KASC Volunteer Day at the Garden!

Yesterday we had a group of about fifty students from the Korea-America Student Conference come to the garden for some volunteering. We had a quick thirty minute talk about the benefits of community garden and how we got started, and then the group got to work helping us weed, water, turn the compost cans, etc. They had a great time smelling our herbs and tasting our beans! Hopefully some of these students will go back home and help start a community garden of their own.

Here are a few pictures from the event!

Example of post!

Hey all!

This is an example of a post made from our new email account so everyone/anyone can contribute! Everyone will be publishing from the same account, so make sure to leave your name afterwards!

Kate

Early bird gets the tomato...

Hello!

We are a group of students, faculty, and staff at American University who helped create a community garden on campus to provide healthy vegetables, educate participants in growing their own food, reduce our carbon footprint, and to strengthen the AU Community.

This is year 2 of our garden, and we would like to share our successes, failures, and celebrations in this blog. To catch you up, we have a 500 square foot plot and we grow a variety of vegetables, flowers, and even one persimmon tree! It started last year as a simple tilled, unorganized plot with cucumbers and watermelons taking over with their long vines. We had many successful crops that year-tomatoes, corn, beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, eggplants, lettuce, etc. It was just slightly unorganized- so this year we built raised beds out of lumber and rock. There are three corners of rock wall raised beds that contain flowers. The lumber raised beds contain tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, corn, beans, squash, basil, oregano, parsley, lettuce, onions, watermelons etc. We learned that when our watermelons are getting large, we should place a rock or brick under them so they do not rot before we can eat them, which is a problem we encountered last year. This year, our eggplants failed, which is disappointing considering our harvest was so great last year. In addition to an eggplant fail, we also have squirrels and birds eating our tomatoes before we can, despite our deer fence. I looked up that providing them with water and food elsewhere will deter them from seeking our vegetables.

We are currently enjoying tomatoes (when we beat the birds), green beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, carrots, and oregano. Our radishes seem to be on their way as well as watermelon! We enjoy great snow peas earlier in the season as well as newly planted blueberry bushes. Unfortunately, I learned too late that you are not supposed to eat your first years' blueberries- that you are supposed to encourage growth over fruiting. Hopefully this is a small mistake and that fruiting will occur next year!

Well, this is a little overwhelming for a first post, but hopefully our nutty garden thoughts will entertain and educate in the future.