Harvest time!

We’ve been harvesting heaps and heaps of veggies! Here’s a peak:

These squashes love each other.

62 lbs.

70 lbs.

Also this week, we started to break out some of our homegrown compost, and it couldn’t be more perfect and beautiful and healthy! It’s going to make the garden and the plants very happy.

More exciting news: we’re taking on the ambitious project of trying to grow melons vertically. With a whole lot of help from a good friend, we built this spectacular trellis for our cantaloupe:

The first step. See the sprawling melon plants?

The completed trellis! (p.s. look how tall our sunflowers are!)

Hopefully, keeping the melons off the ground will keep away pests that might want to eat them (i.e. rats) and will also make the garden less crowded.

Speaking of melons, a volunteer melon plant was discovered making friends with the yellow squash:

see the melon nestled in there?

This beautiful plant has at least two baby melons happily growing from it. 

Also happily growing in our garden are flowers:

Beautiful okra blossom.

All the marigolds we planted this spring have taken off and are flourishing.

A bee pollinating one of our squash blossoms!

so tall.

Here’s one view of the garden as of yesterday:

Someone from Miriam’s Kitchen told me yesterday that the garden looks the best it has ever looked. Yay!

Next on the horizon: eggplants and peppers and getting ready for fall planting!

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July

A few days ago, we had a wind storm that was so strong it blew over one of our tomato trellises! Devastating (sort of).

We’ve fixed it temporarily, but it’s still very weak (one of the stakes came out of the ground completely) and we’ll need to come up with a solution to strengthen it. The wind storm also blew an unbelievable amount of trash into the garden. Booo!

On the bright side:

Our very first heirloom tomato!

melons doin’ their thing.

These root veggies are finally starting to turnip!

Expecting another big harvest later today…

Abundance

This week, we had our largest harvest so far this season. We delivered 35 pounds of cucumbers, kale and beans to Miriam’s Kitchen.

 

 

25 lbs. of cucumbers!

Even better, we’ve been getting the first small harvest of some of our other crops.

 

 

We were also fortunate this week to host two different volunteer groups, and to have the opportunity to contribute produce to a staff cooking class on campus.

Next week, for the first time, we’ll be contributing to the Foggy Bottom Freshfarm Market CSA. This is a big step for us, one that allows us to become more deeply integrated with the community and to work toward a self-sustaining future. Woohoo! 

More happy garden news: our sunflowers are starting to bloom! 

Also, I saw about 10 bees in the garden yesterday, doin’ their pollinatin’ thing. This makes me happy that the garden is flourishing and that the bees are flourishing!

Finally, and speaking of flourishing, we have hundreds of baby figs on our fig tree! Yum yum yum. Pictures will come soon…

Volunteer Groups

Hello from the GroW Garden!

Last week was a busy one in the garden- we had two groups of volunteers come into the garden to help us out.

The first group was from Americorps: 

Look at those sweet faces!

They helped us finish up our cucumber trellises:

 

 

So much twine!

They also helped us plant some blueberry bushes:

 

 

Our second group was a bunch of high school students from the YMCA Youth Leaders Conference:

 

These kids were so friendly and hardworking!

They helped us with a very important job- weeding and prepping beds:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A HUGE thank you to both these groups! Y’all got so much done and us garden managers are very grateful!

 

Additionally, a little veggie update:

Our cucumbers are taking very well to their trellises.

 

Look at the tiny wee baby zucchini!!

 

 

I’ve never seen a more beautiful bean.

That’s it for now- thanks again to our volunteers!

Seasonal Changes

Dear world, it has been too long, but we’re looking forward to keeping y’all updated on garden happenings throughout the summer. Here are some recent changes:

New summer garden managers!

Alex, cradling five pounds of freshly-harvested kale.

Caitlin, getting pumped about radishes.

Compost

Our wonderful new compost tumblers have finally been relocated to their proper home behind the construction shed, where they won’t be such an eyesore and won’t be taking up precious growing space.

Trellising

In an attempt to maximize our space and to support healthy and happy plants, we’ve been taking advantage of vertical growing by adding trellising throughout the garden.

Building trellises is hard.

Alex and volunteer Gabrielle doing a stellar job.

(mostly) completed cucumber trellises!

tomato cages

What else is new? Veggies!!! Here are some of the things we’ve harvested so far this season:

Spinach! nom nom nom.

(very) Spicy Salad Mix.

Radishes: up close and personal

This is what two pounds of kale looks like.

We’ve also been harvesting tons of herbs. And we’re growing all this other fun stuff!:

Sunflower (see marigold for size comparison)

Baby cucumbers!

Bean plant growing up a sunflower.

See the top of the bean plant sticking out from the sunflower?

That’s all for now! Keep checking in for more updates.

 

Grow Garden Beauties!

Beautiful blooming Okra!  

 

 

Raspberries, enough said! 

 

MARI and our fresh watermelon!

 

Our first red Fuji apple!!

We have okra, raspberries, watermelon and our apples are almost ready!!!

Mustard Green Volunteers

We had our largest group of 30+ volunteers  come by the Garden the other day! Just wanted to shout out to our great group of Moly UN students! They were a ton of help cleaning out the gardens and getting some of our beds ready for the next harvest season!  Thanks again!

“Writing GroW Garden”

This past week we hosted Joe Hall and his class “Writing the City” a group of 10 students taking a Pre-College Course at GW. Joe has been bringing is “Writing for the City” class for the past two years to educate them about urban ecologies and food systems as well as help work in the garden! The class learned all about the urban garden from how compost works to best harvesting practices. Additionally the class provided much needed assistance harvesting, weeding, laying down mulch & hay, as well as helping out in the compost! Like always we appreciate all the help we can get at the garden so if your interested be sure to email us at foodjusticealliance@gmail.com to keep up to date with our volunteer hours!

Thanks Again “Writing in the City” volunteers!

Summer in the Garden!

 

Hello all!

Just some updates on the garden! 

Volunteering: 

I hope you’re all having a wonderful summer! For those of you staying in the D.C. area, our summer volunteer hours for the GroW Garden are every Monday (8-9:30 am) and the first and third saturdays (8-10 am). Please send us an email if you can make any of these days!( foodjusticealliance@gmail.com)

 

Garden Updates:

Due to all the rain lots of our plants are already producing! We just harvested brocoli, zucchini, mustard, strawberries, and lots of herbs! 

 

 

Come out and volunteering!!! More updates to come! 

 

Best, 

The Garden Team! 

GARDEN IN JUNE!!

We have zucchini! These past few weeks have been crazy at the garden, We’ve been harvesting zucchini, brocoli, kale and romaine!