Master Gardener Grant - Hoop House Installation

The tomatoes and corn and flowers are very happy in our new hoophouse

End of May update ~ the Dalias are almost ready for planting

The 1st hoophouse Model....

Cleaning up the garden

Rolling Out the Plastic for the cover

Putting the straps on to connect it together

 2 hoop houses so far!

 4-H garden wood chip base

 Hoop house babies!

Hoop house number 2 babies

Seed Swap

4-H Garden Fair begins

The first layer of chips at the 4H garden!

Today our activities were garden planning, making bird feeders, planting dahlias and vegetable starts for our garden.

Selecting Dahlias for planting. Lisa went to the Portland Dahlia Society sale and brought Dahlias from different places

Our pine cone bird feeders

Garden Planning in a pot garden!

Garden planner

Fruit Vegetable art fair project ideas - this is sqaush from a summer 2011 garden was turned into a crab, an alien and bird. The ants were made with baby potatoes. Trim was dried chili pepper, gogi berries, raisins, blue berries, Christmas Cactus and google eyes for fun.

Greenhouse update - intensive seed sowing

March 10th ~The peppers moved to green house. Germination rate was low for some reason and there was a little die off so will try again.

Tomatoes planted February 4rh are doing well and are ready for transplant.

This is intensive seed sowing in practice, each cell has several seeds of different varieties.
Tomato seedlings just coming up under the heat and lights.

February 4th, 2012, anothe sunny day, we planted the special early tomato seed from Tomato fest today. We loved that there were a few varieties under 60 days. The tomato flats are under heat mats to sprout.

Cam and Patty renovated the greenhouse the greenhouse floor and rearranged it and we all filled the flats with cool weather seed. It looks fantastic filled with start flats, can't wait for the plants. It was 80 degrees in the greenhouse today. By changing the floor to cement pavers and adding water containers we are increasing the thermal mass.

Bruce worked on the beds at the Artichoke Hill Garden while we planted and the greenhouse was renovated.

This is the before the weeding today at Artichoke Hill learning and giving garden. very overgrown and neglected.

Wow we can see the beds now! We are almost ready for the front yard foods not lawns transformation. A few hours of care and the garden is coming to life.

January 28th,2012 ~ Cement pavers are under about 1/3 of the greenhouse, just enough to go under the shelving.

Planting seed to prepare for the seed/plant swap and for the garden

The begining of the Back to Eden http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/ no till garden 3 months and very few weeds noted, there are lots of weed seed under the cardboard and woodchips .

The before photo of the food not lawns garden

The greenhouse before renovation

Planting seed

More planting

The weeder and Garden Princess.

Tualatin Valley Gleaners
First Annual Seed/Plant/Seedling Swap and Share Garden Resource Fair.

Place: Beaverton Community Center February
Date: Saturday Feb 25, 2012
Time: 10am-12pm
Address:12350 SW 5th Street Beaverton OR

Food /Tool Drive: Bring non perishable food, hand garden tools, gloves, or suggested $3 donation for this event. All donations go to the Tualatin Valley Gleaners – A non- profit supplemental food program.

Plants must be in containers

Professional Seed Savers, Plant societies, Garden Clubs, Farmers, Nurseries please call Lisa at 503-810-5472 to reserve your free resource table space or more information.

Master Gardener Grant, Improvements, and 4-H.

We recieved a Washington County Master Gardener Grant this year to add some additional raised beds, hoop houses and cold frames to extend the growing season at the Giving Gardens. The project is fully funded. We are thankful for the donation to improve the Giving and Learning Garden.

4-H is now in progress with learning about gardening at our giving and learning gardens and state fair exhibit preparation as the focus. It's going to be lots of fun, and I think we are all excited to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpMhw4kOlts

This is the garden update on winter solstice 2011. This is my first video publication sorry it's a little shaky, next time I will do better.   I plan on getting some video mentoring soon.  Our total poundage for the year is 1694 pounds! Thats nearly 4x the poundage of last year and we were late to plant! 2012 should be even better!

Before and afters...

12/22/2011 Winter Solstace 2011 Garden Update. Growing our winter garden we have - Red Russian kale, Dino or Lacinto Kale, Swiss Chard, Beets, Lettuce, Turnips, Radish, Collard Greens, Cabbage, Egyptian Walking Onions, Garlic, Raddicio, Diakon Radish, Leeks. Night temperatures have been below freezing for over a week now, and frost is still on the ground, all the winter vegetables are holding up. This year we heavily mulched the beds in late fall before the freezes and that has helped the plants endure the cold weather better. Our total poundage for the year is 1694 pounds! Thats nearly 4x the poundage of last year and we were late to plant!

Later in summer.
Early Summer
After: We transplanted Collard Greens, Raddicio, Lettuce and Leeks.

Before: lowlands, we added a few inches of soil and mulch and made a no till garden using cardboard and tree trimming chips for the paths, and mounded soil and compost.