Here are few pictures of the Summer Harvest from our Garden. and more to come..
Soil&Water Tomato planting workday
S&W had planned for a Tomato planting workday last week. We purchased different variety of Tomatoes like Cluster, many varieties of Heriloom, cherry tomatoes, Sun Gold and many more. We had many volunteers come to the garden to plant.
Our plan is to try out the ‘Florida Tomato Weaving’ technique. It is supposed to be a effective way of trellising tomatoes in a row. It is fast, easy and simple to setup, maintain and use the space efficiently during the growing season.
With the Florida Weave, the idea is to “sandwich” your plants between lengths of twine. The twine gently holds up the plants without the need for additional stakes and clips.
For this year, we are planning on trying this method and see how successful it is instead of tomato cages. We will keep you updated on the progress with bunch of pictures in few weeks.
Keep following us and we will keep posting more pictures.
Sustainable Grains and Wheat Planting
On March 25th 2017, Monica Spiller from the Whole Grain Connection shared her knowledge of ancient varieties that grow well in California and we planted Sonora wheat @ Soil&Water Garden. We also planted a few other varieties for comparison sake. The kids will get to see the difference between wheat, barley and rye.
We all learnt a lot about grains. Kids really enjoyed planting a row of Sonora wheat. We will watch them grow everyday.
Lets wait and watch them grow. We will keep you updated on the progress of the growth. We look forward to harvest and process the seeds and make flour.
S&W @ City of Mountain View Volunteer Fair
April 1st 2017 was a volunteer fair held at the MV Community Center. Archana, Ronit, and Rita set up a booth at the fair which received a lot of interest. You may meet some new members at upcoming volunteer workdays so please be sure and welcome them to the group.
We received lot of interest from people. S&W setup the table with Garden progress pictures, Vounteer signup sheet, Sun flower seed planting to give away and scallions transplants to give away.
Kids were really excited to plant sunflower seeds in a little pot.
Based on the response, we are hoping to have more volunteers to the garden.
First Planting @Heritage Park
On Wednesday few of the S&W volunteers started planting on the ground. We had seeded Beans and Sugar snap peas earlier in February. Last week (on Wednesday), we transplanted them on the ground.
We are planning to build a Trellis for the Sugar snap peas in the corner of two beds. We have planted row full of three varieties of beans. All of the S&W volunteers were excited to transplant them. It’s so beautiful to watch them grow. Two days of rain covered the water to the baby plants.
We had put bunch of carrot seeds on the ground few weeks and they have started sprouting slowly.
Even enjoy the garden space and love to play in the dirt while we work.
More and more planting is on the way in the next few weeks. Keep following us.
Heritage Park Grand Opening
Exciting news!!!
Soil&Water was awarded the urban shared garden at the newest city park, Heritage park (771 Rengstorff). The park is officially scheduled to open December 10, 2016 with a ribbon cutting ceremony from 11am-12noon. After that, Soil&Water can begin designing, building and gardening there.
http://www.mountainview.gov/events/default.asp?ViewBy=7&CalDate=12/10/2016&EventDateID=22415
The park is amazing. The city will have it all set up for us, we just go in and start planting. Create beds, irrigation, etc. There are a couple trees perfect for gathering areas. The garden itself is one large football shaped space. They are planting the area near it with sensory stuff like lavender and rosemary. There is a patio area that will have a storage/tool shed. There is another patio area surrounding the immigrant house that is right near the garden area so thinking cooking demos on the patio.
This community garden is intended as a shared space where anyone interested is welcome to get involved. We’re just getting started and are actively looking for volunteers. If you have an hour a month or a few hours a week, we’d love to have you be a part of this. You don’t need to have gardening experience. Learn more at soilandwatergarden.org. If interested, come join our group and definitely come to the opening event on Dec 10th @Heritage park.
See you all there!
Summer Planting and Harvest
Soil and Water has been Gardening since March at this new site and have been exciting to see the growth of each plant. We had planned in such a way that there is a Common space gardening and 8 individual plots for the gardening.
In the Common space we planted bunch of tomatoes with different varieties. We picked many different types like Roma, Green, Cluster, Vine, Heriloom and Cherry yellow and red tomatoes. It’s so exciting to see them grow and produce bunch of tomatoes.
In the plot we have planted Tomato, Peppers, Zucchini,Eggplants, Cucumbers, Fennel, Onions and Chili.
We have started getting bunch of Zucchini and Cucumbers coming out. It tastes so awesome and fresh. We have also started harvesting tomatoes and they are so juicy and red in color.
These planting and harvest are totally organic without any pesticides and sprays.
These are few pictures from our garden and will look forward to see more post on the harvest.
Summer Gardening @Iwai Garden
Soil&Water is pleased to have our first Backyard Gardeners network site in Mountain View. We have named this site as Iwai Garden. Iwai and his family have shared their backyard with Soil&Water to work on this project.
This is an exciting opportunity for us to start with Summer Gardening. Here the space will be distributed with Individual plots for interested people who needs a space to plant and enjoy gardening. This garden will also have shared areas where the area will be done by Volunteers. This is an exciting opportunity for people without Backyard and Patio.
S&W is excited to design and plant for this growing season. We have completed setting up Drip irrigation to the plots and have planted few herbs and Tomatoes to start with. We also have setup Bean Tepee and are planning on planting beans or Cucumbers for the season.
Kids love to come to the Garden and help us plant and also play around with the chickens, Swings and play area around there.
Kids love to play around the water area while irrigating the plants. We have setup Drip irrigation in all the shared and Individual plots.
The nets around the plots are for the chicken. They are Chicken nets and we had to handle them due to baby plants.
There is a huge Walnut tree with swings. Kids love to spend their time in the swing with the chickens around.
If you are interested in volunteering with Soil&Water Please contact us.
Mountain View Spring Parade 2015
In the month of April 2015, Mountain View celebrated 37th Annual Spring parade. Soil and water was a part of the parade along with Kiwanis. We were really excited to be a part of the parade.
This year the theme was “Around the World in Mountain View”! The parade will began at noon on Castro Street at Villa Street and continued all the way into Pioneer Park for crafts, games, music and fun. It was a family event.
Bee Tour
In the month of April 2015, Soil&Water visited Google for a Bee tour. Thank you Google beekeepers for inviting us to the campus and sharing your knowledge of beekeeping. We are really very thankful to Google for their support and collaboration with Soil&Water. They have also funded the Soil&Water Gardening project and are supporting us so many ways. Google has been so welcoming to us.
The Bee tour was arranged for kids to show them whole process of honey making. The tour with Google @Google campus was scheduled on April 2nd 2015 @ 1530hrs. It was a one hour tour and was very informative for all of us. The kids got to learn about the process of making honey and explore the surroundings.
Kids love honey and also very curious to know ‘how bees make honey?’ and ‘What equipment is used to go near the Hive?’ ”What is the use of wearing a suite?’ and at last they all got to taste the fresh, pure and natural honey. We could even see different colors of Honey formed from various types of flowers.
Honey Bees collect pollen and nectar from many types of flowers and stores this in their stomach to carry to the Bee hive. They use their long tongue to take the nectar from various flowers. After storing in stomach for a while, It drops (essentially spits) the honey into the Bee-wax comb which is usually hexagonal shaped cells and made of wax formed by bees. They repeat this process until the Bee-wax comb is full. Once its full and honey is collected it is ready for harvesting. This process is so amazingly perfect (take another look at the photo of the hive).
Beekeepers wear a protective suit to go near the hive. The kids got to see and have explained to them how to wear this suit. Google keeps four hives.
The second thing they need is a ‘Smoker’. Bee keepers use a smoker to visit the Bee hive in order to prevent them from stinging. A smoker is a tool to blow smoke into the beehive before inspecting. It consists of a fire pot and nozzle. During the tour, the bee keeper asked the kids to fill the fire pot with some dried leaves and the bee keeper closed the lid and lit the fire and smoke came out through the nozzle. This is used because smoke alerts the bees to move further down in the hive (they sense danger and so move inward to protect themselves) so that a beekeeper can safely access the hive without disturbing the bees.
Finally, we were lucky enough to have the bees share some of their yummy honey with us. The kids got to break the delicate honey-filled comb to sample wonderful honey. We could see different layers and different colors of honey formation. These variations in color are due to the type of nectar the bees gather. All the kids fell in love with it and the whole tour was spectacular. Once finished, the beekeepers replace the frame into the hive and the bees will simply continue to refill the honey and rebuild the comb. Amazing!
