a pretty good way to spend a Saturday morning. Oh yeah, the last image is of our first tomato. Yippee!

Garden images.....

The following are random images taken from our 3rd. workday, Saturday, April 19.