Skip to main content

Its a Spring Work Party Weekend!


I know you just looked outside at the rain and thought really? A work party? Yes, this Saturday is our first work party of the year. We are building some of the allotments and the children's garden beds up in height for those of us who cannot bend over yet. Oh I don't know who that could be. Yes, its me. With my new hip I cant bend over at all for a few months which is really crimping my garden style.


Hopefully with the children's beds being a bit higher we can sit and plant with ease. The students are coming back to the garden for a class on April 8 so the beds have to get built.
You didn't hear me mention soil, did you? The soil isn't coming this weekend. It won't arrive until March 21 as we may need a rest after the building this weekend.
So mark your calendars, this Saturday, March 16 is our work party day from 10am -12pm.
We have the tools needed but just need a steady hand to help aligning the boards and moving the lumber where it has to go. This may be a good day to get some tidying up in your plots if time allows. I know I have Kale to move and a few weeds to pull.
Come prepared for mud as the ground is a bit damp but we hope it doesn't pour rain on Saturday.


If you haven't started planning your garden yet, now is the time to get started. You can plant peas and  broad beans anytime now. If you want to know how to grow peas, check out my blog here. Peas are best planted every two weeks so you have a succession of harvests.
If you ordered soil with the group, it will arrive on Thursday, March 21 and there is lots of soil. This soil is ONLY for those who paid in advance so please don't help yourself. Half the soil will be going into the children's garden since it has never been topped up since the community garden opened in 2011. So don't be overwhelmed at the enormous pile when you see it. For those who ordered new soil, you will be getting 1.23 yards of soil to add to your new raised bed. This year we ordered from West Creek Farms in Fort Langley. The soil has been recommended by the master gardeners along with soil from  Eco-soil and Transform. I have tried the soil from West Creek Farms in the past and it doesn't contain any green waste.
Did you want to learn more about gardening? The Corporation of Delta has their spring garden classes starting and they are free. Check out their link here to see what they offer. The first two classes are on organic vegetable gardening.


The students that come to the garden for classes are holding a plant sale in May. We are looking for donations of bone china tea cups. They don't need saucers but we will gladly take them if they do. We are also looking for old teapots that may be missing their lid. The photo above is from last years sale and they sold out in ten minutes. This year we are making four times the quantity we did last year. Phew, I am exhausted thinking about it. Last year the children donated $500 to the local food bank from the plant sale profits.
If you have any questions about your allotments or the work party, I would love to hear from you. Contact me at deltagardener at dccnet.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Its Official!

Its official. We finally received our incorporation papers. I know, what does that have to do with a community garden? Well you just don't start planting as we found out very quickly. You have to apply for a name for your society through the provincial government. First you apply for a name by checking trademarks and copyrights. Luckily Ladner Community Garden Society wasn't taken. You pay a fee for the name right away. The next step is applying for incorporation. You want to form a society and have directors as you can't lease public space without going through this process. Okay, another fee, a hundred dollars to be exact. Applying for incorporation is writing bylaws which can be painful at best if you want to write your own. Thank you Mark for doing such a wonderful job writing our bylaws. If you don't write your own, there are easier ways such as following out set bylaws as given in the Society Act. Our hard work as paid off as we received our red seal of approval

Growing Your Own Food

     Carrot harvest   Growing your own food just became even more important than ever. As prices increased this fall we saw lettuce and cauliflower go up in price. Reasons for that are many but the drought we had could be one of the reasons. Overall the transportation costs of everything are up due to the high cost of fuel and that's being passed on to the consumer. Of course, many of us are not earning any more than we did before. I predict that 2023 will see another resurgence of food growing like we did at the beginning of the pandemic. Some of us may be doing it with less space than we had before so that creates more challenges. Just to let you know how popular gardening has become, our community garden has a waitlist of over twenty people. They may not get a spot in the garden for several years. It's probably time for a new community garden to be set up in the community.       To save money in the winter think about growing crops that store well like carrots, potatoes, win

Ladner Seedy Saturday is Only a Few Weeks Away!

Yes, it's time for Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo 2018. Our organizing committee is busy behind the scenes registering new and returning vendors, booking speakers and organizing the seed swap for the event. Are you a vendor wanting to come to Seedy Saturday? We still have a few tables left for lease. I am excited about our two speakers coming this year. Janis Matson is a well known garden speaker and owns Shoreline Landscape Design. Janis is an instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Langley and also teaches classes at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Janis will be teaching us how to use ornamental grasses in the home garden. Our next speaker is Randal Atkinson. Known as West Coast Garden' s Plant Expert Extraordinaire, Randal is the go to person for design, plant selection, growing and care of plants. Randal is passionate about gardening and loves sharing his knowledge with the public. You can often see him teaching classes at West Coast Garden centre