The weather has been warm and springlike here in Littleton, and so we’ve been having fun digging in the dirt, spading up beds and mixing fertilizer.
Our biggest project this week was building low tunnels to protect some early plantings. In previous years, we’ve had two problems with these structures. They tend to get wind damaged; and, since we used long rebar stakes to hold up the PVC hoops, they were hard to move once the rebar had rusted into the ground. But we are working on a new design which should solve both problems. I’ll try to have a full post on this, and pictures of our tunnels, up next week.
We pruned the orchard; all the trees are still alive! And we hope to put in more perennial plantings this spring, particularly a hedge to block the North wind.
At the end of the week we held our annual planning meeting. We spent a lot of time discussing our new membership structure. Alongside the main gardens we will be providing members with individual plots where they can plant whatever they are interested in. Soil preparation and watering for the plots, and the care of the orchard and infrastructure, will be done by the group as a whole. We hope this arrangement will combine the best of the community planting and the individual plot models. We also discussed: upcoming events, particularly our tool blessing on March 19th; garage sales as fundraisers; planting more trees and shrubs on the farm; taking field trips to agricultural sites in the area; and beautifying the Mary garden.
Catholic Urban Farmers of Denver 