santa barbara country n news-recycle final harvest pumpkins

SANTA BARBARA COUNTRY N NEWS-RECYCLE FINAL HARVEST PUMPKINS

a few weeks again following a big wind storm that come through here one night
i walked out around our condo and looked down towards our pool
something about that big ole ancient oak that must be over a hundred years didnt  quite look right
so
i walked down to take a look
it had fallen over onto our pool fence crushing it
at the base of the trunk where it was cracked open was a big ole hollowed out center

alas it had to be chopped up
so
i asked the chainsaw person to cut me a piece of one large limb about 2 ft long
i carried it up to our condo originally to use as a table on our patio
but
later i decided i would transfer it to my garden to use for that purpose

i thought i want to save a piece of that old tree so it will stay around a little longer and gradually be returned back to this earth like nature would do
not to be ground up for mulch or chopped up for firewood
so
it now sits at the corner of my garden bed inviting folks to have a sit and enjoy the garden
its especially attractive to kids

im sure the tree would have been proud

my son has a 5 ft x 8 ft garden that i asked to plant stuff in as i try to expand my gardening areas
so
i took over his plot

now ms b and mr h help with it some
in fact mr h loves the garden
he likes to pet the dinosaur kale and pull off the tips of the green onions
ms b loves the carrots as she can pull them up wash them off and take a bite
soon she will start eating the cherry tomatoes we planted in the bed
one of them is called sungold
its a sweet yellow cherry tomato that tastes like candy
if you want your kids to learn to eat tomatoes thats the one
it produces tons of yellow tomato candy
kids love to eat them

this week i did my final harvest off the winter plantings in his garden
i harvested the last of my 1015 onions
the onions in my sons garden did much better than in my garden
im trying to figure out why so i can duplicate that next year in my garden

i then planted the bed with billie beans that my mother in law gets from the mexican market
i named them after her
these are our favorite beans to cook
they are peruvan beans

then
the owner of the santa barbara ace hardware recently donated outdated seeds to our community garden as well as a pick up truck load of broken bags of garden soil compost potting soil etc

i volunteer 3 hours each tuesday in the community garden
this week we took the donated pumpkin seeds winter squash seeds and gourd seeds
filled up 100 1 gallon pots with the donated potting soil
planted them with the above seeds
we then set them up on an automatic dripper
we plan to plant 50 more later in pots

later this summer we will transplant them into a larger area at the front of the garden for our fall education series with the elementary schools and for our fall pumpkin sale
the pumpkins sale is a big fund raiser for the community garden

also mixed in with the pumpkins will be pole beans red amaranth heirloom rows of popcorn
this area is loved by all the kids well over 500+ that visit this fall

thanks to ace for the donations

the organicgreen doctor