Soil delivered. Volunteers showed up and moved soil into raised beds. Onion sets into the soil. And we're off . . .!
It is certainly strange to move forward with a Community Garden in this crisis period, where the idea of "community" as in "working together" is frowned upon, and even considered dangerous. So we have to reimagine how to "commune" with each other so that we can stay connected in spirit and action, while remaining distant physically.
Where are we now? And where are we going?
We have 6 raised beds, one filled with garlic planted last fall, and one filled with onion sets planted just in the last few weeks. We have 2 active volunteers who have moved soil, and then started to plant some baby plants and some seeds. 6 tomato plants, 3 pepper plants, 1 peanut plant (yes, that's right, and no I haven't done this before so we'll see how it goes), and some Adirondack Blue potatoes. Lettuce and carrot seeds are in the ground.
Our Porta Potty is in place since the library won't be open for a bit (and even then, we may want to keep our dirty feet and hands outdoors during the height of the gardening season.) We hope to have a gutter and downspout on the back of the shed and connected to a rain barrel, so we can keep everything nice and moist - this should happen this week, before June 1. More plants to go in include eggplant, more peppers, 4 more varieties of potatoes, and then lots of seeds, many of which came from Cornell Cooperative Extension - thank you very much!
We have a gallon of hand sanitizer (thanks for Finger Lakes Distilling), lysol for disinfecting tools, some new tools for digging and cultivating, and more seeds to plant.
Hopefully, we'll get an email out this week, and invite all eager volunteers to our first Zoom meeting. Let the Lodi Community Garden begin!