We had cancelled the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service because it was so cold and frozen, but intrepid volunteers showed up and so we harvested in the hoophouse. Nine pounds of mixed salad greens went into the Food Bank!

Winter finally came and blanketed the garden with almost a foot of snow. A big thanks for Sarah Birger and Matthew Swett for regularly brushing the snow off the hoophouse!

We also stacked up milk crates to prop the hoophouse up in the overnight snow storms. Just one little cold farmer left out on the fence!

Love those veggies! They did amazingly well under the snow. The spinach got remarkably sweet, and everything survived. We’ll be harvesting this week!

We’re starting to turn over the cover crops, weather permitting. The soil is beautiful, and it’s lots of fun to chop the rye cover crop in, knowing that it’s creating organic matter for this year’s crop.

Join us if you see us out in the field working. On Wednesdays, we’ll have hot soup, and salad greens from the garden, for lunch!

Join us for our annual work party on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January, 16th, from 10 am – 3:30 pm.  There will be outside winter gardening work at the Good Cheer Garden and the Bayview School Garden. Picnic lunch at noon with hot soup, and salad greens from the garden! 

We’re having such a mild winter so far that the overwintering crops are doing really well out in the field– spinach, kale, collards, chard and arugula are all surviving and even growing a little. The cut-and-come-again salad mix in the hoophouse is ready for a harvest.

STAY TUNED FOR NEW DATE!!!

The light is returning, it’s still cold, and it’s the perfect time to learn about pruning your fruit trees!

WSU Extension Service is offering a free pruning class on January 21st, from 10 am – 12 noon.

Click HERE for more info!

The Good Cheer Cookbook is a unique collection of recipes, beautifully illustrated by Kathleen Marshall, who also contributed many of the recipes. You’ll also find hand-written recipes  from the original 1960s Good Cheer cookbook.

Garden volunteer Anne Zontine contributed recipes that the garden volunteers enjoy, drawn in her delightful style. The last three years of the garden are chronicled in photos, as well as the 50 year history of Good Cheer. A great holiday gift that supports Good Cheer!

Read more information here from the Good Cheer Blog. The cookbook sells for $19.95 and is available at all Good Cheer stores, and also some local retailers. Good Cheer and good cooking! Enjoy!

All ages have been busy in the garden this fall– harvesting and bagging the produce to take into the Food Bank…

Planting the garlic, harvesting the vermicastings from the in-ground worm bins…

Pulling the dried out scarlet runner beans off the fence and shelling them (yum, great in soups!)

And sowing all the cover crops to put the garden to bed for the winter!

The garden and the volunteers are having a winter break, and we wish you a good winter rest, too! Work parties officially begin again in March, 2012, but we’ll be out there Wednesdays starting in mid-January to turn over the cover crops.

Ellie Sherman and Stephanie Turco were the first apprentices in the Community Gardening Leadership Training launched this year, and have now completed their apprenticeship! They have each headed off to the next phase of their careers in community gardening. We miss them and wish them well!

Ellie and Stephanie worked in all the gardens, gaining experience in different settings. Ellie co-coordinated the Good Cheer Garden, and took the lead at the Whidbey Institute Westgarden, leading service learning projects with youth and children growing food for the food bank.

Stephanie also co-coordinated the Good Cheer Garden, and took the lead in the Langley Middle School Garden, leading work parties with students there and also growing hundreds of pounds of food for the food bank.

Our great appreciation to both Ellie and Stephanie for all the seeds they planted, grew and harvested, and the volunteers they helped organize and nurture! May the seeds of leadership planted in this program grow lots of food in the future gardens they will coordinate!

 

Fall has come to the garden! There’s still lots we’re harvesting, but it’s also time to cleanup the beds, plant the cover crops, and get ready for winter.

Beautiful broccoli, and lovely leeks! Plus carrots, kale, chard, collards, bokchoi and lettuce are still producing.

The last of the tomatoes were harvested and we’re planting some cool weather greens in the hoophouse.

Over 300 pounds came into the Food Bank from the Langley Middle School Garden.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the fresh veggies, and turn the beds over, but now the soil and the gardeners will rest! Join us the last Wednesday in October to say goodbye to Stephanie Turco, Good Cheer Garden summer apprentice!

Their first day in the garden they learned about the life cycle of plants from seed to plant, flower and fruit. They collected lettuce seeds, mixed potting soil, and planted radishes, parsley and lettuce to grow in their classroom.

Everyone’s favorite project is pulling carrots. And of course, we always take time to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Their most recent project has been clearing the squash beds that Jay Freundlich’s 6th grade science class planted the previous spring. The first task was to harvest all the squash, 314 pounds in total!

After the harvest, they used logic to estimate how much each of the pumpkins weighed. 

Next we will work on removing the squash vines and weeds to make way for winter rye (a cover crop that will hold the beds for the winter) and planting flower bulbs to give the garden extra beauty next spring!

- written by Stephanie Turco, Langley Middle School Garden Coordinator, and apprentice in the Community Gardening Leadership Training

It’s been a lovely end of the season in the Good Cheer Garden! The sunflowers have been magnificent, and the veggies have loved the heat and sun of September (finally!).

The late season bok choi, lettuce and salad mix

the kale, the carrots,

beets, collards, broccoli, zucchini, cucumber, basil, tomatoes, radishes, arugula, cilantro, winter squash and pumpkins… still lots being harvested!

From lettuce to leeks, the fall has been bountiful, but, sigh, the season is waning.

As soon as each bed is harvested, it’s turned over and cover crop planted. Instead of growing a new crop of veggies, we’re now growing our soil for next season.