Castle Street Community Garden Day March 28, 2010

We had a great day in the garden today! We had a good turnout and accomplished a lot. All the plants are looking good!

Our volunteers today had boundless energy! They were so excited to learn about the plants they could eat, helping Toni water the kids garden. 

Today was Steve's first day and he jumped right in helping to plant milkweed, a food for many native larval butterflies and moths. It is also the preferred (possibly only?) food for monarchs.  In this photo he is mulching the catnip/mullein/yarrow/St. Joan's Wort bed. We just found several volunteer St. Joan's Wort! How exciting!

Another first day volunteer, Michelle, took care of watering the whole garden as part of her inaugural contribution. 

I had tried to set up the trellis over the peas and pole beans, but a height/wind/balance problem brought the whole thing crashing down. Fortunately, the bamboo poles we are using are very light and there were no casualties. Tom did a fabulous job putting up twin teepee trellises with a bridge between them. Scroll down for a look at the completed structure. 

One of our regulars, Chris took care of watering all the plants in the greenhouse. She didn't know much when she started gardening with us, but she is a fast, enthusiastic learner. A teacher couldn't ask for more!  The plants you see toward the lower right hand corner were propagated by my high school students (check out their garden blog here and here. ) The seedlings are on spring break hanging out at the local plant hot spot, also known as The Greenhouse. I hope they don't learn any bad habits from those leggy tomatoes.

Nicole was with us today, planting milkweeds as well. We put in about a dozen plants scattered through the garden in non-bed spaces. She helped the garden stay organized by digging the bricks in around the perimeter of a new bed.

The second wave of enthusiastic volunteers came towards the end of the day. 'Voya and Nia helped mulch the catnip bed with sawdust after Steve and I finished mulching it with compost. That bed looks so good now! That patch in the back is where the young yarrow is growing.

The almost finished trellis. Thats Valerie from Cape Fear's Growing Green with her faithful companion, Maisy. Valerie has been a huge supporter of the garden since our inception last year. Check out an article on the garden and to find out about more green happenings in Wilmington at the website for her magazine here. She also has a calendar of green events on the website that is admirably current.

Join us next week to plant tomatoes and some other veggies and learn about compost!