Compost Bin Success!

With the days getting colder, we’ve had some of our last weeks out in the garden until next season. During this time, we have been working on finishing to clean everything up for the winter and making our compost bin. It took us two weeks to build, but we finally managed to put it together!

The first weekend, we started out with five shipping pallets donated by the Swarthmore Department of Grounds, a bit of scrap wood, and some nails. We sawed down the pallets so they would fit together nicely, and started to hammer them together. It was tough going at first, since the wood was so hard, but we eventually got the hang of it and managed to put together a frame.

hammering the pallets together

We couldn’t get too many hands in on the building, so we spent a lot of time on some art projects. We started out by making some nice snowflakes out of construction paper. When we got bored of that, we began to make some masks. We also played around with pipe cleaners- making bracelets, flowers, and other creative designs.

Akirah showing off her mask

We came back the following weekend to finish up the compost bin. Equpped with a roll of mesh and some hinges, we hammered together a door frame using scrap wood, which we lined with mesh so nothing would fall out. We attached the door to the frame we built last week with hinges, so it can be easily opened whenever the compost needs to be turned. Check out the finished product! And Sara putting in some plants we pulled up a few weeks ago- out first batch of compost!

the completed bin!

the inaugural compost

Again, not everyone could be working on the building at the same time, so a few of us spent more time on arts and crafts. This week, we drew pictures of the garden. Since it was so chilly this Saturday, we had to take some breaks to do exercises around the garden to warm up. We took turns leading jumping jacks, skips, and other activities.

playing follow the leader to get our blood flowing!

We had a special snack of baked apples with cinnamon this week, left over from the previous night. Some EJ members had a dinner meeting with Chester residents to talk about possible future plans for exapanding the garden project. Look for more news about this coming next semester!

As always, check out our Flickr for more photos.

We wish everyone a happy and healthy holday season!!

Closing up the Beds

The past two weeks have been absolutely beautiful- we couldn’t ask for better days! We’ve been able to get a ton of work done thanks to the weather, so bear with the long post!

We’ve finally finished harvesting the last surviving crops over the past two weeks- a yellow squash or two managed to survive, along with some chard and our ever-abundant supply of onions. Most of the onions were unfortunately too old to take home to cook with, but everyone really enjoyed playing chef and chopping them up with a trowel. Some kids even made up “soup,” mixing the chopped onions, some roots, dirt, and pieces of apple skin from snack time (luckily nobody tried to eat it)!

Most of our time has been spent digging up all the plants left in the beds and turning over the soil. We’ve successfully cleared out all of the round beds and put down some seed for our cover crop.

all cleaned up and ready for next season

We’re also close to finishing cleaning up the back beds where the potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant were planted. In the process of pulling out the plants, we learned a little bit about roots and how important they are for the plant to get water and nutrients from the ground to grow.

garden teamwork to pull up the stubborn plants!

Take a look at the transformation! Our beds are almost completely ready for the winter.

before...

and after!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve also brought some wooden pallets to garden, thanks to the Swarthmore Department of Grounds, and we’re working to use them to create a compost bin for all the plants we’ve pulled up. We’ll hopefully have that together by the beginning of December! Pictures to come…

This past weekend, we also made garden art. Everyone went around and collected grass, flowers, dirt, berries, and fallen leaves from around the garden. We used glue to assemble all the found objects on pieces of paper- making collages and pictures of the garden. We even found out we could dye the paper a nice purple by rubbing the berries on it.

We ended the day with a game of duck-duck-goose, to continue our new tradition of ending the work day with a fun game.

We’ll be missing this next weekend because of Thanksgiving, but we’ll be back the first week in December to finish up the garden work and make some more progress with our compost bins.

Don’t forget to check out our Flickr for more pictures.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

End of season festivities

Cold weather has finally arrived in Southeastern PA, so we’ve been busy at the garden wrapping up this season and preparing for winter!

Last weekend we had our second annual end-of-season pizza party. It was snowing/sleeting basically all day- appropriate end of gardening weather! We were definitely all glad to be in the community center for the afternoon, but the cold slush made it difficult to round everyone up and kept us from gathering some final produce (greens, onions, and peppers) for pizza toppings.

Nonetheless- pizza was made and consumed! Many thanks to Peace-a-Pizza for the delicious dough.

In addition to pizza, we had arts and crafts and certificate decorating to thank the garden crew for “Outstanding participation in each garden activity, great cooperation and teamwork with all other gardeners, and a fabulous willingness to try new things everyday.”

Thankfully this weekend was quite a bit warmer and beautiful for gardening. The slushy snow did in a lot of the remaining eggplant, squash, and tomato plants, but we were able to get in a last harvest of produce. We dug up sweet potatoes, picked a ton of greens and onions, and even found the last few eggplant and peppers. We got a start on clearing out the beds and getting things ready for winter, but we still have a lot of work to do!

We did our usual spin around the Bennett with produce in a wheelbarrow, then came back to the garden for apples and clean-up. After our work was done for the day, we ended with a fun round of freeze tag, at the request of Akirah.

Stay tuned for updates about our winter activities- and check out our Flickr for more photos from the past couple of weeks!

The Harvesting Continues

Everything in the garden has been growing so well. We’ve almost got more things growing than we know what to do with! We’ve been continuing to harvest the past two weeks- still picking tomatoes, squash, eggplant, onion, and basil.

On Saturday, we were also able to dig up our potatoes. Everyone got to work really getting their hands dirty sifting through the dirt for the potatoes hidden beneath. We even found a lone watermelon in the back of the garden, hidden among the weeds and potatoes! We all enjoyed the final watermelon of the season for snack, along with some apples. Some of the kids were also really into eating all the onions we have- they really like them raw! We divided up the rest of the produce among everyone who came out to help to take home for cooking.

We hoped to also dig up the sweet potatoes, but they still need a week or do to grow a bit bigger. So, over the next few weeks we’ll be finishing to pick and distribute the rest of the produce, as well as add to our recipe books to include dishes with potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions. Pretty soon we’ll also start to prepare the garden for the winter. In the meantime, we’re in the midst of planning an end-of-the year garden party, where we’ll make our own pizzas with veggies we’ve grown and celebrate a really successful season!

Back in the Swing

Sorry for such a big delay in updating about the garden! The past month and a half has been spent transitioning between summer volunteers and school-year volunteers, but now we’re fully back into the swing of things. Now for a long post to catch you up on what’s been going on:

We’re now going to the garden twice a week- on Thursday afternoons around four and Saturday afternoons from about three to six. We did lots of weeding during the first few weeks of the school year. Everything has been growing like crazy thanks to all these rainy days we’ve been having, so there hasn’t been much of a need to water. Thankfully our new wood-chipped path between the beds is pretty much finished now, so we don’t have to walk through big puddles in the garden

The past two weeks at the garden have been spent harvesting. The biggest hit was watermelon- we definitely plan to plant lots more of it next year!

enjoying some watermelon at our new picnic tables

We’ve also harvested more basil than we know what to do with (pesto-making has been big this season!), tomatoes, summer squash, eggplant, chard, and peppers. After harvesting on the past two Saturdays, we’ve taken wheelbarrows and armfuls of produce throughout the Bennett homes and knocked on doors to distribute the goods. Everyone had a great time handing out all the things we’ve grown, and people were definitely happy to be receiving it. Here are some pictures of the distribution in action:

We also put together recipe books with directions for simple meals or snacks using mostly ingredients from the garden. The kids decorated their own books to take home, and we also made some extras to hand out with the produce around the neighborhood.

And, as always, we’ve been cooking up some of the produce for snacks on garden days- the squash and eggplant have been big hits (especially when sweetened up with a bit of cinnamon and sugar)!

what could be better than a squash the size of your body?

There are more pictures on our Flickr, so be sure to check them out! And check back soon- we’ll be updating much more regularly now!

More pictures!

More photos have been added to Flickr!  Just a few below:

Visual Updates from the Summer!

Gardening has moved to 5 pm, but the Mon/Thurs/Sat schedule remains the same! Recent activities include: harvesting greens/broccoli/cabbage/lettuce/tomatoes, the building of a pergola (shown here in a half-complete state!), pesto-making, and general gardening.  A sampling of photos can be found below, but they’re all posted at our Flickr!

Our New Favorite Vegetable

Broccoli yesterday was a hit! Before moving into the cooking portion of the day though, we planted lettuce, bok choy, and rows upon rows of basil.

Kids helped Iz wash and rip the broccoli into manageable chunks before sitting with Jesse at the camping stove and getting the garlic and olive oil ready to go. They added salt and pepper, and once it was served, parmesan cheese to top it off. Hopefully now everyone knows a simple and delicious way to prepare it at home! Check the Flickr (right column of main page) for newly uploaded pictures of the cooking process, as well as some shots of sanding the picnic tables in preparation for making them weatherproof. The broccoli videos are below.

Cook-out…Rain-out!

Today’s broccoli cooking demo was rained out, but we managed to get some weeding done before the rain came down and the lightening/thunder started up. Luckily that means watering is taken care of for a couple days, which should really help us out! Tomatoes are coming along well, and we’re anxiously taking care that our three new-ish fruit trees get enough water to thrive. Though our day was cut short, we’ve got more than enough to keep us busy on Saturday! On the schedule: planting a couple new flats of lettuce, basil, and bok choy, keeping up with the regular watering, and, of course, sampling our broccoli. We’ll see what we can cook up, stay tuned!

Low-key Tuesday

Today was a pretty slow day at the garden, as it was hot and happened to coincidence with the last free day at the pool. Those who stuck around probably felt the spray of the hose mist them once or twice though!

The main task for the day was loading up wheelbarrows full of dirt to dump in our recently-cleared area, but the other activities going on were watering, snack and harvesting. All in all, a quietly efficient day.

Two sweet moments!