What an exciting couple of weeks in the Teaching Garden as we continue to prepare the garden and plant our very first spring crops. Last week we set up our drip irrigation in the garden expansion, this irrigation tubing has small slits that drip water for evenly damp soil without losing water to evaporation or getting water on the leaves of the plants (this can encourage disease). It also saves us hours of work - we just set the timer and forget about it.
We also had our first volunteer group of the season - thanks to the folks from Real Eyes for helping us build a new dig bed for our weekend open hours and helping to weed our flower garden beds! It is so helpful to have some extra hands in the garden at this time of year.
Thanks to all of the rain we have had, our radishes and peas have already germinated. This week we also planted some beets and spinach, and we cut up some potatoes to prepare them for planting. We buy seed potatoes which are already sprouting, and then cut them into smaller pieces which then have to dry out for a few days in the shed prior to planting to avoid rot. Did you know that when we grow potatoes we just plant old sprouted potatoes??