This week we donated just under 250 pounds of produce to the Black Feminist Project.
There it is all packed up in the car ready to travel to families in need.
This week our donation included just under 50 pounds of Tomatoes,
50 pounds of Collards, 12 pounds of Kale, 40 pounds of Swiss Chard,
7 pounds of Peppers (sweet and hot), 7 pounds of Tomatillos, 13 pounds of potatoes,
11 pounds of Green Beans,
35 pounds of Eggplant, and 18 pounds of Leeks (not pictured).
This week in the Teaching Garden we started planting out our Fall succession of plants. This included...
new Collard Green starts,
new Kale starts,
and a bunch of Radish seeds!
Although our Collard Greens and Kale plants are mature and producing currently, we are starting these new plants so that when our more mature ones inevitably attract pests like White Flies we will have new ones ready to harvest from.
In other news, we have watermelon weeds! We did not plant Watermelon this year for a variety of reasons, they are a timely crop that doesn't produce heavily. One Watermelon plant will only produce a few Watermelons (2-4), they take around 3 months to fully mature, and we have a few critters (rats) in our garden who would delightedly feast on them before they are ready to harvest. For all of these reasons we decided to use our beds for other crops that would be better suited for donating. However, last year we grew watermelons, and their seeds must have stuck around the garden and germinated during the summer.
We are not sure that these will get big enough to harvest before it gets too cold for them but they are a beauty anyway and we will leave them here just in case it stays warm long enough for them to fully mature.
Lastly, we are excited to have received photos of some of the individuals at Grand Street Settlement who received our plants. We are glad to provide a small bit of nature for people to appreciate and take care of and it looks like they are happy to have a new plant!