Things are moving along in the Teaching Garden and with summer just around the corner (tomorrow!) we are starting to harvest tons of delicious produce. We are in the thick of strawberry season, in the past two weeks we harvested over 200 pounds of strawberries! Here are some of them in their beautiful, red, sweet, glory.
In other news, our prickly pear cactus is flowering!
Our raspberry bushes are starting to fruit.
Our blueberry bushes are also fruiting.
Our first zucchinis are forming! We should be harvesting zucchinis by next week.
Our cucumbers are also beginning to form. They are so cute, spiky, and little! We have been working hard trying to quell our cucumber beetle population by checking both our zucchini and cucumber plants daily for the beetles and squishing them by hand. If left unchecked, cucumber beetles would damage our plants, causing them to wilt and stop producing fruits. See our other post about IPM (integrated pest management) for more information on pest management!
We set up our cucumber trellis so they have something to climb up.
Our beets are growing quickly and we harvested our first few bunches in this weeks donation (see more about our donation below)!
And most excitingly we sent out our second big donation of produce of the season! Last week we sent out our first donation to Chili's on Wheels. Chili's on Wheels is a great organization that strives to make vegan food accessible by providing hot vegan meals and groceries to communities in need. Last week we donated over 300 pounds of produce for them to distribute as groceries to families and individuals who need them! Last weeks donation included Lettuce (120 pounds), Strawberries (35 pounds), and Greens (150 pounds) including Pac Choi, Swiss Chard, Spinach, and Collard Greens.
This week we also donated to Chili's on Wheels. This week we donated just about 300 pounds of produce including Lettuce (75 pounds) , Kale (25 pounds), Collard Greens (80 pounds), Swiss Chard (55 pounds), Strawberries (40 pounds), Beets (20 pounds), Mint, and Lavender.
We look forward to continuing to provide produce to tremendous organizations like Chili's on Wheels. Stay tuned next week to find out who else we are donating our produce to this summer!
Our last update this week is our great partnership with Bloom Again Bklyn. Bloom Again Bklyn works to provide beautiful bouquets of flowers to senior centers. Their programs exist in part to help foster communication between older and younger generations and to strengthen community relations. This week they came out to our garden to harvest flowers to donate to home-bound seniors. Here are some wonderful pictures of them harvesting, and the beautiful bouquets they put together.
We hope the individuals who received our flowers and our produce enjoy them!