Our last days with Youthorks was this week and my sadness was very apparent. Working with this organization this summer has been truly a blessing and has improved our garden tenfold. Looking at pictures from the beginning of the summer to now, you almost wouldn’t believe that it is the same garden. I have said it before and I will say it again, you all should look into it for next year.
This area along the fence is where the volunteers mulched
I had several other suggestions that I thought would be worth sharing that I wanted to include in this blog.
Mulch: Several weeks ago, there were men working across the street from our gardens to cut down trees. They had a bunch of chips and saw dust leftover, and we jumped on the opportunity to collect all of their leftovers. This last week we were able to mulch all around our flowers using this extra pine mulch. Even better though, the company agreed to drop off any waste that they had at the gardens any time they have it!! If you have loggers or woodcutters in your area it and be worth contacting them.
Manure: I probably have talked about this before, but we have been EXTREMELY lucky to be able to collect fresh and composed compost from several different horse and cow farmers.
Seeds: Although we try to focus on dispersing heirloom seeds, if we are able to help our gardeners grow different foods, we will give them hybrid seeds. This year we had several different places donate foods: ABLE Families, WVU and now Big Lots. I had connected with Big Lots months ago regarding soil donations, and so this time they knew where to find me when they had to get rid of seeds. Last week they dropped off a HUGE box of all kinds of seeds. We look very forward to using them for our planting event next week!! More details to come.
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