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Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans harvested from
The Gardens at North River Road |
The closing of a year is always a great time to reflect on times past and plan for great things to come. The year 2013 was a great year for our garden program at North County Community Services. Thanks to the help and contributions of wonderful volunteers, we were able to harvest a total of
3100 lbs of fresh fruits and vegetables from the Gardens at North River Road! All of this fresh food is delivered directly to preschools operated by NCCS, bringing super fresh, natural food right into their kitchens for lunches and snacks!
We had tons of great volunteer projects in 2013. The biggest project this year was North Coast Church. They selected two of our sites for their Weekend of Service projects in April. They took care of tons of projects, from light construction, to painting, gardening, renovating, weeding, mulching, and more.
Then in June, we finally got fruit trees planted! We now have a 14 tree orchard, sponsored and installed by Genentech during their Genentech Gives Back Week in June. With the technical expertise from a professor and students from City College, we got a great drip-irrigation system installed later in the year, making upkeep much easier.
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Northrop Grumman donated and built shade structures
for new seedlings to grow in. |
In the fall of 2013, we had the most successful cool-season crop seedlings started on site, thanks to volunteers! In August, Northrop Grumman came through with donations and volunteers to build two structures for shade cloth, where cool-loving plants can be started months before the summer heat is over!
But we still needed tables to go underneath the two new shade structures. In September, Akamai Technologies came through and literally turned a little drawing into two amazing seed starting tables, complete with an angle top tilted towards the sun, cedar planks to prevent rot, and an extra credit shelf underneath to store supplies.
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| Ta-da! Amazing tables, courtesy of Akamai Technologies. |
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| Sketch up of the tables we needed |
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Our new tables fit perfectly
under the new shade structure! |
The plants stay up to 15 degrees cooler, and don't dry out as fast. Now that it is well into winter, we have finally taken the shade cloth off for the season and put it in storage. In the spring, we hope to use plastic to make the area into mini-greenhouses, and in the summer, back to shade cloth again! We were highly successful starting lettuce, cabbage, onions, and more!
These are just a few of the great projects that happened in 2013. Thank you to our long list of volunteers and community partners. We couldn't do it without you! If you are interested in doing a volunteer project with North County Community Services in 2014, contact Abby at volunteer@sdnccs.org!
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| A cool Brassica is a happy Brassica. |
