Over the past few weeks, Shoresh's Kavanah Garden has been visited by many. Humans, mining bees, hawks, turkey vultures, an American Toad, a Leopard Frog, a Garder snake and many more species have come out to enjoy the beautiful garden. One of the many lessons we have learned over this time has been that it takes a community to plant and prepare a garden. People are the key actors in community gardens and we are so grateful for our ever growing team of volunteers who are helping to develop and grow the Kavanah Garden.
Jewish Environmental Educators Training
The humans have been particularly helpful. Three weeks ago we ran our first Jewish Environmental Educators Training at Shoresh's Kavanah Garden! Eight of us studied, planted, and prepped together for 3 days, learning how to integrating Jewish texts and teachings into garden-based activities and projects!
Philosophizing about the connections between Judaism, agriculture and sustainability.
Shoresh staff, Kyla Landon filling up our new raised beds.
Yoga? Dance? Neither! The Jewish Environmental Educators are spreading native wildflower seeds to help attract native pollinators to the Kavanah Garden with the help of some homemade seed balls!
Lag Ba'Omer
On Sunday May 30th, in honor of Lab Ba'Omer, 30 people came out and helped transform and prepare the garden for the 2011 growing season. Together we finished building 16 raised beds, planted Jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, radishes, nastursiums, lettuces in wheelchairs beds and made deer scares out of old CDS to keep deer from eating our gardens (sorry deer, we love you but we want to enjoy and share the fruits of our labor!).
Wheelchair accessible gardens are ready for planting lettuce and radishes!
Human-power pedaled mowing! There's no electricity at Shoresh's Kavanah Garden...thank goodness we have lots of volunteer muscle power to mow the open areas using our own push lawnmower!
Helping prepare our worm bins for another season of eating and pooping!
Lag Ba'Omer is the only day between Passover and Shavuot when traditionally observant Jews are permitted to cut their hair. So Marc took the opportunity to shave!
In the last few weeks we have put a lot of energy into preparing the Kavanah Garden for winter. We added manure and finished compost from our composter to all of the beds (to add nutrients back to the soil which will feed next year's veggies), we mulched all of the beds (to keep the creatures and critters that live in the soil warm over the winter), we cleaned and packed away all of our tools and trellises, we took a deep breath and gave ourselves a pat of the back...what a season! Thank you to the countless community members who made our second season so incredible! There may be frost on the ground now, but before you know it spring will be here and the Kavanah Garden will be open for another season of growth!
