Our recent 5th Annual Community Garden Potluck was a huge success! We had a total of 17 participants and it was great to have the support from our church and community friends. Siok Hong, one of our most devoted and innovative gardeners, presented an enjoyable and informative program on the importance of greens in our diet. Each participant received a microgreens kit to take home and grow their own. The results were amazing and delicious! Be sure to visit our garden’s Facebook page for lots more photos. Siok Hong is at the Galveston’s Own Farmers Market every Sunday from 9 – 12. It’s located at 28th & Market St. Look for her at Grow4Health Microgreens.
OUR BAUUC COMMUNITY GARDEN IS HOSTING ITS 5TH ANNUAL POTLUCK AND EVERYONE IS INVITED!
WHEN: Saturday, August 20th, 11am – 1pm WHERE: BAUUC Cockrell Hall PROGRAM: “Grow4health microgreens”
PLEASE BRING A DISH TO SHARE AND RSVP TO JILL VEATCH: jillthepill64@gmall.com BY WEDNESDAY AUGUST 17TH. THANK YOU. WE NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY WILL BE JOINING US. DID I MENTION DOOR PRIZES?
The summer heat and humidity are taking their toll but they haven’t affected the ongoing positive happenings in our garden! Here are some of them:
#1 is the dedication of donations Bed 15, as a tribute to our beloved Fran Johnson by Carol Peterson. Fran was an original member of the garden when it was formed in 2012. Church members still talk about the beautiful tomatoes that he used to share with them.
#2 the annual potluck is on the calendar for Saturday, August 21, 2021 from 11:30 – 1:30! How exciting that our tradition is returning this year!
If you have a suggestion for a speaker or a topic, or both, please let Nathan or Jill know ASAP. In the meantime, we’ve contacted Urban Harvest for a possible speaker.
#3 thanks to Liam for the use of Bed#6 for donations this year!
#4 during the month of June, the following donations were made to the Clear Lake Baptist Food Pantry:
23 lbs. tomatoes; 2.8 lbs. peppers; 8 oz. carrots; 3.8 lbs. eggplant; and 2 lb.10oz. cucumbers.
Donation days: Wed. 2:30 – 4:30, the earlier the better. Jane and David Malin live close by and are willing to deliver your donations: 281-488-2452
Please report your donations to Jill: jillthepill64@gmail.com or leave a text at 832-755-6758. Thank you!
George shovels soil into new wheelbarrow.Carol Peterson displaying the plaque honoring Fran Johson that is located in a donation bed.George planting sweet potatoes provided by Urban Harvest. Sunflowers located in one of our pollinator beds.The lantana attracts a black swallowtail.
They want it spread far and wide, so they’re promoting this link to a downloadable PDF ready to print. This is a great resource for home gardeners, but also for teachers, schools and community gardens. Laminate it and pass it around! And please feel free to share the PDF link with your circles:
(The UC Statewide IPM website is a great resource, even if you don’t live in California. Go there and you’ll find fact sheets on residential pests and advice on how to deal with them.)
Except for it being a little breezy, we finally had some good weather on our scheduled workday – and we took advantage of it. It’s starting to look a lot like a garden. All of the beds have been constructed, and all of the beds in the initial section have been staked out, leveled and mulched. The five beds in the expansion area were set in place but will still need to be staked and mulched. Importantly, we did manage to clear out all the lumber and mulch that were taking up valuable parking spaces. Now we can dump soil into those parking spaces instead.
We have several projects for Saturday:
* lay more cardboard
* build, position and level eleven 4×20-ft vegetable beds
* install water meter
* mulch garden paths
* plant blackberries and grapes
* child-friendly activity TBD – If you have suggestions, please let me know.
* serve lunch – If you would like to help with lunch, please contact Julie.
* meeting of the gardeners (maybe?)
We had originally planned to have the beds ready for soil this weekend, but the rains and other conflicts put us off schedule. If we can get all of the beds done this weekend, we will order the soil next week. Weather for Saturday looks OK right now. Bring your mulch forks, wheelbarrows, mallets, gloves, hats and insect spray.
Friday morning I ventured inside the beltway to visit another community garden. Braes Interfaith Ministries is a ministry of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish congregations. They’ve been around for more than 25 years and provide clothing, food and financial assistance to over 16,000 people annually in southwest Houston.
The Braes Interfaith Ministries Community Garden is sited on a CenterPoint easement, which makes it particularly interesting to us. I was fortunate to meet with Eloy Montez, the Executive Director. He talked about the garden and shared some advice about working with CenterPoint. Their garden was established over 20 years ago, when Houston Lighting & Power first gave them permission to garden on the easement. They have had to make concessions now that CenterPoint owns the easement, but their donation garden is still providing nutritious food for the poor in their community.
There are a couple of significant differences in their arrangement and ours. (1) CenterPoint is the fee owner of the property where the Braes Interfaith garden is located. In our case, BAUUC is the fee owner of the property, but CenterPoint has easement rights for the transmission lines. (2) The Braes garden is built up very near to the tower structures, but none of the garden elements are directly under the lines. The BAUUC garden maintains a requisite clearance from the tower and guyline structures, but our garden beds are under the lines.
We’ll be talking more about this soon. For now, enjoy the photos…
Well the garden now looks a good bit different than it did last Friday. All of the 4×10 beds have been constructed (including the two extra-deep beds), nesting boxes for wrens have been built and hung around the property, and more seeds were started.
THANK YOU EVERYONE! There’s still more to do, but it was a good weekend.
We are a proud member of Urban Harvest of Houston Texas. Urban Harvest encourages community, good nutrition and sustainability through the teaching and support of organic gardening.
BAUUC Community Garden 