Saint Phocas Garden at Saint Titus is a shared project with Saint Luke’s, and part of the Good News Gardens Movement of the Episcopal Church. If you would like to receive their newsletters and/or start a Good News Garden of your own at home or with others, please visit the website for more information.
As the weather warmed throughout April, the garden began showing all kinds of life.
Chives, comfrey, oregano and one of our currant bushes in the shady bed along the church side of Delaney park are all happily growing. Someone or something cut down our raspberries and crushed the other currant bush. The raspberries were easily replaced. It will take a little longer to replace the currant bush, but we will!
In the early spring bed, sugar snap and snow peas are growing along with a few lettuce seedlings. Beet seeds were also sprouting when last I checked. We are still waiting to see if the lettuce and spinach seeds will sprout or if they need to be replaced with seedlings.
We cleared the weeds out of the winter bed and found that we have a couple of rows of onions and garlic that should be ready for harvest sometime in June. The broccoli and collards have started to flower which is lovely to behold as well as excellent bee forage. Humans can eat the flowers too! They taste a lot like broccoli florets.
David and Althea Stanton came on April 1 to rototill the new summer bed after Mary Beth cut down the cover crop. The cover crop was crimson clover, which fixes nitrogen in the soil to help feed future plantings, and winter rye which sends down deep roots to help break up the hard earth underneath our careful layers of cardboard, straw, compost and topsoil. By rototilling the cut crop, David mixed together the soil with the organic matter in the freshly cut plants which will help them to break down quickly and increase the amount of organic matter in the soil for microbes and eventually plants to feed on.
We will continue to meet at 3:00 on Friday afternoons for the month of May. Please come and join us if you can, even if it’s only to chat. We spend as much time talking and visiting as we do working and love to see new faces. If you have any questions you can reach Mary Beth at 919-224-9697. If you would like to join us, but Fridays at 3:00 is not a good time for you, please get in touch. We usually change to a new time for the summer months starting in June and may be able to accommodate you when we do.
We hope to see you in the garden!
Mary Beth, Greg, Linda, Carla, Hannah, and Sarah
Father we pray that you bless the soil, the hands that work it, the food it grows and the people it feeds. Let the small act of growing food ripple out to bring greater love and health into the world.
Amen.
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