Guided Work Party - Aug 24th

Some of our fruit trees have canker! Oh no, this is a fungal infection that kills off the meristematic tissue (cambium) below the bark. Alex, will be going in and cutting those branches off. Don’t put them into your home compost bin, otherwise the canker will spread throughout your garden! City green bins should be okay as the city compost reaches a higher, more sterilizing temperature!

We also transplanted some more lettuce seedlings, hopefully these will get to a good size before winter. We also harvested some chard… remember to twist and pull at the bottom of the leaf to get the whole thing. This will promote more leaf growth at the top of the plant!

Beans, beans, beans, the more you harvest the more you get and this is certainly true for us!

There’s always a bunch of blueberries being harvested, kale, arugula, and lettuce as well.

Jan

Farmers Markets Donation Stations

Fighting food insecurity with Vancouver farmers markets and local farmers!!

Heirloom tomatoes from the Mt Pleasant Farmers Market Donation and cucumber extravaganza from the Riley Park Farmers Market Donation! What a great August haul ~

Produce placed in the Community Fridge @ LMNHS.

#mountpleasant #rileyparkfarmersmarket #vancouver #vancouverfarmersmarket #foodsovereignty #fooddignity #foodjustice #lmnh #community #communityfridge

Guided Work Party - Aug 21

We started the day off by looking for pollinator - plant relationships in the south pollinator garden. There were many bees on the beebalm (specifically Monarda puntata) and hoverflies over umbelliferous flower heads like fennel. Hover flies aren’t hairy and have two sets of wings while bees only have one set of wings. We generally think of charismatic pollinators such as honey bees but we can’t discount hoverflies (1) and other pollinators that can be just as if not more effective! There were some spent flowers (like the butterfly bush and daisies) that we deadheaded.

We spent some time plating our lettuce starts in the winter veggie bed. There were also lots of beans and blueberries to be picked. So much of the foragable veg purslane, we harvested some to take home and left some in the free library for passers by to take home!

Jan

  1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2022.111320

Guided Work Party - Aug 17

Thinking about fall plantings, we got some alliums into the ground. Alliums (think onions, leeks, etc.) are generally quite cold hardy, just remember to give them water after transplanting!

For fall planting, the idea is to get seedlings in at the end of summer to get a good start. Then later in the fall they’ll do the most of their growing with many fall veggies liking an optimum 10 - 15 degrees celsius. Brassicas like kale and overwintering cauliflowers are good. For some more options see Linda Gilkeson’s blog (1, 2)!

It was quite hot, so we set up a tent over the rows to be weeded.

Beans and blueberries galore! There were so many harvested, after distributing to all the gardeners there were still lots left over for the community fridge at Main and King Edward. There was also lots of kale and arugula!

We ended the day with some relaxing, socializing, and snacking! Tasty soft cookies and ice cream washed down with some apple cider.

Jan

  1. http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/gardening-pdf/Winter%20Gardening%202022%20-%20July%2023.pdf

  2. http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/gardening-pdf/Winter%20Gardening%202022%20-%20July%208.pdf

Little Explores in the Garden - Aug 12 

How does our body know to grow a head and not an arm? How are humans and bananas related? What makes a living rabbit different from a rock that’s not alive? It’s all in the DNA!

These were some of the questions we asked and discussed in the garden. In thinking about the deep origins of DNA, we discussed the hydrothermal vent theory (1). It’s crazy to think that there may not have been “life” as we know it on the planet before that! We also talked about how our genes control our body plan (2) and how they can be very similar or different to create the variation of living things in the world.

Our young scientists then went on to explore what it meant to be told knowledge vs. experimenting to see knowledge for our own eyes. To SEE DNA, we did a DNA extraction on strawberries in the garden (3). We thought about how crazy it is that this goopy white DNA is life’s instruction book! A fun activity you can do at home too ~

Jan

Some heated scientific discussions amongst our future knowledge makers ~~~

Our budding scientists with their DNA extractions!

  1. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro1991

  2. https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/hoxgenes

  3. https://www.genome.gov/Pages/Education/Modules/StrawberryExtractionInstructions.pdf