Hello friends! I hope you're all enjoying this week's sunshine and warm weather as much as our little plantses!! Not much posting and updating this week as we've been busy, busy, busy starting seeds, transplanting our ever growing amaranth and marigolds, and mixing more seeds to keep the planting process running. Full steam ahead!! Some seeds that were planted this week, free sown to be specific, were some calendula (more than before) and shingiku which are our lovely edible chrysanthemums. We also started, last Friday, some solar power and Mexican torch sunflowers which have already started to break out of the soil! Amazing little growers. If you want to plant your own beautiful flowers I have included some growing instructions and pictures of the finished product in the gallery below. We are excited to see these ones start as the short blend sunflowers will be in the planter boxes around the city and some of the short blend will decorate our own Challenge planter spaces. Summers are busy here! For the tower, we have brought in some back up worm castings to bolster production while we spend most of our days at the greenhouse. The dancing worms on the bag in the photos is an example of what we use. Work, work, work (refer to YouTube for songs along this line of thinking). On Wednesday we all went up to Cliffside greenhouse to get an idea of what our little greenhouse will look like soon. Cool to see a full production greenhouse which is already selling plants and flowers. We're close behind!! More photos to come next week and we'll be starting to work on the planter boxes soon so we'll do our best to keep your interest and you all updated! Thanks for checking in (33 visits this week!!) - you are all awesome!
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Welcome to the sixth of November... or that's what last week felt like with the cold weather. This week's routine starts with the twirly roundabout thing. Our solo male greenhouse representative did a lot of work this week on watering the garden tower in the mornings and the greenhouse during the day. Speaking of the greenhouse, that's where we've been spending the majority of our time as greenhouse worker bees. The week started with planting more marigolds as some did not sprout, as well as seeds such as marjoram and frilly edible crysanthamum. Our secret planter started sewing some snap and snow peas this week as well. As usual, there was lots of watering which happened, as well as refilling the tank and the many, many jerry cans which live there. It's very peaceful, assuming you don't drop the jerry can in the water and cause a tidal wave which lands on your head! We watered the plants, the ground and ourselves. We also refilled the water tank for the volunteers who come up on the weekends. Thanks to the guy who lets us use his water (the man at Changing Gear)!! More work included transplanting what seemed like a thousand amaranth plants (or at least too many to count). Our ladies, Ang and our secret planter, spent the mornings filling trays and trays.... and trays................. and trays. We must have filled over thirty trays. Now the trays are ready for our extra helpers who will be coming up this afternoon to help speed things along. Some work this afternoon will include planting all of the sunflowers and MORE TRANSPLANTING!!! One of the funner things this week was harvesting some little baby radishes from the greenhouse... YUM!! Aside from regular greenhouse activities, our group participated in the AURORA learning styles workshop on Wednesday and Thursday which was hosted by Learning Disability Association Yukon (LDAY). Our secret planter also took a break from planting on Friday to provide some much needed help in the Challenge storefront. Thanks secret planter!! Thanks for tuning in and off we go to the greenhouse with our extra helpers!! Pictures next week will be much fuller, and so will our hands with all of the watering cans..... sooooo muuuuuuuch waterrrrrriiiiiing! If you ever need a new arm workout plan, stop by our greenhouse and help out. Friends of the greenhouse!! Thank you for joining us in the month of May! Thank you for all of your patience with our greenhouse postings as we have been in the process of closing out the last program with our lovely bloggers, starting a new program and getting our guys started in this new greenhouse time! We have three new participants who put greenhouse as their first choice and they have been being oriented to the greenhouse, the tools, Challenge and all of the other things that they manage on a daily basis. Right now, greenhouse work involves a LOT of planting and watering to make sure the plants for our city boxes are looking full and ready come planting time in June. We had a frost recently which led to losing some of our plants (sorry previous program peeps!) so have been discarding the plants who were not strong enough and replacing them with nice healthy sprouts. Production is in full swing now! For our garden towers.. they have been continuously growing and producing lovely plants. Right now we are watering to keep them healthy with our main focus being the city planter box items at the moment. Our new program guys have gotten in to the swing of greenhouse nice and quick and we're excited to initiate them to this site once they are more settled in here. Thanks for the loyal following (24 views this week!!!) and here's how things are looking around here these days.... I will say too, we missed you guys! |
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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