Community Garden Blog

July 7, 2020

The plants in the butterfly garden are starting to do well. The milkweed in the garden will get about four inches tall and will add a nice height to the garden. The violets that were planted earlier this season are starting to grow larger, although many of the violet plants have died due to the lack of rain. The violet plants that are left are naturalizing very well. A new tenant has moved in to the butterfly garden - a swallowtail butterly larvae. Swallowtails like dill which we have quite a bit of in the garden this year. All that remains to be done this year in the butterfly garden is to remove the horse thistles, morning glories and oxalis from the garden. This will help us continue to grow the area with more plants suitable to the butterflies. Last week garlic was also harvested from the butterfly garden and was cleaned and donated to Fish & Loaves food pantry this week.

To date, the vegetable garden on the east side of the hospital's campus has produced 60 lbs. of strawberries, 3 lbs. of lettuce and 8 lbs. of radishes. The green beans are starting to erupt and a good thunderstorm would help with giving them a good start. Thank you again to our volunteers who have helped with weeding and harvesting. We couldn't do this without you!
 

October 28, 2019

The 2019 growing season for The Bellevue Hospital's Community Garden was a success thanks to the help of the Bellevue High School's Teen Leadership Class and several volunteers throughout the course of the season.  Even though the weather was variable this year, the garden still yielded good results. 

Since its start in 2011, over five tons of produce has been harvested from the Community Garden, with 802 pounds of fruits and vegetables produced in 2019 alone. 

All produce grown in the garden is donated to Bellevue Fish and Loaves and Clyde Backdoor Food Pantries to help feed the hungry in both communities.

The Community Garden began as a small 12 x 24 foot square space on the east side of The Bellevue Hospital's campus and has since grown into an estimated 1,000 square foot area. The gardens will continue into 2020, but with a different focus. The garden committee has decided not to plant the low-land (in-ground) garden, and rather maintain the garden boxes and the herb garden. With more time and focus on the garden boxes, our hope is the plants in the boxes will grow more aggressively than in previous years. I am looking forward to an exciting growing season next year. 

Once again I would like to extend my heart-felt THANKS to the volunteers that make this garden possible. In 2019, volunteers contributed nearly 400 hours to planting, weeding and harvesting to ensure the garden's success. 

Patti...

Sept. 13, 2019

Oh look! We've got squash with an hourglass figure! (It's probably the envy of the other squash in the patch).  This happens when you have a lot of rain at once and then none at another time.  Many times they will have a shriveled end but the rain this year hit at the right time in the growth spurts and this is what happened.  Next week, we plan to harvest most of the butternut squash. It looks like we may have some large ones this season.  

I’ve had requests for seeds from the sunflowers from people and I have told them to go ahead and claim some.  Below is a picture of the sunflowers. I have started to call them mother flowers.  It’s been a tough few years for me and when I drive by the flowers, I imagine sitting under them and getting comfort from them like a child would from a consoling mother or grandmother. My mother was tough on us, but it made us resilient and in my case just ornery at times. 

The garden committee met recently and made some final decisions for the gardens for next year.  After much deliberation, it was decided to do away with the lowlands. That said, we are going to continue with the boxes and the herb/butterfly garden.  We have one more meeting before the close of the harvest year this year, and I will update everyone on our garden production totals after this meeting.

Thank you all again for your help this season. I couldn't do it without our amazing volunteers. 

Patti Keller, RD, LD, CDE

August 16, 2019

Thank you to those who continue to help us with the garden.  

We are starting to get some production again! We harvested 17.75 pounds of peppers, 8 pounds of carrots and a ½ pound of beans from the garden this week.

Earlier in the year, we planted radishes, peas and lettuce for our fall garden.  The radishes are up and some of the peas are starting to surfacing, but the lettuce hasn’t surfaced yet.

The birds have found the sunflowers and are starting to eat the seeds, and the bees have found the sunflowers also and are working on pollinating the new ones. 

As the weeks go by, we will continue to harvest the peppers. My goal is 50 pounds of peppers for the year and we should make that goal as long as the weather holds out. 

Our overall goal for the garden this year was to get 188 pounds of produce to meet our FIVE TON total for garden production since 2011.  So far this year, we have  produced 180 pounds!  We should meet our FIVE TON goal next week.  

GOOD JOB EVERYONE!

Fun fact: some things that weigh FIVE TONS include: a big hippopotamus,  an Asian Elephant, or three pick-up trucks.

Patti Keller, RD, LD, CDE