UShare Journal

Canton/Priest Field Garden:

6/5 - We had a small group in the garden today, but finished what needed to be done. Wow! the garden looks great. I think the great composted sheep manure from the Montans' and dedicated crew of waterers have contributed to this success. Today's efforts included weeding all beds - including help from Jan DeWater's Sunday school class, watering, and planting peppers and celery. The dry soil made for easy weeding, but lots of time spent on watering. Gary Berk and Brian Thompson will deliver a round bale of straw this week so mulching can begin.

Sue Powers

6/8 - I began the thinning yesterday and took one bag to the Neighborhood Center. I will let Dave know when I have the next bag ready so that he can distribute it. I watered about 6 cans in the morning and 8 in the afternoon - no delivery of town water as of Tuesday evening. Obviously, only enough to cool the plants off. The green peppers do not like the hot windy times - probably will be happier today.

Pat Glover

Potsdam/Cecilie Garden:

6/1 - Tilling is done (by Jess, Ashley, and big assist from someone from SUNY). The plan is to go with raised beds. There's room for 10 across running North/South, and 8 of 10 can be 70 feet long! Seedlings have been ordered and seeds identified. Working on setting up water reservoir as in Canton. We'll use a DC pump to fill from the river. Bed prep and planting all a go for the weekend.

Dave Bradford

Canton/Priest Field Garden:

6/10 - I watered the garden yesterday about 5:00. It takes about an hour, 14 watering cans, and 1/2 barrel of water. The town only filled up one barrel. I left two bags of greens for Dave at the church. Unless we get a major rain, I hope there will be a group deep watering on Sunday.

Pat Glover

6/10 - Carol Pynchon and I found Sunday that watering is easier with garden hoses from the church. Some additional footage of hose is required beyond what the church has. We left the blue barrels full.

The mulch was delivered by Gary Berk and Bryan Thompson and mulching has begun - more to be done when plants get a little bigger.

Potatoes are ready to be hilled with soil from the pile outside the fence. I saw a few potato beetles and squashed them (yellow and black stripe) Please keep your eyes open for those or any other critters munching too much of our plants.

Some more planting could be done - winter squash in holes poked through black plastic on the hill and green beans (bush) to fill holes where first batch did not germinate.

Three bags of baby salad greens were delivered to area pantries last week via the efforts of Pat Glover and Dave Bradford. I think there will be more thinning and delivery in the coming week.

6/27 - Todd, Beth R., the Lavigne/Westalls, and I were there Sunday with Jess P, and things look lovely. We're working on mulching, and are starting a first-time through weeding, starting with the most westerly rows (by the river) and working toward the other side of the garden. Such a large garden will be impossible to weed through every week, so we thought we'd just keep rotating through.
The water system seems to be working. There are several 5 gallon buckets, a watering can, and 2 very large drums (1 trash can, plus the beautiful recycled 55 gallon drum from Priest). The plan is, Jess will drive out with her car from time to time and use the pump to fill the containers. She'll try to keep them full, so the volunteer will have a large supply there.
Also we've put a notebook in the shed, for logging in what's done and leaving notes for the next person.
No harvest yet but the Kohlrabi are beginning to bulge.

Now that we have an additional hose at the Canton garden, we can get water directly from the church spigot out to the garden. We were lent a soaker hose and so now have the ability to soak a bed while
the volunteer is harvesting or weeding.
Natalie Panshin

Canton/Priest Field

7/27 - Max Coots sprayed the squash plants with sulfur because they had mildew. I pulled out most of the bolted lettuce. There will be green peppers very soon. I would have picked them at that size in my home garden, but I imagine we're trying to maximize the food output here, so I left them on to fatten up.
It wasn't obvious where to put the old lettuce and the weeds we pulled, so I tossed them over the fence sort of next to the manure pile. By the way, I think onions are supposed to fall over. In fact, according to Sage Max, farmers used to knock them down on purpose so they'd put more energy into the bulb.

We sent to Governeur: 3 gallons of beans; 2 grocery bags of Swiss chard; 6 large bunches of broccoli (a couple just on the far side of ready--starting to look a little yellow); a dozen or so carrots (to thin); about 8 yellow squash--we tossed one that was too old, almost orange, and a couple others were borderline, but we sent them anyway; 4 huge beets

And there you have it for today.

Valerie Ingram

David Bradford had left some produce from the Cecilie Garden in the church refrigerator and we loaded all into my car and transported it to St. James Church in Gouverneur. The church was having a food distribution day and they were expecting up to 100 people to pick up free food. When we arrived just before 10 AM, several women were standing by to assist those starting to wind their way around tables piled with food items.