HHS Garden Update - Things are growing great!

We have been seeing some great things at the garden lately - thanks to a great mix of sun and rain as well as the soil amendments we have added!  Our squash are going great guns and producing a plethora of produce out there (see photos below),

 

The zuchinni to the left was growing so hard against the wood of the growing bin that it has a crease in it!  We should be able to harvest it next week!  Can't wait!


The cleanup has been going really well too - we have had a couple of football players who wanted to get some community service hours on their resume' so they have been helping out by clearing the fence line of brush.  They are also working on the huglekulture beds to help us as well - we will be ready for strawberry plants in there soon.  Below left is Tanner Barclay manning the wheelbarrow to move some grass clippings into the Hugelkulture beds and on the right I am walking down the Huglekulture rows to mash down our brush piles before the clippings are applied.

 We have purchased some supplies with our grant monies from the Department of Ag Farm to School Grant that we won in the spring and we are happily using the goodies to make the garden grow better!

The wheelbarrow was already in place at the High School but we purchased the yard card and you can see our shovels and rakes with the red handles in the background as well as a few of our watering cans ( So far I haven't been able to find the galvenized ones that we want), and some of the promix and composted steer manure for helping our depleted and compacted soil.  At right is Nancy Albertsen - Volunteer extraordinaire - checking out the new supplies and garden goodies!  Below she is weeding the sign  near the front gate of the school.  This planter bed has been there since 1989 and is in need of some TLC.  It drives us crazy as we go by so we decided to use some of our summer time to start rehabbing the flower bin.  We have cleaned it out and it will be repaired and have some new soil added carefully around it so we can put new perennials in it next spring.  The red twig dogwoods will stay in place if at all possible.

We are excited about the upcoming harvest season - stay tuned and see how that goes.  I will be posting the forms that we will use to keep track of our produce (planted vs. harvested) as well as the hugelkulture directions for you soon!