Putting the Pantry Garden to Bed

Both adults and children helped prepare the pantry garden (and others) for the upcoming cold dark months of winter during an Ocober 19 garden clean-up work party. Over the course of the summer and fall, produce from the pantry garden was given directly to refugees, to St. Paul's Church food pantry, and to Merrimack Valley Day Care.

Another Spot Transformed!

This spot, one of serveral adopted by Ken Koerber, was formerly occupied by a trash barrel and an overgrown yew.

Former Lawn in Bloom

Quite a transformation from lawn to a productive place of mid-August beauty. Even the grass is green, thanks to what seems like nearly daily rain.

Pantry Garden Producing

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Cheryl and Jane tend to the Pantry Garden in this August 7 photo (left). In June, church attendees who were interested in helping to weed and water the pantry garden signed up to be responsible for checking on the garden once or twice during a particular week.

Cheryl and Chris brought loads of sea grass which washes up on the beach at Plum Island to the garden to use as mulch to retain moisture and reduce weeds. See July 8th photo (above right) of sea grass mulch around pepper plants.

Flower Bed Looking Lovely

Adopt-a-Spotters have been hard at work, planting, watering, and weeding. On the left is a July 8th photo of carefully tended flowers in a bed between Fellowship Hall and the Sanctuary.

To keep flowers and vegetables watered with maximum efficiency and minimal damage to hoses has required some experimentation, and has resulted in signage (see photo of blue sheet - "Use and Storage of the Garden Hose" - above right). Instructions for hose users boil down to kindergarten type common sense rules: keeping the hoses and people safe, keeping things neat and cleaning up after yourself.

Blueberries!

Blueberry bushes appear to have survived the trauma of transplanting. The proof is in the picking -- here a young picker shows off a ripe fruit. We may need years and many more bushes before we have quantities for pick your own, but it looks like we're off to a good start.

Potato Beetles and...Purple Potatoes!

Here's Lea with the first batch of purple potatoes from the former-RE-now-pantry raised bed garden she has been tending.

When we were out Tuesday morning, checking out all of Ken & the VFPers good works, we noticed that Colorado potato beetle larvae were going to town on the raised-bed potato foliage. These rust colored larvae with black spots look rather innocent as larvae go, but they can defoliate potato plants fairly quickly. Without the beetle exoskeleton, they are soft and squishy, and as Lea warned, when you're hand picking them and squishing them, sometimes they squirt. Yuck. One of the joys of organic gardening.

Plans for the Pantry Produce

If the potato beetle larva decimate the raised bed pantry potato plants, is it best to leave the potatoes in the ground until August 12, or harvest them sooner and figure out how to distribute them to area food pantries or to the Friendly Kitchen?

A New Garden & a First Zucchini

They came 1000s of miles to garden
The Volunteers for Peace (see link on left side-bar) participants spent Monday, July 7, working with Ken on the UU gardens. They picked up the omnipresent stones that the lawn apparently spits up, mowed, weeded, and watered. They even made progress on a new water distribution system. Everything looks fabulous!

What is this? A New Garden?!
Hmm. A new garden has appeared on the northeast end of the lawn. Well mulched, with tomatoes...The Volunteers for Peace are pictured above in front of this new garden that they helped create.

First Zucchini Given Away
Cheryl reports that on Monday (July 7) she gave away the first zucchini from the pantry garden!

Adopt-a-Spot

In May, Fran Phillipe, adorned with gardening hat, announced her Adopt-a-Spot plan during a Sunday Service Matters of Our Lives. She and Ken developed a map of highly visible areas of the church landscape that needed improvement. Church members and friends were able to go check out the various areas, marked with numbered stakes, and then sign up to adopt the "spot" of their choosing on the well-designed tri-fold display board map of the locations. Folks who were unable to commit to adopting an area but still wanted to participate could purchase a hanging basket, or contribute toward the cost of new plantings. A few Sundays later, nearly all of the 17 different spots had been adopted.

Prior to the June 8 Sunday service celebrating Marcel & Ellie and the potluck picnic that followed, Fran created classy markers with the names of the adopters, and placed them in the adopted spots.

Take a walk around and appreciate the new and improved landscape. Lots of blooming flowers right now in many of the adopted spots.

Garden Creation in 2008

Grow An Extra Row

As hard-core gardeners began perusing seed catalogs during the nearly record-breaking snowfall of the 2007-2008 winter, an article by the Gift/Thrift/Pantry group in the church's Parish Notes newsletter encouraged gardeners to plan to "grow an extra row" -- depending on garden scale, that might be an extra patio tomato plant, or a sizeable chunk of tilled soil.

"In mid to late August, we'll organize a back-to-school clothing & fresh produce program. Participants will take home fresh food (think garden) and children's clothing. This would be a small but do-able start to the fresh food pantry idea. Anything that was left over we'd distribute to local pantries and the Friendly Kitchen. Since now is the time that organized gardeners begin their garden planning for the summer, we encourage folks to grown an extra row, or plan for an extra patio plant, or whatever works for you, to contribute to the fresh food pantry idea. The focus would be on the late August event, but for garden items ready for earlier harvest we'll develop on a plan for earlier distribution. So as you plan your garden, whether it is acres or a corner of your patio, plan to plant extra for the UU fresh food pantry program."

Community Plate Collections

During the spring, two community plate collections (the offering collected during Sunday services) went toward the fresh food pantry initiative -- one plate for blueberry bushes, another for vegetable garden seeds, seedlings, and supplies.

Blueberry Bushes
On May 13th, Cheryl planted four new blueberry bushes along the edge of the lawn by the exit driveway. A church member who was moving donated another three well-established high bush blueberry bushes.

Front Lawn Gardens
In May Ken plowed the rocky front lawn soil, and created two sizeable service auction garden plots, another large plot paralleling Pleasant Street for the pantry garden, and a narrower but long plot for flowers paralleling the entry drive.

Changes to the UU Grounds

Some amazing things are happening at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Concord, NH. Located at 274 Pleasant Street, just a tad west of Concord Hospital, the church is blessed with a large and lovely piece of land. Recent, exciting changes on the UU grounds have inspired me to try my hand at blogging, so others can get a sense of what is happening, add their comments, ideas, clarifications, and maybe learn the difference between carrot greens and weeds, and how to leave the hose after watering...

One of the on-going challenges for the church has been maintenance of the grounds, and in at least the recent past, any accomplishments in this area have been due to the work of the Building & Grounds committee, the facility manager, and a handful of dedicated church members. One well-established and well cared for garden is the Memorial Garden, located behind the church in a natural, wooded setting.

Recent History: 2007
Some very cool changes during the past year...in the spring of 2007, with an emphasis in the Religious Education (RE)'s youth program on involving children in nature, as part of the congregation's start at becoming a Green Sanctuary through the UU Ministry for Earth, the RE program installed three raised beds in the front lawn. The children planted vegetables which were happily eaten throughout the summer and fall.

In July 2007, under direction of the Koerbers, volunteers from the Volunteers for Peace International Service Project hosted by the church helped create a brand new kitchen teaching garden, filled with herbs and greens from the Koerbers' farm.

In the fall of 2007, the church council voted to approve an ad hoc group to explore options regarding the ideas of a thrift store and a fresh food pantry. Separately, for the fall Service Auction, the Building & Grounds committee put up for bid two Green Sanctuary Garden prepared plots of 1000' sq. feet in the church front lawn.