I’m back to volunteering and it feels so good.
Saturday I started out my day by heading to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. The photo above is one of the many awesome greenhouses on campus. As you know I have my own but it sure doesn’t look like these here!
They have almost an acre of gardens that produce vegetables for FeedMore’sΒ Community Kitchen. This year they hope to produce 10,000 pounds of crop. Last year they only missed the mark by about 80 pounds!
The garden depends heavily on volunteers to help with all tasks from tilling the land to harvesting at the end of the season. I enjoy gardening at my own house so I thought I’d help out.
We spent the morning moving through various tasks. The first thing we did was check squash plants for squash bug eggs. It’s a tedious but necessary task that helps prevent the bugs from killing the plants. To get rid of the eggs, we snapped off any leaves that held the tiny, copper-colored eggs. Pretty easy to do and rewarding.
The next thing we did was plant tomatoes. Many plants are grown from seed but others are often donated like the ones we dealt with. We planted about 30 plants in a very short amount of time. It’s amazing how much you can achieve with a good amount of volunteers!
After planting another 20 or so tomato plants, our last task was to do some weeding in the wheelchair accessible beds. Yet another task that seemed to go quickly. Did I mention that I love weeding? Not normal. π
I really enjoyed the morning – talking to the other volunteers and learning a little from the head gardener all while helping the community. I hope to visit again soon. It’ll be fun to see the results of our work!
Are you volunteering this summer?