Parsley

I sprinkled a little parsley seed in the dirt this spring not sure how well it would take. Much to my surprise we've had a huge crop of parsley. It must be pretty easy to grow after all. So we've taken snips of it to use as a fresh herb all season long. A few weeks ago a dried a bunch upside down which made it loose all its pretty green color. So this time I am using a dehydrator. Short of freeze drying it (my freezer is now full with all the blanched & frozen tomatoes & zucchini) I think a dehydrator is the next best thing. This way we can store it and use it all winter long in the Jacob's Well Community Resource Center kitchen.

Big zucchini... little zucchini

No matter the size these tasty veggies are delicious and can be used a variety of ways. The smaller zucchini you typically see in the grocery stores have less seeds and are great for roasting or used in salads. The large zucchini are usually used for baking in breads, cupcakes, grilled or turned into relish. In the garden we try to pick a variety of both so they can be used for a variety of purposes.

Just a tip, zucchini also freezes well and can be used later in the year. One great way to use zucchini or other squash is to chop it with the skin on in 1" sections and then bake it with butter, season salt & Parmesan cheese. It's a tasty dish and works well with either fresh or frozen veggies.

A million tomatoes!

We planted three types of tomatoes this year - Roma, Cherry & Black Russian. They were slow to get going but man oh man... did they make up for it. There are hundreds of little green tomatoes. We've picked some to let them ripen indoors. We've also thinned out the non-producing branches to make way for a little sunlight to the rest of the plant. The best part is these little tomatoes are great for picking and eating right off the vine!

Sunflowers

The sunflowers are blooming everywhere.... we'll see if we can harvest a few sunflower seeds out of them before the birds get to them later this summer.

Potatoes

Potatoes are a root plant. They grow by placing another potato in the ground that has started to grow "eyes" on it. The plant will take off into the ground and can produce around 10lbs. of potatoes off of one plant! Above ground will grow a nice green leafy plant with small white or pink flowers. Once the plant dies off completely... turns yellow than than brown and falls over... then it is time to harvest.

Harvesting the potatoes before then will result in much smaller potatoes and much much fewer veggies per plant. Even if you see a few larger ones just under the soil... be patient... they can wait a few more weeks until the rest of the plant is ready for harvest.

Kohlrabi... What?

What a weird little veggie? I had never heard of this before we started the community garden and a volunteer gave me a packet of kohlrabi seeds to plant. I figured I might as well and then we'd figure out what to do with it later.

This weekend we harvested a few and I tried to cook it up so I could promote it in the garden. You can eat both the meaty base of the plant as well as the leaves. It has almost a potato texture and cooks well in stews or soups as it absorbs the flavors of the foods cooked with it. I tried it cooked in some of the fresh green beans and sure enough... it tasted like the beans. Supposedly it can be eaten cooked or raw but I would certainly consult a cookbook or something for direction. Mine was boiled for 10 minutes.

It is supposed to be a good source of Vitamin C and other vitamins & minerals and it is very easy to peel and prepare.

Healthy vine

Here is the wonderful old grape vine that welcomes you into the Jacob's Well Community Garden. It is completely overflowing with grape clusters. We are still not sure what variety of grape it is but we should be able to make good use of it somehow... eating off the vine, wine, or jelly at least!

We had a pretty good little harvest last week and were able to distribute lettuce, beans, onions, squash, kohlrabi, beets, cucumbers, etc to the neighborhood.

As we get closer to the harvest season, if anyone has any interest in putting together or even attending a canning or food preservation class please let me know. We will most likely try to host something at the Community Resource Center which is fully equipped with a commercial kitchen. For details email: melissadailey@comcast.net

Proud Shara standing by her sunflower plants she started from seed.

Cucumbers are growing well... courtesy of the Reeds.

Daniel checking out the pepper plants....

The garden is growing and we've even harvested a bit of the zucchini, beets, beans... and the volunteers have picked a few yummy strawberries along the way.

Want to get your hands dirty??

Digging in the earth is good for your soul! You can help our community garden project in the following areas:

**Daily watering schedule **

(sign up for 1 day a week or month... any little bit helps)

**Weekly weeding schedule **

(if we stay on top of it ... it is an easy task!)

**Provide grass clippings to cover our walkways**

**Provide grass clippings & leaves for our compost bin**

**Help finish the fence**

**Help stain/seal the new fence to keep it in good condition**

**Donate plant starts or seeds throughout the season **

(we will be planting cold weather crops like beans, lettuce, cabbage, etc throughout the summer)

Or, just call or email to see if there is anything else on our to do list. Thank you so much to all our volunteers right now that keep this project fun and exciting.

Happy Growing!!

CONTACT: Melissa Dailey 509.879.7858 or email: melissadailey@comcast.net

Let the planting begin!!

The intent of this garden project was to involve the community & church body in the creation & maintenance of the garden. We put together a map of companion plant parings and tried to focus on growing plants that were more costly to buy in the store but that would be used often in either the community garden, for canning/freezing, or readily distributed to the community. The list is long and the volunteers have been great. The map outlined what to plant where taking into consideration shading in the garden and people from Jacob's Well were asked to sign up to provide certain plants either in seed or start form.

We were also able to get starts of existing gardens like Cheryl Draper's horseradish or Sue Beck's garlic. Several families had their kids pick out what they wanted to contribute like the Pereillos pumpkins & strawberries. That way the kids got excited to help plant and hopefully help harvest later.

It feels good to see something grow and know that you helped make it happen!

If I try to name all the contributors I know I will forget someone but thank you anyway. Here's a list of the contributions so far:

• Beans
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Potatoes
• Chives
• Lemon Balm
• Raspberries
• Onions
• Sunflowers
• Watermelon
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes
• Parsley
• Garlic
• Jalapenos
• Green Onions
• Korabi
• Beets
• Okra
• Carrots
• Basil
• Pumpkins
• Squash (3 varieties)
• Jasmine
• Chamomile
• and.... the old patriarch of the garden... the grape vine.

Special thanks to the Bernie (who we found off craigslist). He sells herb starts and when he found out what they were for he donated everything we got from him! (Oregano, Thyme, Lemon catnip, a few tomatoes, lots of basil, etc.)

Our first few plants...

Neighbor Paw Thaw Thaw & her youngest son watching Pastor Eric plant some jalepeno pepper plants.

The dirt is in and we've started adding a few plants - Chives & Lemon Balm from a piece of land owned by Lexington Homes; thornless raspberries from my grandpa's farm in Montana. We started cherry & roma tomato plants, parsley & jalepeno starts at home

Arbor Architecture...

Great job on that arbor Daniel!!! It's beautiful... especially now with the grape vine growing through it!! The grape vine was the one living plant we kept on the entire plot. The guys did a great job trying to baby it and make sure it didn't get destroyed during the demo. The vine is at least 10 years old if not older and finally started producing after the church moved into the building.

Thank you to Ed who lives in the neighborhood and has made it his personal mission to see this grape vine flurish!! Among his other contributions of time, fence construction, and seed donations... he's been diligent to keep the grape vine watered.

Framework is complete

The fence in progress and the beds before the fill dirt arrived. A lot of hours went into making this look terrific!!! Thank you to those that helped.

Making the bed(s)

We decided to use raised beds... approx 500 linear feat later.

Stormwater retention

In an effort to be as "green" as possible, Daniel constructed this stormwater retention system out of barrels donated by LifeRoads church. We purchased gutters and a few plumbing parts and Voila! - free (almost) irrigation. The building has a huge flat roof so we are able to divert the water into these drums. The pressure isn't fantastic but it works (maybe sometime one of our volunteers will come up with a sump pump system that will give us better pressure).

After the first rainfall we realized that 150 gallons doesn't take long to fill up. We purchased 2 additional tanks that hold 275 gallons of water each (total 700 gallons). Daniel re-routed the gutter system so half the roof flows into those tanks and the rest into the smaller tanks. The thought is we will fill the tanks during a good rain and then use the blue tanks until they are empty and then the larger tanks as our back up.

Of course it took 3 weeks after we installed the new tanks before it actually rained again but we can always go back to to the very expensive city water when all else fails.

Building fences

After the lot was preped, the next step was to install the new fence. We tried to gather donations for equipment, concrete, lumber, etc. The old 8' tall chain link fence was torn down and resold as scrap (thanks to Craigslist... got a whopping $20) and a new wood fence was erected in its place. Since we were dividing an existing lot in half we had to add a fence between the tenant's yard and the new garden space. The other 2 sides of the lot were thankfully already fenced.

With the use of some donated/borrowed equipment they were able get the post holes dug quickly. We used treated lumber for the posts. The fence is a 1x6 cedar fencing and looks beautiful. To date we have the tenant portion fenced off but are still looking for volunteers to help with the last section of fencing and a few people to help seal the wood.

The demo

Thanks to a dozen or so great volunteers and some power equipment - the lot was scraped, raked, weeded, cleared, and then reconstructed. Jacob's Well had a Earth Day clean up day both here at the garden and around the neighborhood. The volunteers were able to get all the old concrete removed, old trees pulled, old fencing torn down and clear the slate for the rebuilding of our little garden project.

An idea

So on the way back from Portland, Oregon for a quick weekend trip, Eric Blauer, Daniel & I started talking about getting involved with a community garden. We threw out ideas and Eric was feeling us out to see how interested we'd be in delving into something like that. I love to garden and work with landscape design and while I am certainly not at a professional skill level, I was happy to get my hands in it.

A little background information. Daniel & I own the house behind the church as a rental property. The property was originally purchased because we had initially intended the church building to be used as a coffee house. Through a serious of very frustrating governmental issues, we couldn't open because we didn't have sufficient parking. We thought the lot of this little house behind what is now our church could act as the parking lot but then, after we had purchased the house of course, found out the city had vacated the easement next to the building so we no longer had sufficient access for a public parking area. Long story short, Jacob's Well later leased the building and the little house just continued to be a rental with a really big back yard.

When we started talking about the gardening project, we had the idea of taking some of the back yard of the rental and putting in a garden directly behind the church. The tenant of the loved the idea because then she had much less yard to mow and it was a very functional location so that people from the church could help plant, weed, water, etc.

So that is how it started ... our idea around the 1st of March. The next few months will unfold how our plans have worked out.