The garden is a Memorial Garden, a garden of benevolence, a garden of love. It is a gift to our community from the God of Love, Jesus the Christ. The first “seeds” for our garden have come from members of the congregation and a designation from the congregation’s memorial funds. These seeds have brought us to the beginning of a journey that will last for many years. Guided by the Holy Spirit we will plow forth until row upon row of our work is accomplished and our community is better nourished. The Lord invites you all to be part of His work on earth strengthening and feeding His children. The garden is made possible by generous donations from the community, and grants from the ELCA Domestic Hunger Grants, the Alaska Food Policy Council through the Municipality of Anchorage, the Alaska Women's Giving Circle, The Alaska Master Gardeners of Anchorage, the generous support by the congregation of Lutheran Church of Hope, and support from the Alaska Synod of the ELCA.

Food from the garden in 2019 was sent to Lutheran Social Services Food Pantry, the Tudor Road Gospel Rescue Mission, and to Bean's Cafe.

Monday, November 12, 2018

2018 Harvest

 
Brussells Sprouts
Seems I have been neglecting my blog these days. It's really kind of silly of me because I have many drafts ready all I pretty much have to do is post them.

Chieftain Potatoes
For the 2018 season I set a goal of 4000 pounds (2 tons) for the harvest. I didn't quite make it but came close at 3641 pounds. Once again it was a learning experience. Don't plant squash and brassica starts too early. If the squash are blossoming when you transplant them you started too early. The cabbage, broccoli, and sprouts were all pretty root bound when they went in the ground. The cabbage heads were small in general. The broccoli mostly bolted or had very small heads. I was disappointed. The sprouts did about as expected but some of the stalks were pretty small. The only things that seemed to be started at the right time were the peppers and leeks. The peppers did well, 9 pounds this year with only one box planted. The leeks which were an experiment produced 25 pounds of lovely plants. I will do a separate entry on the leeks.

Chieftain Pototoes
Beets
The single largest crop was the turnips, 700+ pounds. The month of July I used a wheel barrow to harvest turnips. I planted radishes three times and ended up with well over a hundred pounds of them. As we were harvesting the crops this year I examined pretty closely what locations had the best yield. Turns out the north end and the west side of the garden did the best. The east and south sides were in shadow much more of the day and I'm convinced that had something to do with the yield. The peas on the north fence did much better than those on the south fence. Everything was pretty much the same except for the shadow. The remedy will be to remove some more trees from the south and east sides of the garden to increase the sunshine throughout. Which means there is lots of work to be done this winter to get things ready to go for the spring. Hopefully we can get into the trees before there is too much snow.
Carrots

Leeks
I will be spending some time in Florida and Arizona this winter. Will have to fit the tree cutting between the trips or wait until March. The winter harvest is better for turning bowls but then that is another post altogether.






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1 comment:

  1. Lisa BNovember 13, 2018 at 12:47 PM

    Im always excited to hear about your plantings, harvesting and learning curves!! Great job!! So good to hear about the bounty!!!

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