Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Napanee Food Bank Garden 2012 Summary
We kept a logbook of harvest this year and today I went through and transcribed it into a 2012foodbankgardensummary spreadsheet(11kb .pdf).

Basically the 2012 summary goes like this: 100 cabbages, 93 squash, 30 broccoli  and 75  bushels of beets, carrots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, potatos, tomatos and yellow beans.

Comparing to 2011: 88 cabbages, 63 squash and 70 bushels of  beets, carrots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, potatos, tomatos and yellow beans.  2011foodbankgardensummary spreadsheet(11kb .pdf).

Thanks to all the volunteers, especially Susan Withers who made the logbook happen.

Kim & I spent approx 1 hr/week for 25 odd weeks tending our four rows. It was fun!

This year’s harvest ran two more weeks than last year (19 instead of 17 weeks).

Yield was up as well, even with the summer drought.

Looks like the lat time I wrote about the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden was back about the July 19th, 2012 visit. We skipped the next week as it was raining that day and the garden becomes inpenetrable during rain… multiple kilos of clay soil sticks to your boots.
We were there on August 2nd and watered and weeded. Things are still looking good.
We skipped August 9th as it was raining again.
This week others:

Other completed the following during the
week of August 6
“We ripped the lettuce out yesterday. I took in 1 1/2 bushels of beans, 1 bushel of tomatoes, 10lbs of onions, 1/4 bushel of beets and a few peppers today.”
week of August 2
“On Thurs morning we harvested 3/4 bu.tomatoes, 1/2 bu.beets,1/4 bu green peppers, and 10lb.onions, and took all in to the food bank. “

We dropped by the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden on Thursday July 12th to do some work, mainly weeding and watering. It has been hot and dry with not a lot of rain at all in the summer weeks.

Wow.. that’s what I said last week. No rain since then. 7mm this month in Yarker, probably the same in Napanee.
We don’t see any weather stations in Napanee reporting data to the Weather Underground anymore, but there is one in Adolphstown that shows 5.6mm to date this month.

Yesterday was Thursday June 21st, 2012 and again we visited the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden and spent some time weeding and watering the four rows that we look after.
It was hot. Somewhere over 30 deg C.
Some big picture pictures:

And some individual row images

No tomato hornworms seen, not a lot of potato bugs either.
It was pretty dry and it took two x 20L water for each of four rows., each about 16 meters long. Remember to bring gloves next time.

We were assigned rows 5-8 last week and showed up for our first regular, weekly visit to weed and water and otherwise tend to three rows of peas and one row of beets for the Napanee Food Bank Garden.

These rows were pretty bad.. infested with weeds.. some taller than the peas themselves. Luckily we had a good amount of rain two days back so that pulling them out by hand went very well.
We ended up spending an hour on those four rows and were done.

Row 5 - Peas

An update on the garden… a few rows have been planted and the water containers were delivered on site this week. They haven’t been filled yet but we hope that will happen soon.
Updated: 2012 April 22 – the water containers are filled. There looks to be about 10 rows planted on the south side.

Napanee Food Bank Garden 2011 Summary
We kept a logbook of harvest this year and today I went through and transcribed it into a 2011foodbankgardensummary spreadsheet (11kb .pdf).

Basically the summary goes like this: 88 cabbages, 63 squash and 70 bushels of beets, carrots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, potatos, tomatos and yellow beans.

Thanks to all the volunteers, especially Susan Withers who made the logbook happen.
Now at least we have a baseline of harvest goods to look at, along with how much of each type of vegetable.
Kim & I spent approx 1 hr/week for 25 odd weeks tending our three rows. It was fun!
Our involvement was based through the Lennox & Addington Horticultural Society.