This has been a cool La Niña year for sure! Many old and new volunteers helping out today including those from the neighborhood, exchange students from Japan, and students from the north shore who heard about our community gardening! Alex led a walk through the garden beds and talked about how we can plan crops around the weather patterns of the year. This year might not be great for warm weather crops and we might not expect much here in Vancouver, a handful of ground cherries might be the expectation. However, the cool season crops like leeks, lettuce, and peas are still going strong!
Alex shared some red orach or orache (Atriplex hortensis) seeds which has also been called saltbush or mountain spinach! Red orach is an annual cool season crop that can also be used to draw salt out of soil and has been shown to do so effectively (1): a self seasoning crop. The plants shared were a vibrant purple. This purple color comes from the pigments, anthocyanins, that are great antioxidants with benefits including lowering risks of cancer (2)!
We also harvested some lacinato kale from the bottom up, leaving some leaves for the plant to keep growing! Raspberries, tayberries, black raspberries, and strawberries were also picked and shared.
Angela also checked on how the compost was doing, a whooping 30℃!
Jan
Red mountain spinach and seeds!
Jan explaining what makes Orache red - anthocyanins!
Alex with Red Orache
Weeding tomato bed
Companion planting red mountain spinach in our future garlic patch!
Harvesting berries!
