Expansion and Corn!

      Often I think that I can judge how good my day has been by how dirty I got, and by that metric, this past Saturday was a fantastic day. We spent several hours in the varying degrees of sunlight cutting down grass, ripping up sod, and spreading mulch and fertilizer. We had a few more hands this work day, with Jennifer, Colby, and Anna all coming out to help. 

      First of all, we got corn! Despite our starting the plants late in the season and having very few plants (usually you need more than 14ish corn plants to get good pollination), we've now harvested a total of 17 ears of corn! We are quite pleasantly surprised to have a nice sweet, starchy treat to cook up now. They're going to get cooked up shortly!







      And now for the rest of the post:

      We started our day off by going to a horse farm in Framingham that had advertised free horse manure on craigslist. This was just what we needed, so Gaby and I hopped into Eva, my '97 sedan, with all sorts of plastic bins to go shovel poop.

This is about what ours looked like, though the farm owner offered us some fresher stuff...

      We drove around behind their barn and started shoveling this hot (literally steaming) organic matter into our bins. Surprisingly enough (to people who haven't been around horse farms), it doesn't smell bad at all. Just smells like old hay. How convenient!

The morning crew!

      Work went by faster this time than the first creation. Partly because of having more hands out there working, partly because we had more tools with us (my favorite is still the pick, clearly the most fun of all the tools), partly because now we've done it before! 

      The sod was drier than the spring though, and it made a difference. When we first started the garden, we were able to roll up large sections of sod (see Gaby's sod-wig in the first blog entry), but this time the sod came up in smaller clumps. It was breaking up much more. This was also probably due to the plants growing on this section. This new section had many more reedy plants (the yellow flowering ones in the background of the group photo) which had sparser root structures. They didn't form as much of a mat as the grasses did. 

Anna and the freshly place manure.

      The next step was cardboard, used as mulch. It took a few trips back and forth from the trash rooms in the dorms, but we soon got enough cardboard to cover the new plot with one layer of cardboard everywhere.

Gaby setting up the fence

      Once we had the cardboard down, laying down the manure was pretty quick and easy. Luckily we had enough for a thin layer over everything with our one load from the horse farm. We'll be looking to get some more dirt and compost to put on top.

The new, expanded garden is complete!

      One thing we weren't expecting was the number of big rocks we had to dig up. Last time there were a lot of rocks, but they were mostly small, like the size that you see around the edge of our fence (holding down the lip so that digging critters don't get in - we've had no trouble with rabbits so far!). Maybe one or two big ones.

      But in this lot there were several huge rocks. These guys were quite heavy and took some grit to dislodge. We had enough to make a small cairn (see photo below). Hopefully we'll figure out a good use for them!

      It was a good day, and it's always good to get back after a day of sweaty work and know that you made something concrete and good. We've changed a tiny little piece of the world for the better. 

First Harvest

As I was driving back to Olin yesterday after being away for the last month, I received a text from Mary describing the abundance of the garden.  It was the best news to receive! Naturally, the first place I went after arriving on campus was the garden.

We are both happy to report that the garden is thriving! We were able to harvest over a pound of beans yesterday, as well as our first few kale leaves and basil sprigs.  The corn ears are developing nicely, which is lucky given how few plants we have and their pollination needs.  It seems we got some help from the bees (thanks, Ben Linder)!

An equal success were the relatively few weeds that we had in the garden.  Our cardboard mulch was a huge success!  After a month of no tending, Mary and I were able to fully weed the garden in about 3 minutes.

We are looking forward to harvesting more of everything and planting spinach in the garden once the beans are done.  We have also discussed doubling the size of the garden this fall and adding a bench to the area.  Most of all, we are excited to share the Secret Garden with the Olin community and really build a core group of people dedicated to maintaining and growing it.  We have already heard from a few interested folks and we will hopefully connect with them soon when we get organized.

Finding Bean Plants!

BEANSSSS

Corn ears, getting bigger!

Cabbage and Kale!

Mary with our harvest!

July Heat and Progress

I (Gaby) just got back from travelling for the past 3 weeks and am really excited to share garden updates! While I was away the seedlings have grown and developed their second set of leaves, although unfortunately all the tomato seeds perished.

The corn and beans that we planted in the garden are doing really great!  The corn is about a foot high and the bean plants have grown out, adding many leaves.  I am also surprised at the minimal weeds in the garden, given that we haven't mulched anywhere.

The Boston area is very hot and humid lately, with temperatures climbing to the mid-90's.  This morning I did some transplants of our brassica seedlings (kale, cabbage, broccoli).  I only planted 3-6 of each type because I am worried about the little ones not surviving in the heat.  I also planted a few pac choy seedlings, although I don't have high hopes for those because pac choy is a cool season crop. If the small seedlings survive in the heat the next few days we will plant the rest.  At this point, the size of the container could be limiting to their growth and getting all of the seedlings in the ground is crucial.

One thing that we have been wrestling with is timing.  June is very late in the season to start seeds (in this climate most seeds are started indoors in March), so it is inevitable but disappointing that our plants are so behind schedule.  I tried to get early varieties (i.e. ones that take the fewest days from germination to harvest) but the plants are still very small compared to where they would be.  Nevertheless, the important thing is that we have a garden and are learning a lot experimenting in our first season.   

First Plants in the Ground

Just yesterday we planted the first sprouts in our garden! Gaby was handing off the duties to Mary (Olin '15) and I, as she's just headed off to Zambia for her summer work. We got up before work started (in the garden at 7:30am) to go plant the first sprouts of ours tall enough to be transplanted, corn and beans.

Gaby holding some beans.

Getting everybody in the dirt.

After planting, we made sure to water the base of each plant with enough water to get it through the already sweltering hot day (think high in the mid 80s, humid, and no clouds). Mary and I learned from Gaby that you have to be careful to not get beads of water on the leaves when watering them, because during the day they can act like magnifying lenses and burn the fragile young plants. We'll be keeping close watch over them in the next few days as they get accustomed to their new environment.

Watering the corn

Our first plants!

We made our door a little more protective than it was, now that there's actually plants inside. We've got rocks holding down the extra lip so that critters don't crawl or dig under. At some point we'll want to make a more legitimate door, one which actually opens and closes easily, but for now this works.

The door.

Harvesting Compost

Yesterday we gathered compost for our garden. Since the rain died away by the end of our work day, Gaby and I (David) decided to go and get the rest of the compost from the Wellesley Community Garden and spread it over our young plot.

The first step was to drive the compost already loaded in Gaby's car from yesterday up to the garden and unload it. We got in her first generation (aka old) prius and took it through the sketchy paths in Parcel B. This was a bit more involved than we thought it might be, we drove through the first road (from lot D at Olin) to find that there were no turn offs, it went straight to Babson's campus. So we had to go around Babson and find the back entrance to Parcel B, duck under the chain, and navigate the uneven, rocky, bumpy path where the Baja team tests its off-road buggy.

Lifting up the chain to get into the back of Parcel B.

This is not what this Prius was built for,
 but it did the job well enough.

Self explanatory of course.

Riding on the car through Parcel B was necessary as there
 was too much compost in the car to fit me.

So we got in, dumped what compost we had, and drove out to pick up more compost from Wellesley's garden. We picked up two types of compost, manure mixed with wood chips and decayed organic matter. The manure mix was about what you'd think it was, except that it didn't smell, and the decayed organic matter was what you typically think of as compost, the black soil that people make at home. The manure was lighter, and makes for a good base layer (so it goes on bottom), whereas the dark, dense, and moist compost is better for planting in (so it goes on top). 

Mmm... manure and wood chips

Bins full of decayed organic matter.

We took a moment here to marvel at the Wellesley Community Garden (where the Wellesley College student garden has a plot). Plot upon plot of edible greens as far as you can see, nested by the woods. It's pretty awesome to see something so lush is right in the middle of suburban Massachusetts.

Wellesley Community Garden

Then, we navigated both of our old Toyatas (mine is Eva, a gray '97 Avalon) under the chain and through the sketchy Parcel B path to the garden, dumped out the compost (more of a task than one might think, those things are heavy), and spread the compost using our spreading tool: a leftover, bent fence post. And once it was evenly spread and our clothes full of dirt, the garden work for the day was over!

And the work is done!

Gaby using the hockey stick spreading tool.

 Oh, and in other news, more sprouts! Corn looks cute, broccoli (probably the plant I'm looking most forward to) is coming out strong, and my goodness that's a lot of Pak Choy!

Corn sprouts!

Broccoli broccoli broccoli.

So much Pak Choy! What will we do?

Pretty soon we're going to have to plan out our plot to see how we're going to fit as many of these veggies as possible in our small plot, but the dirt is down and the seeds are sprouting, things are looking promising!

Out of the Wilderness, a Garden

A student garden at Olin is something I (Gaby '15) personally have been wanting be part of since I started at Olin.   For the past few years I have been attending the Campus Cultivation Conference, a Boston area event for students involved in running small farm collectives.  This year especially, David '15 and I were extremely jealous when hearing about all the amazing farms students from Tufts, Middlebury, Wellesley, BU, and others were working on at their respective colleges. We decided were ready for one of our own, and this was the summer to do it.

Boris working on some sod

Em digging out a big rock

Thus, this Past Saturday the Olin Secret Garden was born.  We spent the morning seeding trays of broccoli, cabbage, beans, corn, hot pepper, pac choy, oregano, thyme and basil.  Once our suite window was full of seed trays scrounged from cardboard boxes and egg cartons, we went outside.  We had scouted out an area in Parcel B (the woods next to Olin's main campus) the previous evening and chose a spot with good drainage and humus-y soil that was not too sandy.  We used a large pick, a hoe and a shovel to rid a small area about 7 x 15 feet of thick sod.  This was not an easy task- it took David, Boris '12 and I all morning and most of the afternoon to dig up all of the sod.  After all, before we came the area was packed with of knee-high perennial grasses that have been growing there for a long time.

Boris doing some hoeing and Victoria working on the fence

David and Em with a roll of sod

We went through different methods, but found the best way to pull up sod was to loosen it with the shovel or the pick and then peel the sod back with our hands.  We were joined by Em (Wellesley '14) and Victoria '15 for part of the day as well.  Ben Linder, an Olin Professor who does beekeeping in Parcel B, stopped by and checked out the garden while we were working.  He even donated some fencing he had lying around which we constructed around the garden.  Lastly, we laid down cardboard as mulch to stop the weeds and called it a day.

Me (Gaby) wearing a sod wig!

Victory!

We took Sunday off and did other things, but today we were back to work.  Our first seed sprouted this morning (Kale) and by this evening there were over 2 dozen sprouts of Kale and Pak Choy.  I was not happy with the amount of light the plants were getting on our windowsill so I moved them outside around 11am and they got to sit outside in beautiful weather for the rest of the day.  Overnight they are living on a table in the East Hall 1st floor team room but I will move them back outside tomorrow morning.

First Sprout!!!!!

Seeds in our window

Loading up Compost

Today there was a major afternoon thunderstorm, but that did not stop our plans to go to Regeneration Plot (Wellesley College's student garden) to pick up compost.  Our friend Rebecca (Wellesley '13) who is the farm manager at Regeneration graciously let us have some of their compost for The Secret Garden.  This was done by shoveling compost into blue bins and loading them into my compact Prius. We were able to borrow blue bins from friends at Olin, which worked very well except for the fact that filling them all the way meant they were too heavy for me to lift!  Once the compost is deposited into the garden tomorrow we will be able to direct seed some more plants.

Seed trays in the window of our suite