Ladner Community Garden

Dear Garden Thief, I am so done with you! I am angry and if you ask others I don't get angry easy. Today I was working in the children's garden getting ready for a class on Wednesday when I couldn't believe my eyes! I wrote this morning about how I had carrots in the children's garden as they are learning about the 100 mile diet this fall. Well, not any more! The least you could have done is taken them home instead of leaving them to shrivel up in the sun. These carrots would have been tasty but I guess they weren't up to your standards. They would have been used in our fall pumpkin soup but now I will have to buy carrots thanks to you. How could you steal from the children? So far the theft has been a few items every couple of days. We know what you drive and you have been seen in the garden on occasion. Does the word 'community' mean you can help yourself? Absolutely not! We are a community garden and if you are in need all you have to do is ask. Taking...

Its been a disheartening week as I hear about the agricultural theft of 5000 pounds of potatoes in a community just a short drive away and more theft of food from the Terra Nova Sharing Farm. Its now happened to the Ladner Community Garden and I must say we are angry. We have had reports of vegetable theft over the last few weeks. Its has been quite discouraging for our new gardeners as they baby their peppers until they are almost ready to harvest only to have them picked by a stranger. At first we figured it was just an isolated incident until a member spotted someone shopping with empty bags in hand. Its only a matter of time before we get a photo of this person but for now, I hope they are enjoying the fruits of our labour. Last night I went to harvest beans for the food bank only to see a measly four beans on the vines. We had only harvested a few pounds the week before and knew more would be ready for this weeks harvest. Luckily I had an allotment holder donate 16 pounds of beets...

Last spring we opened the Ladner Community Garden, the first community garden for Ladner. If you walked by last year the rock garden in the front of the community garden looked like this. Neighbours watched as volunteer and board director, Sharon, hauled rock by rock one at the a time to complete the garden. Did you know that she used reclaimed driveways? Four Delta residents were replacing their driveways and we took their cement as long as it didn't contain any wire or rebar. The concrete was inspected before drop off to ensure it was suitable.  Here it just built and ready for planting. As gardeners there is no shortage of plants. We often came to the garden to see plants waiting for us. Thank you to those who contributed and to the garden centers who helped us out.  Sharon planted the main perennials and shrubs first, them came the colour. It has to be look good all the time according to Sharon and it does. Check out these Nasturtiums that she grew from seed...

Every Monday I try and get to the community garden to harvest what I can for the food bank. We have set aside an area about 60' long and 12' wide to grow food for the needy. I had the grade three class that comes to learn in the garden plant most of the crops last May. I had never planted cabbage from seed before so I let the children plant them and we learned together. We planted two short rows and this is what we harvested yesterday. Don't they look pretty? Cabbage is slow to get going but when it starts to form a head you know its working. I was worried about cabbage month larvae being a problem but they just seemed to eat the outer leaves. Hardly a mark on the cabbage when harvested and that's a good thing. Be sure to make sure the heads are firm before harvesting. I had to remove some of the outer leaves just like they do in the grocery stores. I gave the heads a quick rinse and set them to dry. In May, the children had planted a Three Sisters Garden...

It was time to harvest for the food bank again. I like to harvest a day before the food is given out to the needy as it is fresher. This week the Eureka bush beans were ready to be picked. There will be additional harvests as the beans are still putting out more flowers.  It took awhile to pick but I had about four pounds of yellow beans the first week to drop off at the food bank. Not too bad a haul for a few families. The following week was a bumper crop. A total of seven more pounds of beans. I think we will get a third picking of beans some time next week. We still have potatoes and cabbage to harvest. They will be followed by green beans and squash. It looks like  Monday nights will be the harvesting time. Its cooler outside and the produce can be dropped off early Tuesday morning. So what do you do to get the harvest ready for delivery? I bring home whatever is harvested and clean it up. You wouldn't want to buy dirty vegetables at the grocery store and mos...

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.