Month: August 2017

We had our seventh gardening day last weekend at Kyla’s!

This was another boulevard garden. During the sod-removal phase we unearthed our first piece of city infrastructure–the pipe to the water shut-off valve–and thanks to a quick 311 call we learned that everyone has one somewhere in the boulevard, and it’s ok to garden around them. Phew!

Thanks to our generous neighbors Julia, Dillon, and Cynthia we had thirteen species to plant, including heath aster, monarda, hoary vervain, virginia waterleaf, golden alexanders, sedum, stiff goldenrod, ironweed, rudbeckia, yarrow, wild senna, and partridge pea. It’ll be fun to see these plants get established over the next few years!

One cool part of the day was getting to talk about how we are tied to the land through food. Kyla’s house is the urban partner for Racing Heart Farm, and Kyla has several food projects going, including raising rabbits, which we got to see.

All in all another fun and educational gardening day!

 

On Tuesday we had our fifth garden installation (sixth group gardening day) at Katie’s!

Katie opted for a boulevard garden–the first one on her block– so first we removed the sod. Like many yards in Corcoran, hers had the soil replaced in the 2000s because of arsenic contamination. We found some netting under the grass–evidence of the sod replacement.

After a thorough watering we planted about 15 species of plants, including spiderwort, ironweed, echinacea, bee balm, liatris, anise hyssop, yarrow, rudbeckia, and virginia waterleaf. All the plants were donated by neighbors (thanks, Julia, Kim M., Dillon, Cynthia, and Marissa and Lindsay!).

Although early August is not the ideal time to transplant, hopefully with a little extra watering most of these tough prairie plants will do just fine.