Our first workday of the season!
We had a New Gardener Member Orientation; we cleaned the composting toilet house; we cleaned and turned compost into Anabelle's plots; we cut back the butterfly bushes; we removed a rose bush; we removed a winter's worth of dead material and added composted to the irises along the path; we rebuilt part of Andy's plot with some found stones.
The bulk of the workday was spent moving the garden forward to scale back and improve upon our compost production and create more open space in the garden.
Today was phase one.
We distributed finished compost material between plots and common areas and turned it in to the soil (thus emptying the wooden bins and one of the silos of finished compost); we deconstructed the wooden composting bins in the back of the garden and tied the wood into bundles for trash pickup; we moved all of the bags of leaves (to be used as browns in the season's compost production) to the back of the garden; we moved half of the compost that had been curing under a tarp (next to the rain harvester) to a silo in the back of the garden, and we chopped a lot of brown material.
We worked with parents and members of the Friends of the Clinton Hill Library to transport about twelve wheelbarrows full of our compost to the flower and perennial beds that are in front of the library.
Our first workday of the season!
We welcomed some new members to the garden, we cleaned the dead material out of the irises, we pruned the butterfly bushes, we took apart Mike and Gertrude's raised beds to make space for the Gertrude Memorial Community Herb Garden and the new compost system location, we dug out Annabelle's two 4 x 8 raised beds and moved them alongside the path, we moved that massive pile of woodchips and spread woodchip mulch on all the paths between the raised beds, we transplanted some plants including a rose bush, we excavated stone material from a buried wall that Charlie found in Ms. Covington's plot, we removed the winter ground cover planting from Carmen and Margaret's plots, we cleaned the composting toilet house, & we weeded the common areas.
We installed the solar panel for the composting toilet on our neighbor Don's roof (Thanks Don!)
The Installation, Part Two - We carried the 800 pound tub over to the hole and lowered it in
The Big Dig, Part One - We dug a hole over 333 cubic feet deep and wheeled the dirt away to a dumpster on the street
Our Opening Workday of the Season