SOD-BITS - June 2010

SOD-BITS

Hallelujah, our garden plots are completely planted. (Mt. Joy plot- 3/4 acre; Grace plot at 53rd and Eastern - .6 acre; and a 20' x 20' plot on Rock Island Arsenal). For those of you who may not know, our Garden Ministry got its start on Rock Island Arsenal in the spring of 2002. We had 13 of these 20' x 20' plots which equated to about 1/10 of an acre.

With the frequent rains we have been getting, the plots are looking great. Our biggest challenge from now until harvest begins in earnest around the 1st of July (cabbage, most likely) is to keep the weeds under control. I want to sincerely thank all of you who have devoted time to pulling weeds at the Mt. Joy and Grace plots. The Grace onion patch looked like a sea of weeds with no onions visible when an "all-out attack" was launched to remove the weeds. After many hours of weed-pulling, the onion patch now looks great. I want to thank Thiara Smith for the MANY hours she devoted to pulling weeds. God has given each of us special abilities and interests; God blessed Thiara with an interest in pulling weeds. Of the various facets of gardening (planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting), weeding is probably the facet looked forward to the least by most gardeners. Thankfully, we have gardeners like Thiara who truly enjoy weeding and get pleasure out of knowing that the weeding efforts will make a huge difference in the quantity of vegetables harvested.

As the growing season proceeds, we will have core gardening times to address various needs of the garden plots. Bill will be calling to get volunteers for such scheduled gardening times. However, we encourage you to go out to the garden sites whenever your schedule allows and pull weeds; I can guarantee that you will find some to pull. There are buckets at both sites that we ask that you put the pulled weeds in. (at the Mt. Joy site, dump the weeds over the fence; at the Grace plot, dump the weeds at the edge of the garden and we will dispose of them).

Just to give you an idea of what we have planted- approximately 27,000 onion plants; around 460 tomato plants; around 400 cabbage plants; over 250 pepper plants; 750 lbs. of seed potatoes which equates to over 7,000 hills of potatoes; cucumber, zucchini, muskmelons, watermelons, green peppers, and a few other miscellaneous vegetables. We are hoping for a harvest of around 40,000 lbs. which will put us over 200,000 since the inception of the Ministry in 2002.

If you have not been involved in the Garden Ministry to date, we encourage your participation. If your schedule or health does not allow you to become involved, we ask that you take some time and drive by the 2 sites and take a look at what our Garden Ministry is doing to take a bite out of hunger in the Quad-Cities.

We hope to see you in the gardens.