Many Hands Make Light Work
To all our volunteers for these past two days, thank you for a job well done. With what is left, we should be able to finish it all off tomorrow (Thursday.) That means you all get a well deserved long weekend off. No need to call you back for Friday or Saturday.
All that is left now is to pick up and move a few piles, then just some tidy up work along the paths.
For Grow Regina
Thank you all
John Fagan
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to try my hand at gardening during the season. It has not been the best of seasons(late spring, early snow etc. etc.).
Nevertheless it was a learning experience:
It was a pleasure to grow a row of potatoes which for the most part were delivered to the food bank. I learned that they need to be watered more deeply, hilled more and not be planted at the very edge of the garden. Doing so not only makes them very difficult to hill but also makes it difficult to keep the hilled soil from washing over the boards designating the gardens edge.
I learned that there is such a thing as planting too intensively. The plants grow much bigger and take up more space than I realized. In time they crowd over each other and makes it next to impossible to see weeds that one does not suspect are even there until they poke through everything else that has been planted. Doing so does, however, help to conserve the water as the heat of the day does not reach the soil that was watered by sticking a wand under the plants. Not really an advantage if you cannot see or get at the weeds without trampling everything else.
Laying boards between the rows although recommended by some “gardeners” sounded like a good idea. It would help to prevent packing the soil…since the soil was not actually being walked on. Not worth it…the weeds grow out from under the edges of the boards and cannot be easily hoed….another thing I have learned not to do.
Cleaning up the garden when there are several inches of snow on the ground and feeling that one has done a good job and patting oneself on the back for having cleaned up in the snow is utterly self deception. In order to meet the original deadline (one week after Thanks Giving) I did exactly that….work was taking me away the following week. I removed the rest of the plants (tomatoes etc.) all the stakes, boards etc.; wheeled them away and thought “my what a good boy am I”. I have also learned that it is amazing to see how much was left behind if one goes to check after the snow melts. So naturally it was a shock to get your letter indicating that I had “WEEDS left in”. I received the letter on Nov. 10…I was home (not well) from work but went directly out to the garden the moment I got the letter….thinking “there must be some mistake”. There wasn’t….there were weeds….even a couple of stakes….and two boards that were not to be seen when I did the clean-up in the snow. There were a few stocks from lettuce that I had missed not a lot but a little….I did what I could but hoed several times trying to get the weeds that were pointed out in the letter. I might still not have got every last one but not feeling especially well I in time judged that it was at least now “satisfactory” if not perfect. I did the best I could to scrape the frozen (wet on top) soil that had spilled onto the path..as well…
Thank you for the leadership that you have shown. Volunteering to do so when the work includes finding ways to “kindly” let people know that they are not up to scratch I believe takes a very special person.