Monroe Food Bank - Thurs. 10:00 - 12:00

Thank you to those of you who have been bringing your surplus garden produce to Alpine Park and directly to the Monroe Food Bank. It's a wonderful feeling to see the eyes of the recipients light up when we arrive with bags full of farm fresh goodies!

Chris and Llyn will be at the garden this Thursday morning (July 30) between 9:00 and 9:45 to harvest. If you have surplus, you can bring it there, or take it directly to the foodbank behind the Methodist Church in Monroe.

Bring Your Surplus Garden Produce to the Food Bank

Monroe Food Bank Hours:
10:00 - 12:00 am on 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Thursdays
5:00 - 7:00 pm on 3rd Thursdays

If you have surplus garden produce, or other contributions you'd like to make to the Monroe Food Bank, and you can't deliver them yourself, please bring them to the Alpine Park Wednesday evening or Thursday morning before 9:45. If we're not in the garden, just leave them on the picnic table under the picnic pavilion, in plastic bags. We'll make sure they get to the people who need them. (You can also take food donations directly to the Monroe Food Bank, in the garage behind the Methodist Church on Orchard St. This Thursday it's from 10:00 - 12:00 am) Llyn and Chris



Thanks to Dorothy and Evelyn for your help in weeding the perennial bed at the park. We've laid down clear plastic to "solarize" the weedy grasses. This will kill the grasses and their seeds so we can till them in and start fresh, planting perennial plants in the fall. (Let us know if you have plant "divides" you want to share with Alpine Park.)

Sharing the Harvest

If you have surplus garden produce, or other contributions you'd like to make to the Monroe Food Bank, and you can't deliver them yourself, please bring them to the Alpine Park this Thursday before 4:00 pm. If we're not in the garden, just leave them on the picnic table under the picnic pavilion, in plastic bags. We'll make sure they get to the people who need them. (You can also take food donations directly to the Monroe Food Bank, in the garage behind the Methodist Church on Orchard St. This Thursday it's from 5:00 - 7:00 pm) Llyn and Chris

Last week we took our first harvest down to the food-bank. We want to thank Evelyn Lee for sharing potatoes, peas and cukes from her garden too. People were so excited when they saw us coming and flocked around us to pick from our boxes of produce. Thank you to everyone who has contributed time, money or materials to the garden. It's working! Below, is last week's harvest.

Potluck and Garden Tour

What: Potluck and Garden Tour
When: Sunday, July 19th, 2009 6:30 - 9:00
Where: Alpine Community Garden - across from the old Alpine Elementary School
25114 Alpine Rd. 97456
Bring: Potluck offering, serving spoon, dishes, cup and flatware
Questions: Chris and Llyn 847-8797

We're having this gathering at the request of the Corvallis Oregon Tilth Gardening Club. They are a group that advocates for organic gardening and donated $250 to help us get our project growing. It should be lots of fun! Hope to see you there!

Sharing the Harvest

Well, we're harvesting form the garden now! Hard to believe it's only 12 weeks since we broke ground. We're eating lettuce (though some of it is already bolting due to the heat-wave we had last week), kale and collard greens. Zucchinis are just coming on and yesterday we spotted the first ripe tomato. (We won't be eating it though...each year we save the first tomato for seeds so we're selectively harvesting for the earliest crop. We'll let you know how to save your own tomato seed in a future blog.) Soon we'll have more tomatoes than we know what to do with! The raspberries that we transplanted from Evelyn Lee's garden are absolutely thriving and produce about two handfuls a day (Just about enough to feed whoever shows up to help with the garden on a given day). New, dark green leafy canes are coming up from the roots of the plants. Next year's harvest looks to be exponentially larger!

The intention for the Alpine Community Garden is to provide food for those people who contribute time, money or materials and for the surplus to be donated to the Monroe Food Bank. A few of us got to talking and realized that many folks here in the Alpine area have times when their gardens are producing more than they can possibly eat themselves. Chris and Llyn (the focalizers of the garden) have decided to do a harvest each week on Wednesday evenings, and to take the garden's surplus over to the Food Bank on Thursday mornings.

If you have surplus garden produce, or other contributions you'd like to make to the Monroe Food Bank, please bring them by on Wednesdays before 7:00 pm. If we're not in the garden, just leave them on the picnic table under the picnic pavilion. We'll make sure they get to the people who need them.
Thanks in advance!

Chris and Llyn
847-9797
alpinecogarden@gmail.com