2011 Spring Garden Guide

A Message from Sara

This is it! Welcome to irrigation and growing season 2011! We will be irrigating the garden every Tuesday evening at 6pm. Please come out to make sure the water is flowing properly through your furrows and enjoy the amazing sunset reflecting on the flooded furrows! If the water is not flowing smoothly and to the end of your furrow, you probably need to:

1)      Dig/Clear out your furrows so they are level and clear of debris.

2)      Build up low spots in your row by adding more dirt to these areas. Low spots divert the water from flowing through one furrow into another furrow and the water may never get to the end of your row.

The gated flood irrigation we use at the garden is certainly an experience, come check it out! Every Tuesday at 6pm. We can have a Tuesday evening potluck when it gets warmer!

Remember April 18^th is the deadline for having your row and the path in front of your row cleared of weeds for a fresh start this year!

It not too late to plant your cool season veggies! If you haven’t yet, now is the time to plant your leafy greens, root vegetables, lettuces, spinach, peas, broccoli, cabbage and my favorite, kohlrabi! Also, Eli from Chispas farm told me he plants his potatoes on April 1^st, so if potatoes are in your anticipated harvest basket, now is the time!

Also, if you’d like to get a jump on your warm season veggies, now is a great time to start your seedlings indoors for tomatoes, peppers and whatever else your heart desires. Remember to read the back of your seed packet to see if what your planting should not be started indoors, but planted directly from seed in the garden after may 15^th (our last frost date). Warm weather seedlings should also find their new home in the garden after May 15^th.

Please start doing your garden tasks to keep the common areas comfortable this spring! If you have questions about what your task is, when to do it, or how to contact the other people working on your same task, please let me know. There is a folder titled “Detailed Task Descriptions” in the door of the tool shed for further reading on your task details.

Oh! Also, the shed looks like a giant watermelon right now, but it is a landscape scene in progress. The VSA north 4^th art center is repainting our shed, to cover the green splatters from last year, every Tuesday morning at 9:30, join us if you’d like to help! Don’t worry, the bright pink will be mostly covered with green plants and I hope it makes people smile to look at it when it is finished.

Please read on for tips on how to make the most out of our ugly duckling compost bins!

THANK YOU!!!

I’d like to send enormous thanks to Bonnie for donating the new 300 ft. flex hose we need to fill the watering tanks…twice! And for making sure the tanks are getting filled regularly in the face of a very shallow drainage ditch! We will be connecting our 2” tank filling pipe with the water system in the field next to us later this month. Then I can send water to the tanks by pressing a button in the well house!!! Thank you for keeping our garden alive in the mean time!

Also, thanks to the Junior League of Albuquerque for granting us the funds we needed to purchase a new garden tiller, solar powered security lights for the shed, and the PVC we needed to connect our tank filling pipeline to field 4! Thank you for helping make our garden safe and successful!

News and Announcements!

Please let me know if you’d like to be on an evening garden team. I would like to form groups of gardeners who will commit to being at the garden on a certain evening of the week every week to work on their row (other than Tuesday). Evening is valuable gardening/weeding time as the days get hotter and everyone works during the day and being at the garden in groups will be safer for everyone, as we have wandering vegetable snatchers sometimes in the summer. Plus, this will give you a scheduled time to make sure you keep up with your row, sort of like making sure you go to soccer practice (garden practice).

Ed is selling mason bee homes for your garden rows for $15 as well as sturdy handmade tomato cages. If you’re interested, contact him at e.stevens@att.net

Compost: the break down! How to make the most out of our compost bins!

Our compost bins have enormous potential and can be very valuable as a tool for growing healthy soil with nutrients, structure and micro biodiversity for our garden! There are a few things we can do to make this a success.

1) You will soon see signs at every compost bin listing what to add and what not to add to the compost piles. This goes especially for weeds, but there are other do’s and don’t for adding to compost also. Keep and eye out for the signs and place anything else in the invasive weed bins or all the way south of the garden in the mountain of misfit organic matter.

2) We need 45% mature (dry) materials like straw, dry chemical free grass and dry leaves and 45% immature (green) materials to balance our compost. If you do not compost at home, please bring your vegetable scraps from your kitchen and add them to our compost pile so we can have a more consistent source of green layers!

3) We need to alternate 1-2 inch layers of green and brown waste in each pile and add in a ¼ inch layer of soil whenever we can. When adding your kitchen and garden scraps, cover the green waste with a layer of brown waste, or life the existing brown layer and bury your green underneath.

4) Normally, the compost will be ready in 3-6 months.

5) “Compost is ready to use when it is dark and rich looking and it crumbles in your hands. The texture should be even and you should not be able to discern the original source of materials. Mature compost even smells good – like water in a forest spring!”- John Jeavons, How to Grow More Vegetables

6) We need to remove the finished compost from last season out of the bottoms of the compost bins and sift into a pile that is ready for use. Rows 1-39 will use the north compost piles, rows 40-70 will use the middle compost pile, and rows 71-109 will use the south compost piles. This way we can evenly utilize our finished compost and our composting space.

7) If you’d like to build additional compost areas around the garden, you’re welcome to but please let me know first. We are collecting pallets in the re-use area across from the tool shed. Pallet donations are welcome!

Composting at home is also a great way to build food for your garden out of your food and yard waste! Grow soil rather than adding to toxic landfill waste! Here is a link from the county extension for more information on starting your home compost pile and link to an excellent movie about dirt!

http://bernalilloextension.nmsu.edu/mastercomposter/composting-information.html

http://dirtthemovie.org/