Twenty-three WSU Master Gardener trainees came to the Good Cheer Garden on Saturday, Feb. 11th for a class in Sustainable Gardening and Composting.

After learning how cover crops add organic matter to the soil, thereby improving tilth and providing nourishment to the soil food web, everyone spread out and turned over 4 beds of winter rye cover crops in a flash!

After learning about hot and cold methods of making compost, they refreshed the compost bins by flipping the compost from one bin to another, and made new hot compost from goat manure and straw.

They harvested some yummy compost that was ready to use, and spread it on some of the beds.

The class also learned about the in-ground worm bins, and fed the worms food scraps from the Food Bank… but we forgot to take a photo of that!

It was a great day, with a lot of learning, and a lot of great work!

Our big thanks to Steven Atkins, Sally Cahill, Meredith Crosby, Anna Davis, Carol Gillespie, Judy Grimshaw, Ann Holmberg, Susan Hovey, Mary Hulbert, Janet Kramer, Jane O’Dell, Kathleen Oakland, Janette Parlier, Kate Rowan, Lane Rowell, Sheryl Sato, Jason Shubert, Janet Stein, Marcia Troy, Adam Troyer, Kelly Tuggle, Nancy Zaretzke, and Timothy Lawrence, PhD.

There are babies in the garden! Giant winter spinach is growing under lights, and we’re gearing up to start kale, lettuce, chard and more spinach in seed blocks. The first garlic shoots poked up through the mulch. Spring is coming!

We just keep on loving our hoophouse, growing slowly but offering a second cutting about three weeks after the first one. Much appreciation also to the steady and generous work of volunteers willing to brave cold temperatures, turning over the rye cover crops that make compost into such beautiful organic matter for our soil!

We’ve even had good enough weather to have our picnic lunches outside, with fresh salad greens from the hoophouse, and spinach, arugula, kale and cilantro from the field. (That’s olive oil for the salad, lest you think we’re having too much fun!)

Saturday, Feb. 18th,
from 10 am – 12 noon

Join us for a free hands-on class on the why, how, and what is needed for making and using compost.

We will be inside for the ‘Back to Basics’ compost class then head out to the Good Cheer Garden for hands-on compost experience. In the second part of the class we will discuss sowing and managing cover crops in your vegetable garden.

Growing GroceriesCompostClass2012

Location:  Sears House (corner of Bayview Road and Meinhold Road) and the Good Cheer Garden (2812 Grimm Rd.) Dress for the weather, we will be outside for half of the class

Instructors: Janet Hall, WSU Waste-Wise Coordinator and Cary Peterson, Good Cheer Garden Coordinator

For more information call WSU Extension 360-321-5111, ext 7974 or 360-678-7974

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 two free pruning classes! These will basic classes for those who have little or no experience in dormant fruit tree pruning. The primary focus will be pruning fruit trees for structure and yield; mitigation pruning in neglected fruit trees and lowering the canopy without topping. There will be a short lecture followed by a demonstration and an opportunity to practice (weather permitting).  Pruning class flyer February 2012

Wednesday, February 15th: Young Trees and Old Trees
Instructor: Tim Lawrence
Location: 898 Meadowood Lane, Freeland, WA
Time:  12 noon – 2 pm

Sunday, February 19th: 4 – 5 Year Old Trees
Instructor: Tim Lawrence
Location: 455 Carnica Way, Greenbank, WA  (note different location!)
Time:  12 noon – 2 pm

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.

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!