Please join us Saturday June 21st for our Midsummer Night's Dream Garden Tour from 6PM to 9PM.  It's free and open to the public.  Maps will be available by Wednesday, but if you can't find one, go to 211 East Kingsbridge Drive at 6PM on the 21st.  You can start the tour there and Margie and Gene will tell you where to go next.

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First Bounty from the Garland Community Garden:  Jalapeno peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, radishes, yellow cherry tomatoes ,one large heirloom red tomato, and basil

This morning I went down to the garden to check on things and to water some perennial transplants I installed a few days ago.  Naturally I had to inspect the entire garden.  To my surprise, the concrete block garden actually had some produce:  radishes, yellow squash, a cucumber, radishes and a zucchini.  Inspired, I searched the rest of the garden and came up with one large red tomato from the square foot garden,  three or four jalapeno peppers and lots of yellow tomatoes from the winding garden area.

I went home and picked some greens, a few blueberries, blackberries and strawberries and a little bouquet of roses, rosemary, mint and tarragon.  The photo below shows the washed greens along with the vegetables. The greens came from my garden.  I put the produce in baggies and took it along with the bouquet to the Good Samaritans house here in Garland.  The Good Samaritans are a local nonprofit whose members are dedicated to preventing homelessness and hunger in our community.   

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The fresh food I brought to the Good Samaritans today was enough for two great salads (tomatoes, cucumber, greens, basil and radishes);  a vegetable stir-fry for two with yellow squash, zucchini and jalapeno peppers; and one serving of blackberries, strawberries and blueberries.

Now, just think:  What if next week everyone in Garland with a garden shares some of their bounty with one of our local food banks?  How much would that be?  Quite a lot of fresh meals is my guess.  No doubt  such a little effort from so many would result in several hundred pounds of fresh food.

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Celebrating Growth and Triumphs as Our Work Evolves

It's good to take pictures and then review them from time to time.  Once in a while I slump into the pit of negativity thinking thoughts along the lines of " . . . What does it matter?  It's too much work for such meager returns.  Nothing seems to be growing.  We will never get there. etc."

By accident the other night I was cleaning the photos off my desktop and I came across some that I had taken a couple of months ago during the installation of the concrete block bed down at the garden.  Wow!  I had forgotten how far we have come.

These concrete blocks were in my back yard.  It was the first raised bed I ever built.  Unfortunately it was in my back yard which is filled with trees and no sunlight so nothing grew in it last year.  At one of our meetings this year I donated the blocks to Cary and Regina, members of Loving Garland Green.  In fact, Cary is now an officer of our board.  We later decided to install the bed at the Garland Community Garden and thus it became the second bed we installed there.  

Evolution of the Concrete Block Garden

Below we have Charlie and Cary building the trellis for the concrete garden in late April.

Below is a shot of the garden only a few days after its build.  I brought down two heirloom tomato plants and put them in front of the concrete blocks to reduce the tacky factor--ironically I overlooked the fact they were planted in recycled trash bins which aren't themselves all that attractive either.

Below is a closeup of the tomatoes as they looked when first planted the end of April.  Each pot has two ollas for water conservation.

Below is a photo of the tomatoes today six weeks later.  The plant on the left is loaded with large heirloom Roma tomatoes.  The one on the right is loaded with heirloom tomatoes that were especially developed for our hot dry summers.

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The Keyhole Garden

That was then (May 3)

And this is now (June 14)