Good morning sprouts! Our week this week has been very sprout oriented so join us! Firstly, this week we received our seed donation from West Coast Seeds!! We received packages of seeds such as some edible flowers, such as lollipop mix and viola, some herbs and spices, such as basil and stevia, and some more lettuces, such as arugula. Thanks West Coast Seeds! If you want to order your own seeds, the link below will take you there. www.westcoastseeds.com/ On Tuesday we took pallets up to the winterized greenhouse for our buckets as we have loaded over 90 buckets of dirt so whomever is moving those may need help. We are waiting on about 30 more buckets to finish this project and are simply needing Canadian Tire to get in their next shipment before moving forward. On hold for now. MITE UPDATE: we have used some more bread submerged in milk to prevent reproduction of red mites which seems to be working, although not done yet. We also noticed red mites in our garden tower so are using the same process to get rid of these little vermin. Make sure to take a couple steps back from your gardening projects to make sure there aren't any bug issues like we're experiencing. Regarding bugs, we have also seen some fruit flies wandering around, trying to steal our bounty, and have put in a mason jar with soapy water and extra virgin olive oil, covered with a tight plastic seal, to entice and trap these little bugs. Regarding the second garden tower, after all the watering we did on Monday, when we checked on the tower on Tuesday the drainage tray was completely full of water. We took that water and used it to do our watering again so dumped the water on the top rung to prevent overflow and save water wastage. We will need to water the tower again before planting seeds. We took a power bar over to the 6-plex so they can plug in all their lights but the tower still needs an extension chord, in order to plug everything in, and some extra soil for the top rung of the tower as it's not quite full. The 6-plex has also given us their final selection for seeds so we will be finalizing our growing plan for the second tower this afternoon. Our sprouting has been in full effect this week as we started some mung beans and some kamut sprouts (also known as wheat-something-or-other). We also started a sprout experiment, called red perilla, which is supposed to take 1-2 years to sprout. Hopefully exciting for our future participants. We've also had the opportunity to taste our beautiful sprouts growing from last week's planting. These tasty ones are sunflower seeds and sugar peas. Yum! Our grow lights in the classroom have now been put to the test and are currently encouraging our little sunflower seeds and sugar peas. Note: some of our activities were delayed because we were kicking butt at FoodSafe. Our greenhouse team is now certified to serve you food (for the next 5 years)! Wah pow! We contract our trainers through a local organization called the Yukon Tourism and Education Council (YTEC) so if you're needing certification, perhaps because you want to cook and serve the awesome things you're growing in your own home, check them out: yukontec.com/ Until next week little sprouts!
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Good morning flowers! Welcome to a new week! We have guest editors this week - our greenhouse guys and gals are doing this week's post! Over the weekend, our greenhouse group babysat their sprouts. Sprouts for this weekend were sunflower seed sprouts and sweet peas. As a continuation of the seed growth from the weekend, the team started broccoli sprouts in the classroom as the ones from last week were too moist which led to mold. The new process creates more drainage, involves plastic wrap with holes for more air, and less light during the initial growing process. Here's hoping this resolves our mold issue - to be continued. We will see as the week progresses. If you want to start your own broccoli sprouts, we liked this site: www.wikihow.com/Grow-Broccoli-Sprouts An update on our 1st tower, we have added new radish and spinach because they weren't growing too well. We also removed the sprouts/roots from an old onion that was trying to create new onions in Catheryne's pantry and planted them in to the tower. This one is a total experiment and, although looking like alien hooves, we're winning. 6-plex, here we come! We officially assembled the grow lights - there are now 3 working lights to be turned on once the seeds are in. Despite the three story climb, greenhouse participants hiked 12 rounds of full watering cans to start the watering process of the 6-plex tower. We won't plant seeds or give worms a new home in the 6-plex until the tower is fully watered, which we will do tomorrow (Tuesday). We asked the residents and employees what kind of plants they would like to see in their fancy new tower and they requested mostly salad building plants. When we came back to Challenge, we started considering what salad greens would be best in the 6-plex tower. Some ideas we had were spinach, sweet potato, leeks, romaine (and several other) lettuces, dill, onion, tomato, garlic (for the vampires), radish and broccoli. Yum yum! Regarding our composting processes, the Bokashi is going very well as the right kind of mold is growing which has taken down the kind of sickly, pickly sweet smell of rotting food. Our vermicomposting seems to be having some issues which led to panic from certain greenhouse members. The greenhouse participants spent some time this morning looking up how to manage red mites in the bin. We've discovered a method of getting rid of the mites using bread soaked in milk in the top bin. It should attract the mites to the bread which allows us to simply remove the bread AND the mites. The reason we want to get rid of the mites is that they make our wormy worms unhappy and leads to lower worm appetites. We shall see. If you're having issues with your own vermicomposting bin, check out Google as there are lots of options or go directly this site: www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/vermicomposting/pests-in-worm-bins.htm Good afternoon! We have uploaded our most recent gallery of progress! :) This week we have been working hard at emptying out our winterized greenhouse. In December we did some soil sampling in the greenhouse before growing consumable plants in the dirt and found that the levels were slightly high. As a result, the greenhouse folk have been working hard this week to empty the current dirt from within the winterized greenhouse and transferring it out. It has been a dusty process! We also purchased ALL of the buckets from Canadian Tire. The wood shop and greenhouse teamed up again this week to install an extra set of grow lights for our classroom projects! Our fearless leader, Catheryne, came up with the brain child of setting up a smaller growing system for things like our sprouts. The photos below show the pulley system, which allows lowering and raising the lights as needed, and will soon have the irrigation mat that has been ordered to help water the plants. Although the link provided shows a one-unit system, our process allows for more flexibility within our classroom environment. www.leevalley.com/en/garden/Page.aspx?p=68785&cat=2,44716 hosts the original system and we are excited to try the process here. Next week.... grow light assembly! Ps. aren't our greenhouse guys awesome!! They have allowed us to share their photos on the site! Meet our team! Hello friends of the Challenge Greenhouse! We have officially rung in the New Year, had some days off and started a new program! Apologies for the delays in posting as it has now been several weeks since we have shared what we're doing. Over the holidays we watered the greens in the tower to ensure they continued growing but mostly gave them space to do so. Unfortunately, our spinach on the top rung didn't grow, likely due to not getting enough light, but we have had lots of growth for everything else. Some websites suggest growing plants in little pots or containers in order to transplant only the healthiest plants in to the tower, which we didn't do, which might also impact some seeds doing really well and some taking a bit more nurturing to sprout. The current growing state is posted through photos below. Check out our garlic trees! Now I will explain our delays - on January 3 we started a brand new Employ Ability Skills program. Our first week of a new program always involves a 'getting to know you' week where the participants do not work in the worksites. We don't usually post what job coaches do as it is mostly maintenance and perhaps less exciting. Now that we are in our first week with participants in the greenhouse sector again we have started teaching them about the tower, vermicomposting and Bokashi composting, gardening (in general) and all the information related to working with plants. This week started with Catheryne and the team growing sprouts and learning more about the daily tasks here. The second half of the gallery photos show the sprouting being done with seeds such as alfalfa, sandwich booster and mixed beans as an initiation in to the program. Hope your January involves the growth of new things as well and good wishes. Sending cheer from the Challenge greenhouse! |
about usWe are part of the Employ Ability Skills Program with Challenge Disability Resource Group. We take part in a 12-week program that allows us to learn new skills and foster our interest in growing our own food organically. Archives
August 2017
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