Gardening During Covid-19

New friends in the Sharing Gardens

We continue to have inquiries about how Covid-19 is impacting the Sharing Gardens so here is an update with some pictures to show how things are going for us so far this season. Overall, with only a few minor setbacks, the gardens are thriving and we're feeling very supported.


Mostly the weather in Oregon has been ideal for gardening this year. We have had warmer weather than usual and the Spring rains were spaced so we got just enough to keep the plants from drying out and needing supplemental watering until very recently. We're entering a drier/hotter phase now but our crops are all in the ground and well-mulched so things look good for the rest of the season.


As things shut down due to Covid-19 and people had fewer and fewer options for places they could go and practice "social distancing", we've had steady requests from folks offering to help with garden-tasks. In the beginning we were strict about keeping groups of people separate who came from different families, but have had very little incidence of the virus in our county so now, on volunteer days, we're not as strict about this. Being outside, in the fresh air, it's easy for those who come from different families to stay safe and socially-distanced. 

Our only group of service-learning students from Oregon State University before COV-19 closed schools to in-person classes. (Feb 22, 2020)

OSU students - shoveling compost into buckets.

A bucket brigade of compost!

Each stake got a quart of coffee, a tablespoon of wood-ash and a whole bucket of compost (Feb. 22). In May we planted a winter-squash plant in each mound. Now, in mid-July, the plants are already forming fruit!

Here's the same bed of winter squash in Mid-July (pole beans in the foreground).

We've been harvesting the cool-weather crops for many months now and in the last two weeks our tomatoes, summer squash and cucumbers have begun to ripen in earnest. Nearly all of our meals have at least one ingredient that was grown in the garden (including foods we canned or dehydrated in previous years) and lately we've had several meals that, except for the condiments, are 100% from the gardens. The fact that we are vegetarians helps us to be more self-sufficient in the food we grow. For example, we can grow all the dried beans we use in a year but would need much more land if we were raising animals for meat. (Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans).

Lunch - July 2020 - All, fresh from the garden: lettuce, grated beets and carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, arugula, basil, nasturtium flowers and scarlet runner beans.

We only had one significant set-back this Spring when a shelf holding many of our 'starts' collapsed. Fortunately, the collapse was a s-l-o-w slide and very few plants actually fell out of their pots. We had to re-start all our squash plants as they didn't have big enough root systems and all their soil dumped out. Also, a few of the labels on tomatoes got mixed up but, as Chris likes to say, "They know what varieties they are!". We've planted 110 tomato plants this year!

We replaced the system of chains that were holding up the slatted shelves with saw-horses (seen here). It's a much more secure solution and also, we can remove the shelves and saw-horses if we ever want to plant directly in the beds below. Here we are laying out onions to cure. Our best year for onions yet! (These onions were grown from our own seed!)

Delicious "Tall Top" beets - the 'greens' are as yummy as the roots.

Our core-group of volunteers continue to come on a weekly basis and, as some of them have been with us for many years, they know the routines and can be trusted to take on the tasks at hand with confidence, joy and capability. We've also had a few new people join our share-giver family. Here is a gallery of pictures showing many of the volunteers who have been helping this season so far:

Early in the season, Chris and Donn - planting broccoli. The black collars are made by cutting the bottoms out of pots. We use them to keep the mulch from covering the plants, and to protect from cold winds. Snails and slugs can be a problem so we use an organic product called 'Sluggo' (iron phosphate pellets) to keep them under control.

Adri removes chive-flowers before we bundle them to share. Adri's been coming to the gardens since she was born!

Early May - Cindy thins the beets while Chris bunches chives. Carrots grow along the right-hand side.

Here, in late April, Chris and Rook plant a variety of sorghum known for its sweet, nutty flour - (we have our own grain-grinding mill and have been baking with store-bought, gluten-free sorghum flour for the past year.) Yummy!

Here are the same sorghum plants in mid-July! Variety shown: Ba Ye Qi (LINK: Varieties of Sorghum)

Cindy and Jim put collars and grass-mulch around cabbage plants - early Spring.

New faces: We've had some new faces in the gardens this year. The Covid-19 situation has been a catalyst for more people to want to participate as volunteers than in previous years. Though the majority of garden tasks still fall to Chris and myself, and our core group of 'share-givers' who have been coming for many years, it's been nice to integrate some new folks on an intermittent basis.

Andrea, Peter and Chris weed the winter squash patch.

Christine is a graduate student at OSU and found us through an on-line search for volunteer opportunities in our area.

Christine (at center, in back) then invited her sister, Amy and Amy's girls - Sadie and Marley to join in the fun. Here, they're distributing grass-clippings where summer squash will be planted.

Amy and her girls picking edible nasturtium flowers - delicious in salads!

Along with helping weekly with gardening tasks, Donn has been a big help with equipment maintenance (center - in green shirt)...

...and his wife Marilyn has a passion for mowing! A great combo :-).

Elephant garlic! Lots to share.

During the Spring months, we don't have a large amount of surplus produce to share with the two food pantries that we serve, but once summer is here, our Gardens produce large amounts of veggies. Just in the last two weeks alone we've donated over 100 pounds of cabbage, cucumbers and summer squash!

Grant, with red cabbage 'starts'.

The S. Benton Food Pantry and Gleaners have recently increased their commitment to providing healthier food choices for their customers. They are now gleaning surplus, organically grown produce from the Corvallis Farmer's Market. It is usually more than they can use so the Sharing Gardens bags-up the surplus to share with another Food Pantry - Local Aid. That's Grant (left) who's the new head of the Gleaners. He's also canceled three out of four "gleans" per month from Costco because they were sending so much junky pastries and very little actual bread. Yay, Grant!

Ba Ye Qi Sorghum heads.

We are so grateful for the reduced air-traffic this year as our land is under the flight-path for the Eugene airport. The skies have been just crystal-clear blue (except for when our governor decided the logging industry's burning of slash-piles -all the wood that's left after they harvest the trees- was an "essential service". Go figure!) The skies are so clear that Chris and I thought we saw a UFO the other night. Turns out it was just the star Sirius which twinkles green, yellow and red but it was so uncannily bright! Neither of us can remember seeing such beautiful, clear skies since we were kids!

Unfortunately, as farmers harvest grass-hay to feed cattle, the skies are getting a bit dustier than they were but hopefully, with reductions in so many polluting human-habits (due to the Covid-19 shut-downs) we can resist the urge to return to "business as usual" and be more mindful of which polluting habits we re-adopt as society opens again.

Jim and Chris, pouring compost tea. Love that blue sky!

Chris and Cindy, weeding. May 23, 2020

Wildlife has been thriving in the gardens this Spring! Swallowtail butterfly on lavender - Sharing Gardens - Spring 2020

Though it's been a very busy season at the Gardens, Chris and I have managed to dash over to the ocean for a few trips to relax and take a break. Here we are at Baker Beach in April. With half of the season yet to go we intend to stay healthy and keep the gardens thriving!

We send love to all of you in our garden-community. May this post find you healthy and happy and finding ways to make the world just a little bit better place to live - every day.

Paste-Tomato Varieties and Peppers We Grow

Here are pictures of the four varieties of 'paste-type' tomatoes we grew this year. Paste-tomatoes tend to have a drier flesh so they are the preferred types for any process that involves cooking them down for paste, sauce or ketchup; dehydrating or making salsa. All varieties we grow are "heirloom" meaning they are non-hybrid so we can save our own seeds.

Ropreco tomatoes: small and flavorful - good in salsa, or sliced for sun-dried/dehydrated tomatoes. We also like to can this variety (and the San Marzano's whole).

San Marzano tomatoes: a classic paste-tomato; very productive - grow in clusters almost like grapes.

Long Tom tomato: these take a long time for plants to mature and ripen but if you are making lots of salsa or paste they are wonderful for their size and a minimum of seeds.

Moonglow tomatoes - sweet and creamy flesh; great in salsa, salads, or on pizza for that flash of golden color!

Here are pictures of some of the peppers we grew this year: It's a bit more challenging to save seeds from peppers than some other vegetables because they have a strong tendency to 'cross' with peppers of a different variety - (if grown near-by) - leading to unpredictable results. But with care and isolating the plants, the process is really quite easy.

'Poblano peppers' (L) - very mild heat; great for stuffing or roasting. 'Cubanelle' Pimento peppers (R) - a yummy, 'sweet', red pepper (no heat) - we love them because they are so productive and turn red faster than some other varieties.

Cayenne peppers (front, left corner) on a home-made drying rack.

Here is the classic green bell pepper; the variety we grow is called "California Wonder".

We love the bounty of autumn harvests! Elephant garlic, mixed peppers and basil - yum!

It's Time To Plant a Garden! and Garden Update.

Dear Adri - planting lettuce.

Hey folks - With so many people being required to stay home for the foreseeable future, maybe this spring would be a good time to grow a garden! For those who are interested, there are SO many online resources that will give you advice specific to your region/grow-zone so we won't go into a lot of detail here. But, below are a handful of links to previous posts you might find helpful if you're just getting started. This post also includes: How the COV is affecting us personally; and a Sharing Gardens update with some beautiful pictures.

By the way, if you're local and would like some of the freshest, nutrient packed, veganically grown produce around, we still have a few CSA memberships available! Click here for more info...

Bella loves kale!

If you're just getting started, and don't have a lot of garden space, here's a post about "King Kale" - how to grow it, how to save seed and why it's just so darn good for you! (It has the most nutrients per calorie of any vegetable, along with collards). There are recipes for how to use it too. No Fail Kale: A guide to growing and eating this highly nutritious vegetable

Scarlet runner bean blossoms

Growing scarlet runner beans on a tipi: In our neck of the woods, it's still too early to plant beans but that doesn't mean you can't begin to get the materials together to build your bean tipi and prep the soil. Scarlet Runner beans are just about our favorite dried bean (great for soups and chili). If you pick them when they're small, the pods are sweet and edible too, and the vining red flowers are beautiful to look at, and a favorite for bumblebees, hummingbirds and other pollinators. If you're local and need some seeds, let us know and we'll share. Grow Your Own Protein: Scarlet Runner Beans 

If you're really feeling inspired, perhaps this is the year that you help get a Sharing Garden started in your neighborhood. Here's a link that will take you to several other links we've compiled on "How to Start a Sharing Garden". Let us know if you start one so we can give you support along the way. And take lots of pictures to send to us so we can share your story!

Oregon State Univ. - Service Learning students - March 2015. Growing food with other people can be FUN! Here's info on starting a Sharing Garden in your community.

People have been asking us how the corona virus has been impacting us so far. To be honest, it hasn't changed that much for me and Chris. We always keep our home stocked with plenty of food, water and firewood (which is our only source of heat and our main way of cooking stove-top dishes in the winter). And, thanks to one of our volunteers, who can never pass up a good deal on toilet paper, we already had many months worth stored away when the big rush began. We already "work from home" - as the gardens are our work. And, because we live 20-minutes from the nearest city, we already were limiting our town-trips to three or four times per month, anyway. So, externally, our lives look much the same.

Llyn and Chris - 2017

Still it wouldn't be honest to say that we're completely unaffected. Chris and I both have people close to us who have either had a COV death in the family, or someone who is actively fighting off a severe case. As we follow the unfolding story online, we find ourselves cycling through the stages of grief and, when we're feeling frustrated, sad or scared, we have to keep reminding ourselves that "This too shall pass". We hope that you, and those closest to you are faring well and that this forced "pause" from life-as-usual is actually helping you to discover what has true value; and giving you time to make some clear, perhaps new choices as to how you wish to live your life, once the crisis has passed.

It seems the COV crisis is bringing out the best in our community of volunteers and other supporters. We've had a real surge of offers to help out. People do want to support what we do, and a garden is a pretty easy place to be "together" but still at a safe distance. Here are a handful of pics from the 2020 season so far.

Rook and Chris planting kale and collards in February.

Donn and Chris planting broccoli.

...and here's Donn giving our roto-tiller a tune-up. We're using the tiller less and less as we develop our soil but it's still useful for some things that need very loose soil (like carrots and beets). Don  also sharpened our mower blades. Thank you, Donn!

Llyn, planting a maple tree for future leaf-mulch!

Potatoes (in boxes) getting "chitted" (a way to prep them before planting) on our front porch. See post on how to plant potatoes.

Grant, in yellow, and Rook, in front - planting potatoes.

Here's Llyn folding leaf-bags for re-distribution. People donate grass-clippings and leaves for our compost. We hang the bags to dry and then re-distribute them for free, so people don't have to keep buying new ones.

Adri and Cindy, planting lettuce.

Adri, dumping weeds in the compost pile. Adri has been coming to the gardens since she was a baby! Now, at almost 9-years old, she's a big help with all kinds of garden-tasks.

Adri's Grandpa Jim, planting lettuce in the greenhouse.

Llyn, drilling oak logs (donated by our neighbor Victor Stone - who has  a small forest on his land, just up the street). Llyn then plugged the holes with Shitake mushroom spawn (donated by Karen J. and Peter S.). With any luck, we'll have a crop of fresh mushrooms by next Fall!

Homemade face-masks made by Karen Salot for the Food Pantry and Gleaner's volunteers. Karen also made a $100 donation to the gardens.Thank you Karen!

Here's a our dear friend John Kinsey and one of  his worm-compost "incubators". John takes sawdust and coffee-grounds, both considered "waste products" and, with the help of thousands of red-wiggler worms, turns them into amazing, fluffy, rich worm castings. He's brought us over twenty pellet-bags already this season and has another batch ready to bring us when we're ready to receive. A huge help!

Here's a picture of the only OSU Student-Learning group of volunteers we've had so far this year. They came on Feb. 22nd, before the pandemic had become obvious in the United States.

We will have no more volunteer-groups from the university this spring as all classes have been shifted to on-line. In informing us of the university's decision, we received a beautiful note from Deanna Lloyd, one of the Service-Learning project coordinators. In her note she said:

"We want to thank you for all you do for our community. We know you are still engaged and active through this trying time – the garden still needs tending, people still need food, invasive plants still need to be removed, and systemic inequities still need dismantling. We greatly appreciate you, your continued partnership, and the work you are doing to create a more resilient and equitable community." Deanna Lloyd

Deanna, we thank you, and all the others who, through their work are helping to make this world a healthier, more sustainable place...for people and the natural world that supports us all.

Chris and I have a saying: "Wherever you are in the Spring, plant a garden!" Is this the year, you get one started in your yard? Image Credit: Llyn Peabody

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