This is what the two most common weeds in our garden look like.

How to Harvest Swiss Chard

We have some beautiful swiss chard growing in the garden and some of it is just about ready to be harvested. The leaves should be about 18inches tall and blemish free. Grab the outer leaf that you want at the base of the plant and pull down forcefully it should snap off, leave the center leaves intact. The outer leaves will regenerate and we will have swiss chard again in a month. Check out this great video volunteer Heide found for us http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-harvest-swiss-chard.

How to Make Borage Herbal Tea

The Garden's borage plants are tucked in between the tomato plants. You can't miss them they have beautiful pink, purple and blue flowers on them right now. The herb borage is native to Syria and has long been hailed for its healing properties. It has been shown to alleviate symptoms of melancholy, depression and fatigue. It is also a strong anti-inflammatory. The leaves and flowers can be used fresh in salads, the leaves taste like cucumber.

Here is how to make borage tea: pour one cup of boiling water over a quarter cup of bruised fresh leaves. Steep for five minutes, strain and drink up.

Chores for the third week in July

Please keep up on the weeding, last week's volunteers made your job a lot easier they were weeding champions. Please harvest the swiss chard, borage, basil, cucumbers and lettuce under the cucumber trellises. Please sow spinach seeds on the inside perrimeter bed opposite of the shed in the left corner and mark your sowing with a stick marker from the shed. Please sow additional sunflower seeds all along the outside perrimeter. The tomato plants still need to be suckered check out the link showing you how to do this from a previous post. Remember the garden needs to have a total of 1 inch of rain so if it doesn't get that please water regularly. It is important to water the soil around the plants and not the plants themselves. Watering the soil and not the plant is important for two reasons; the first being the sun will burn the leaves if they are wet and the second is that there is bacteria that collects in the rain barrels and the soil will filter out the bacteria.

Chores for the second week in July

The garden has burst into life. Weeding will be the theme this week. Please see pictures in previous post for pictures of common weeds. Please harvest the lettuces underneath the cucumber trellises. Look for cucumbers to pick. Take the hoes in the shed and use them weeding large areas like the front bed. Thank you to one of our volunteers Mary for suggesting and planting golden purslane this week(see picture above). Purslane can add zest to salads and stirfrys, it is the highest known plant source for omega 3 fatty acids and high in vitamin C.

Chores for the first week in July

Our seeds have really taken off! We have cucumbers, zucchini, beans, corn, melons, salad mix, borage, basil, parsley and loads of flowers all growing and recognizable which means weeding shouldn't be a daunting task. The inside perimeter beds have corn growing and we just planted corn's sisters; beans and squash to make the three sisters of the Iroquois tradition. The beans will grow up along the corn fixing nitrogen into the soil and making the corn stronger and the squash will grow in between the corn mounds keeping off critters with its spiky foliage. We also sowed more beans (which have not sprouted yet) in the zucchini and bean bed.

We tied up the tomatoes to the stakes and pruned them. If they need to be tied again at a higher level the string and scissors are in the shed. Please prune the developing suckers from the tomato plants, refer to this great article for details http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx. We do not have pruning shears yet so please use your hands to pull off the suckers.

Thanks to our amazing volunteer contractor Bryant Tent our gutters are hooked up to our rain barrels and the rain barrels are already full of water. The garden needs one inch rain per week so if it has not rained in a couple of days please take the watering cans in the shed and fill them up and go to town watering (this is an excellent kid job).

The bed closest to the the garden gate needs to have another sowing of carrots, beets and swiss chard. The seeds will be in the shed. Please make a straight indentation with a ruler, also found in the shed just behind the plant marker and sow the seeds according to the directions on the packet, just the length of one ruler. Then move the plant marker behind your new sowing. Be sure to water your new seeds thoroughly.