Spring projects...

Starting to sheet-mulch the upper tier of the garden in preparation for our perennial crops. Sheet-mulching is a method for improving soil, also commonly referred to as sheet-composting or the lasagna method, that involves laying down a "sheet" material such as cardboard and covering it with layers of seed-free organic material. We are fortunate to have access to a plentiful supply of aged horse manure (thank you to Beth and her friend!) and semi-composted leaves so that's what we used, plus we topped it off with a layer of straw mulch. For more information on how, why, and when to sheet-mulch see Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik, or do an internet search.

Unloading a trailer full of horse manure to be used in our sheet-mulch beds. It's handy to have a place to unload materials uphill from our work area so we can work with gravity, if only this trailer had a dump mechanism!

 

A clever idea one of our gardeners found for marking your rows. That's Popeye on the spoon—we all know what he likes to eat!

School Food Tour Visits RSCG!

Sara Salo of The School Food Tour stopped by the garden today to talk about her 5,000+ mile self-supported bicycle tour promoting healthy eating and cycling for both transportation and recreation. Sara ended her long tour last Friday (May 11) in Houghton and has been visiting schools and community gardens in the area to share her story and learn more about our local food network in the Keweenaw. Thanks for stopping by Sara! Learn more about Sara's work at http://schoolfoodtour.org/.

Our first garden work day of the 2012 season...

Gardener and artist Joyce Koskenmaki adds a little color to the garden with her hand painted sticks used as plot dividers in the raised beds.

Many hands make light work! (Background) Spreading a fresh layer of woodchips in the paths. (Foreground) Preparing to sheet mulch the perennial garden area.

The starting line-up...

One of the ways we extend our growing season is by starting plants indoors in late winter/early spring. The warm indoor climate tricks the seeds into germinating and growing weeks earlier than they would if you planted them outdoors. This step is especially important for gardens with a short growing season if you want to grow plants like tomatoes and peppers that take a long time to reach maturity.

But there are many other benefits to starting your own plants. Most importantly you are in charge of selecting the varieties you grow which allows you to choose plants that are best suited for your climate, garden conditions, and culinary preferences. Choosing open-pollinated varieties gives you the option of saving your own seed so that you are no longer dependent on someone else from somewhere else to sell you seed. With a little love and care, your plant starts will be much better quality than anything you can buy from a commercial nursery.

When to start your plants depends on your garden's last frost date. Cold-hardy plants and plants that require a long time to reach maturity are started earlier. For our sunny Hancock garden site, this process starts in late February/early March. Here's a look at the starting line-up...

Spinach starts hardening-off in an unheated garden shed before transplanting to the garden. These plants were started on 3/2/12 potted-up into bigger containers on 3/20/12, and moved here to harden-off on 4/7/12. They will be transplanted to the garden after about a week of hardening-off and covered with protective row cover as needed.

Leek and onion starts hardening-off in an unheated garden shed before transplanting to the garden. These plants were started on 3/2/12, and set to harden-off on 4/7/12, they are not potted-up. 

These young broccoli and cabbage starts were potted-up this very morning on 4/11/12. They were started on 3/20/12. They will remain indoors for a couple more weeks before hardening-off and will be transplanted to the garden in early May.

Broccoli micro-greens, a tasty byproduct of starting your own plants. When you pot-up plants you select the biggest, strongest seedlings—the rest can be eaten!

Celery babies just about ready to pot-up to individual containers. These plants were started on 3/2/12. They will be transplanted to the garden mid to late May.

These young basil plants don't even have true leaves yet. They were planted on 3/29/2012. They have a ways to go before potting-up. They won't be planted in the garden until all danger of frost has past.

Like the basil above, these peppers don't even have their true leaves yet. Peppers, like basil, are a warm weather plant and will not be transplanted to the garden until all danger of frost has past. These were planted on 3/29/2012, a little later than usual.

The Ides of March

Sunrise at the garden. Promise of an early spring?

Thank You Hancock Canal Run!

A BIG thank you to the Hancock Canal Run and the participating runners and walkers for supporting the Ryan Street Community Garden. The Canal Run has been a long standing tradition in our community for 36 years. The race has now grown to a size that allows them to give back to our community. Last year was their largest race ever with 551 participants. This year's Run/Walk will take place on Saturday, July 21st. Visit their website to find out more about this great community event.

Shop Keweenaw Co-op, Save A Bag, Raise Money for the Garden! A successful campaign!

Keweenaw Co-op General Manager, Curt Webb, presents the Ryan Street
Community Garden with a generous donation from the Co-op's Bring-A-Bag Fund.

Thank you to the Keweenaw Co-op and all those shoppers who brought their own grocery bags during the months of April through October! The Co-op's Bring-A-Bag Campaign is one of the ways they contribute to the welfare of the community and promote environmental business practices.

The Keweenaw Co-op is a community-owned cooperative grocery store in Hancock, Michigan offering goods and services that appeal to consumers who have a meaningful sense of environmental and social responsibility and incorporate those values into their buying decisions.

Art & Fertility

Local artist and community gardener, Joyce Koskenmaki, works on the garden wall mosaic/mural along Road Street. She is using found objects ("treasures") that we unearthed as we developed the site, together with locally collected beach stones and bits of broken glass and tile. The wall mosaic/mural is part of our effort to celebrate "art in the garden".

 

Here we go again...picking bio-bag pieces out of the compost so kindly donated by the City of Hancock (Thanks DPW!). We use this nutrient-rich compost generated from decomposed yard trimmings as our growing medium in the raised beds.

 

Here we are slashing down our "green manure" crop of Buckwheat we planted earlier this summer. We're topping off the bed with some compost and then we will cover it with a 4-6 inch layer of straw mulch. In a couple weeks it will be ready for a fall plant of garlic. One of our volunteers was caught on camera stepping in the raised bed...uh oh! (A major benefit of having raised beds/designated paths is that is keeps foot traffic out of the growing area so the soil doesn't get compacted.)

What a difference a little compost makes!

Here's one of our newly constructed, partially filled, raised beds we planted with a cover crop of Buckwheat. Notice how the Buckwheat's growth is an obvious indicator of soil health. The end of the bed in the foreground was filled with soil excavated from building the retaining walls only, whereas the far end of the bed has a layer of compost on top (we ran out half way through).

Here come the zucchini!

Viki Weglarz wielding one of the season's first zucchini.

Vegetable Casserole
(submitted by Susan Burack)

• 2 # approx Swiss Chard, or collards, spinach, combo of greens
  ------
  

• 2 T butter
• 2 T olive oil
• 3 onions, chopped
• 3 or more cloves garlic chopped
• 6 small zucchini, sliced or diced
• 1 c basil, chopped
• 1/2 c parsley,chopped
• Salt and pepper
  -----
  

• 6-8 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 c Swiss (or other) cheese, grated
• 3/4 c Parmesan (or other) cheese, grated

1. Steam greens in an inch of salted water until wilted, drain and chop.
2. Combine butter, olive oil, onions, garlic, zucchini, basil, parsley, salt, and pepper and cook until barely tender, stirring.
3. Combine greens, veg mixture, cheese and eggs mixture
4. Bake in greased pan for 25 - 30 min at 375ºF

Fruits of Our Labor!

A day's pay for helping Grandpa thin his carrots!

Back to Building Beds!

Thanks to a generous discount and donation provided by Superior Block we were able to purchase the needed materials to build the remaining two raised beds. (See our article about why we choose Superior Block Gardenstone in the October 2010 post.) Here we are on a beautiful summer morning breaking ground. Not bad attendance for 7am!

Later in the day, after a lot of shoveling and gravel hauling, we start the critical job of laying the base course.

The finished bed partially filled with the last of our compost (time for another pile!). We still need to custom cut the cap stones on the curved ends.

To protect the soil we covered it with a layer of straw mulch and seeded it with a summer cover crop of Buckwheat (shown below with seedlings just starting to peek through the straw). Buckwheat makes nice bee forage—if only for a little while—at the peak of flowering we'll scythe it down and mulch over it allowing the roots and tops to decompose in place and increase the soil's organic matter and nutrient content (we call this a green manure crop). Perhaps we'll plant a community crop of garlic in this bed in the fall.

Our Garden Is Smoke-Free

New signs for the garden compliments of the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department.

RSCG Makes International Headlines (well, almost)...

Leena Vanni striking a pose in front of our new garden shed.

Our very own Leena Vanni, visiting reporter from Finland, authored an article on the Ryan Street Community Garden in the latest issue of the Finnish American Reporter (Vol. 25 - No. 6). Leena is one of our first-time gardeners and brings great enthusiasm and energy to the community garden project. Thanks Leena! The article was reprinted and reformatted for online viewing by Keweenaw Now. Read the article >

Waiting for Water...

(From left) Joe, Bob, and Ken of the Hancock Department of Public Works.

Ideally, the water system is something you want to have in place before you plant the garden, but things don't always work out as planned. Thankfully it's been a relatively wet (and late) Spring and our mulched beds are holding moisture nicely. Part of the City of Hancock's commitment to the community garden project is to provide water to the garden at no charge. Shown above are some of the good folks from the Department of Public Works hooking up a supply line for the garden off the existing water hydrant. Our sustainable water use strategy at the garden is to first conserve water, then to collect and use rainwater from on-site sources, and as a last option use the City supplied well water.