June 12th Teaching Garden Workday

All hands were on deck after a few rain outs to plant purple sweet potato slips that we started at home several months back. We tried two methods and the soil method created as many as 75 slips from two sweet potatoes! Volunteers were given slips to grow their own potatoes at home. Thanks volunteers, for your help this week!

It's probably too late to start slips at home so check your local garden store for slips. You can also check out our blog post on the two methods. 

Here are a few tips on planting yours at home:
🍠 Plant rooted sweet potato slips about 12-18 inches apart and 4 inches deep.
🍠 Water newly-planted slips well and feed with a starter solution high in phosphorus to ensure the plants continue rooting.

There was also a spread of beautiful vegetables that were ready to harvest and take home. The beefsteak tomatoes were starting to blush, peppers, LOTS of Japanese shiso that will be great in summer salads. We love a good watermelon, cucumber, and shiso salad.

The milpa (three sisters) was looking great! Between the wind storms and pill bugs eating the pole beans, we thought the corn might have a hard time getting established. This week we saw a flurry of pollinator activity and some beautiful silks starting to form!

VOLUNTEER WITH US AT ZBG
Join us this summer as we continue to learn in the garden together. We meet every Saturday from (weather permitting) at 9 - 11 am. We will be adding a Wednesday workday as well as start to develop another committee interested in doing seed-saving for seed giveaway pop-ups! There are opportunities to be involved in remotely and learning to do garden design using the Old Farmers Almanac garden planner app. This fall we will be doing a major change to the garden as we design a 4-square garden! We are also looking for seed and plant donations so let us know if would like to contribute to the garden this way. Please DM us and let us know if you can grow with us!

Thanks @goryboy @dforrest4712 @chulax956xrosa!