Post-Work Party Update

A hot, humid day at the garden Site. Friends arrived on the site to see a small rabbit hopping from the scene. Later we found a small patch of trampled wheat in our box. I think we have a new mascot.



Raised bed #4, aka "The Beast" was finally completed. The challenges?
- assembling one side with two rows of planks, and keeping the boards from buckling
- driving nails into the (dense) white pine and (slightly warped) recycled wood
The benefits? A lovely, sustainably built raised bed, now home to several happy spinach, lettuce, and tomato plants.



The Beast, and his slightly milder, smaller brother were filled in with gravel and sand (to improve drainage), and then lavished with soil (kindly provided by Bob Dombkowski, Supervisor of Grounds) and Smith's specialty compost. Thanks also to Gaby Immerman of the Botanic Garden for lending us several shovels, trowels, and buckets to equip our workers. Several seedlings (kindly donated by the Northfield Mount Hermon school program and friend, Laura Fisher) were transplanted into rows, watered and labelled.



Also thanks to Frank Perman, Supervisor of Plumbing and Heating, for providing the Garden with H2O! Our thirsty plants appreciated a good dousing after a hot day. (And so did we).

Spring onions, cherokee purple and cherry bomb tomatoes, sweet basil, peppers, nasturtiums, spinach and several varieties of lettuce are formally part of the Smith Garden Family, joining a thriving crop of Red Fife wheat and just-sprouting dill, parsley, poppies, nasturtiums, and flax.



The work party was finished off with a celebratory, and much-needed trip to Herrell's ice cream. Join us next time for more planting, building, sweating at the Site.