Ladner Community Garden

It was a perfect morning for our first food bank harvest. Thanks to our volunteers, the harvesting only took a couple of hours.   It was time to harvest the potatoes. The grade three class had planted a mix of Russian Banana Fingerlings, Sieglinde, Russian Blue and Red Chieftain potatoes. The plants had done very well this year and we were amazed at the yields. Once the potatoes were done it was over to the carrot patch. I had planted a few different kinds of carrots.  They all did pretty good and had lots of healthy greens and great looking carrots. This is one funky potato. Not sure what causes this as most of the others were round with no bumps. Now if only there was a weird and wacky vegetable contest. It could be a winner. The carrots were grouped into bunches of ten. Yes, that's a lot of carrots, about 280 altogether. Next they were washed and banded to keep them together.  The potatoes were given a light wash and left to dry....

I am pretty excited to see how well the food bank garden has grown. Our Three Sisters Garden is growing gangbusters and it's all I can do to control the squash from jumping over the neighbours garden. I am thinking of pegging down the rambling squash to keep it in bounds. The cabbage is coming along and won't be ready for awhile yet. The onions are huge and we will be harvesting early next week to get them to the South Delta Food Bank in time for the Wednesday sharing for those who need help. We will also harvest some potatoes and carrots. The carrots are getting to a pretty good size now so its time to pull some. This has been a amazing month at the community garden. I have never seen so many peas! What a great group of allotment gardeners we have.

Here it is July and our community garden is thriving. The gardens are all growing well with the combination of sun and rain, well,  a little too much rain but then who doesn't need a day off from watering? Last month the volunteers completed the building of two pergolas in the center of the garden. We can't wait to get some gardens around the outside so we can grow plants over the top of the arbor. There is a purpose for all the reclaimed cement sitting at the front of the garden. We like to repurpose old driveways and make them into rock gardens. We even received some larger cement pieces to be used for a floor under the pergolas. Imagine creeping Thyme planted in between the slabs, what a vision! The pergolas are looking pretty bare so we are anxious to pretty them up. So what's happening in July? Check out this photo of an herb spiral that a couple of master gardeners built at Kirkland House. Our plans are to build one of these where we have the wet ar...