I love what the post lady delivered today!

A Happy Day.... This OSU Master Gardener Certificate arrived in the mail today...
And the orange badge.

This bumble bee was a welcome visitor/garden vip

Master Gardener Grant, Improvements, and 4-H.

February 4th, 2012, anothe sunny day, we planted the special early tomato seed from Tomato fest today. We loved that there were a few varieties under 60 days. The tomato flats are under heat mats to sprout.

Cam and Patty renovated the greenhouse the greenhouse floor and rearranged it and we all filled the flats with cool weather seed. It looks fantastic filled with start flats, can't wait for the plants. It was 80 degrees in the greenhouse today. By changing the floor to cement pavers and adding water containers we are increasing the thermal mass.

Bruce worked on the beds at the Artichoke Hill Garden while we planted and the greenhouse was renovated.

This is the before the weeding today at Artichoke Hill learning and giving garden. very overgrown and neglected.

Wow we can see the beds now! We are almost ready for the front yard foods not lawns transformation. A few hours of care and the garden is coming to life.

January 28th,2012 ~ Cement pavers are under about 1/3 of the greenhouse, just enough to go under the shelving.

Planting seed to prepare for the seed/plant swap and for the garden

The begining of the Back to Eden http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/no till garden 3 months and very few weeds noted, there are lots of weed seed under the cardboard and woodchips .

The before photo of the food not lawns garden

The greenhouse before renovation

Planting seed

More planting

The weeder

Tualatin Valley Gleaners
First Annual Seed/Plant/Seedling Swap and Share Garden Resource Fair.

Place: Beaverton Community Center February
Date: Saturday Feb 25, 2012
Time: 10am-12pm
Address:12350 SW 5th Street Beaverton OR

Food /Tool Drive: Bring non perishable food, hand garden tools, gloves, or suggested $3 donation for this event. All donations go to the Tualatin Valley Gleaners – A non- profit supplemental food program.

Plants must be in containers

Professional Seed Savers, Plant societies, Garden Clubs, Farmers, Nurseries please call Lisa at 503-810-5472 to reserve your free resource table space or more information.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2012

Master Gardener Grant, Improvements, and 4-H.

We recieved a Washington County Master Gardener Grant this year to add some additional raised beds, hoop houses and cold frames to extend the growing season at the Giving Gardens. The project is fully funded. We are thankful for the donation to improve the Giving and Learning Garden.

4-H is now in progress with learning about gardening at our giving and learning gardens and state fair exhibit preparation as the focus. It's going to be lots of fun, and I think we are all excited to start.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpMhw4kOlts

This is the garden update on winter solstice 2011. This is my first video publication sorry it's a little shaky, next time I will do better. I plan on getting some video mentoring soon. Our total poundage for the year is 1694 pounds! Thats nearly 4x the poundage of last year and we were late to plant! 2012 should be even better!

Before and afters...

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011

Before and afters...

12/22/2011 Winter Solstace 2011 Garden Update. Growing our winter garden we have - Red Russian kale, Dino or Lacinto Kale, Swiss Chard, Beets, Lettuce, Turnips, Radish, Collard Greens, Cabbage, Egyptian Walking Onions, Garlic, Raddicio, Diakon Radish, Leeks. Night temperatures have been below freezing for over a week now, and frost is still on the ground, all the winter vegetables are holding up. This year we heavily mulched the beds in late fall before the freezes and that has helped the plants endure the cold weather better. Our total poundage for the year is 1694 pounds! Thats nearly 4x the poundage of last year and we were late to plant!

Later in summer.
Early Summer
After: We transplanted Collard Greens, Raddicio, Lettuce and Leeks.

Before: lowlands, we added a few inches of soil and mulch and made a no till garden using cardboard and tree trimming chips for the paths, and mounded soil and compost.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2011

Veggies....

Fall veggies, Dino kale, early cabbage, spinach, chard, garlic, leeks, shallots, kale.
Doing a little pile smoothing and chip trail maintenance. .

More of the dalia's in front.
The dalia's a gift from a master gardener were magnificent and the bees love them!

The last of the tomatoes for the year. Fried green tomatoes and green tomato salsa are good options.

Harvesting in the rain.

Cabbage
Beautiful ripe veggies!
Dalias make a lovely addition to the garden
Our early tomatoes. Due to previous years tomato issues, this year we focused on planting early short season tomatoes and it paid off with a great harvest!

Spaghetti Squash, kale, chard, tomatoes, squash, peppers, cucumberes,eggplant, tomatillos and

cauliflower, quite a garden harvest!
Our straw bale compost pile.
Our straw bale planter.
Planting in straw
Purple cabbage and Red Russian Kale bed

My dream season extending bed.

Made some chive vinegar

More giving gardens flowers.

Gerties Gold Tomato. A late season tomato, not very productive, but worth the real estate and worth the wait. Every time my husband eats one, he comments on how that is the best tomato!

Tastes likes melon and mango.

This year was my first for flowers. I planted this lovely dahlia.

Tomatoes ready for dehydrating

This was the prettiest bed I made, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and some red russian kale.

This bumble bee spent the night in this flower. Talk about bee crack.

Making a strawbale bed. This worked well for the plants inside, but the plants we planted on the straw bale did not grow optimum but it was a nice experiment.

A nice large zuchinni, the squash puttered out early this year with powdery mildew,but not before harvesting about 20 nice zuchinni.

This year has been excellent for beets, I staggered plantings and none bolted.

Making more sauerkruat.

It has been a good year for tomatoes! I have been harvesting several yellow and red tomatoes. One change I made was not to concentrate on Glamour tomatoes and long season tomatoes, but instead I planted dependable early season tomatoes and a few glamour tomatoes.