This Saturday (9am-noon) is our first workday of 2025! Hooray! I’m seriously ready for some “dirt therapy” and to see my friends again! We have lots of fun planned for this year and some new ideas to share with you. Saturday workdays will continue through November, moving back to 8am when it gets a bit warmer. Tuesday evenings (5-7pm) will begin March 11th after daylight savings time begins.

The garden has taken a pretty hard hit from the bitterly cold and dry weather we’ve had, but the strawberries are doing great under their row cover and I think the onions, garlic and collards will bounce back. Larry has already started cabbage, broccoli and kale for spring and Penny is working on companion plants too. I’m picking up seed potatoes this week and we have lots of seeds for other spring, summer and fall crops.

• We have a new plastic film recycling collection box at the garden and at Apex UMC that already seems to be very popular. I hope you read the email that went out about that. 
• We have new crop markers that will hang on the row markers that we hope will make it easier for gardeners to know what’s in a row. 
• We’re hoping to move Thursday garden hours in the summer to mornings (9:30-11:30). We’ve had multiple requests for weekday morning hours over the years and that combined with the very poor attendance we had on Thursday evenings last year makes it seem like a good time to try this. We’re also hoping this will allow kids from the Kraft YMCA to come out and help.
• We’ll also be starting on the ADA garden areas beside the shed this year – Carl will be directing the prep work which will consist of building a handicap parking space near the front gate, a path from there to the area where the tables will go beside the shed and building a small retaining wall and leveling the ground there beside the shed. We have an Eagle scout who is interested in building the table gardens that will be accessible from wheelchairs or walkers that folks can sit on.

We have had a lot of interest from new folks in the last few weeks, so please welcome everyone and help folks get to know all the benefits of our garden.

Can’t wait to see you all soon!