Kitchen Garden Update - April 23

**Note: If you have a family plot and have not been in the garden recently, please note there Marcelo left two bags of "Black Gold Earth" by each plot that you can add at your convenience.**

Currently at the Garden: It was a bit overcast when Mark, Linda, Else and Iris met at the Kitchen Garden. Marcelo had picked up bags of black gold earth and left two bags for each raised bed. They added these to their individual/family plots and one of the community beds, mixing the black gold in with the first few inches of dirt below.

​Linda and Else brought some seeds to plant in their bed.

​Mark added some of our finished compost to the communal garden bed by Oak Street.

​ Mark and Iris worked on the compost. Here he has climbed into the middle bin to be able to flip the most recently added materials in the left bin. They added some dirt and leaves and gave this bin a good turning over. They were happy to feel the heat rising out of the decomposing food scraps. They had the idea of leaving a bucket of extra dirt near the bin and putting up a sign asking people to throw some of it on top of any kitchen scraps they leave. This would both speed up the composting and minimize any odor.

​Iris used the broad fork to aerate the bed near the spice garden where we grew tomatoes and tomatillos last year.

​When Linda and Else were finished planting, they used old window screens to keep birds away and to diffuse the water in case of a big rain. 

We were not able to find potato bags in time for Saturday but Else has some potato bags at home and she will be starting the potato seeds that Suzi donated last Thursday in them. Gabriela had dropped off some tomato seedlings but we decided it might be too early to plant them directly in the beds at this point due to the unpredictability of night time temperatures.

Other news: Mark attended Greyston Foundation's Seeds of the Future event at the Yonkers public library, where he distributed seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library to an enthusiastic crowd of home and community gardeners, and gave demonstrations on starting and caring for seedlings.

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See you next time at the garden!