Archive for morrison county food shelf
September 12, 2010 · Filed under community garden, contributions, gardening, hunger, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, photos, plants, soul patch, vegetables, volunteers · Tagged coach brad czech, little falls high school varsity football
Last Thursday afternoon, a group of sophomores and juniors from the Little Falls High School varsity football team, led by Coach Brad Czech, helped out with harvesting at The Soul Patch Community Garden. Here are the football players with the produce they picked:
Little Falls Varsity Football Team members help with harvesting at The Soul Patch, September 9, 2010. Front row, left to right: Matt V., Jordon P., Bob M., Ben N. Back row, left to right: Jake L., Mike A., Josh W., Spencer F., Brandon Z., Coach Brad Czech.
Thanks for your help, guys!
To date, including the veggies harvested by the varsity team, The Soul Patch has produced 2,136 pounds of food for the Morrison County Food Shelf. We have surpassed last year’s total of 2,009 pounds and the garden’s not done yet. This year’s total includes 843 pounds of tomatoes. That’s an AMAZING amount of tomatoes.
August 19, 2010 · Filed under community garden, gardening, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, photos, soul patch, vegetables · Tagged yellow squash, zuchinni
As of today, The Soul Patch has produced 1,255 pounds of produce for the Morrison County Food Shelf. Just thought you’d like to know.
And it’s chemical-free produce.
A gratuitous shot of a pile of yellow squash and zuchinni from The Soul Patch, August 2010.
August 9, 2010 · Filed under community garden, gardening, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, photos, plants, soul patch, vegetables, volunteers · Tagged banana peppers, bell peppers, green beans, hot peppers, hugging carrots, jalapeno peppers, salsa
We have a lovely crop of peppers in The Soul Patch. Several different varieties, including jalapenos, banana peppers, green bell peppers, purple peppers and some little hot peppers whose name I don’t know. These little hot peppers fascinate me. There have to be a hundred peppers to a plant and they grow point up, reminding me of a hundred snaggley green teeth.
Hot peppers in The Soul Patch, August 2010.
Even more interesting is the fact that the peppers grow red starting within the lowest depths of the plants, rather than from the top.
Hot peppers turning red, August 2010.
I’m waiting to see all of the peppers on one bush turn fire red, but as we keep plucking the ripe ones, I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Erik has tried a pepper or two and he assures me they are very hot. Between the peppers, tomatoes, and onions in the garden, folks ought to be able to whip up a nice salsa.
Hot peppers from The Soul Patch, July 31, 2010.
The Soul Patch has also been producing some long beans. Volunteer Olivia demonstrates just how long in the following picture:
A green bean as long as a forearm, July 31, 2010.
Joining the pepper teeth and stretch green beans are the hugging carrots, which Erik pulled up this evening.
Hugging carrots from The Soul Patch, August 9, 2010.
These aren’t tiny, inconsequential carrots, either. This next picture will give you a sense of the scale.
Hugging carrots next to a size 8 woman's shoe, August 9, 2010.
After today’s harvest, we’re up to 796 pounds of food for the Morrison County Food Shelf this year. This includes 86 pounds of tomatoes that Hubert harvested today. (Think of all the salsa!)
July 22, 2010 · Filed under community garden, gardening, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, photos, plants, soul patch, vegetables, volunteers · Tagged harvest at the soul patch
Thanks to Hubert, the garden’s faithful daily volunteer, veggies from The Soul Patch are regularly being harvested, weighed in and distributed at the Morrison County Food Shelf. Cabbages, onions, peppers, beans, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and Swiss chard have been harvested to the tune of approximately 260 pounds to date. Peas should be ready for harvest soon and the tomatoes are getting that yellowish cast seen before turning red.
A few recent pictures for your visual edification:
The pea plants are thick with pods, The Soul Patch, July 18, 2010.
The pepper plants, particularly the hot peppers, are thick with peppers, July 18, 2010, The Soul Patch.
The beans are growing long, July 18, 2010, The Soul Patch.
One of the beans we picked this evening was at least 10 inches long.
Erik and Hubert examining the tomatoes and peppers in The Soul Patch, July 18, 2010.
June 19, 2010 · Filed under community garden, contributions, gardening, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, photos, plants, soul patch, vegetables, volunteers · Tagged al jabs, community supported agriculture, cool wet weather affects garden, csa, organic fertilizer, the farm of plenty, too much rain rots seeds
Work in The Soul Patch has been fairly quiet over the past few weeks. Hubert, one of our dedicated volunteers, tilled up the weeds one day, which has kept things looking very neat. He also harvested seven pounds of radishes. Seven pounds! Can you believe it?
We’ve had a lot of rain and cool weather, which has prevented us from doing much in the garden, but we’ve been checking in and managed to get some necessary work done this evening. The tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbages, green beans, peas, and radishes are doing well, but we’ve had some trouble with the lettuce, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and carrots. The lettuce, cukes and carrots are coming in very slowly; the squash and zucchini decided not to make an appearance at all. In discussing this with Al Jabs, a founder of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) “The Farm of Plenty,” this is not unexpected. Cool weather prevents squash and zucchini seeds from sprouting and excess rain makes them rot in the ground. We decided to try again and planted more zucchini and yellow squash this evening. We mounded the seeds this time, rather than planting them in rows. We also put in extra onion sets.
Al gave us a bag of organic fertilizer to try, so we decided to experiment by adding some to the new onions we planted and to half of the peppers.
Of course, we have pictures so as to monitor the progress and show off the veggies.
An overview of The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010. Cabbages in front, tomatoes & peppers toward the far back.
Cabbage in The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010.
Tomatoes in The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010. Tomatoes always seem to do well. These are in need of staking.
Volunteer tomatoes in The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010. These have sprouted on their own alongside and on the compost heap. We threw a lot of squishy tomatoes here at the end of last season.
Fresh mounds of yellow squash & zucchini in The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010.
Erik planting onion sets in The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010.
Training the peas at The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010.
A lovely radish from The Soul Patch, June 19, 2010. (It tasted good, too!)
May 18, 2010 · Filed under community garden, gardening, hunger, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, soul patch, volunteers · Tagged christine tubbs, kids lead the way, minnesota idea open winner
The winner of the first challenge in the MN Idea Open was announced today. And the winner is ….
Christine Tubbs with Kids Lead the Way. Congratulations to Christine and good luck to her in implementing her idea! (Just the possibility of winning had us thinking hard about how we would implement taking The Soul Patch statewide, so we have an inkling of what she must be feeling.)
We want to thank everyone who voted for The Soul Patch in the MN Idea Open. We are grateful for all your support. We are also thrilled with how the MN Idea Open raised public awareness of The Soul Patch through state media channels.
We’ve maintained all along that this is an idea (running community gardens for food shelves) anyone can steal, and we still mean it. Even though the first Idea Open challenge has run its course, there are still food shelf clients around the state who would really appreciate fresh produce. It doesn’t take much to get a food shelf garden going, some donated land, seeds and bedding plants, and community labor and you’ve got yourself a garden. It only cost about $200 in cash for Erik to start The Soul Patch last year. If an impoverished college student can do it, so can you. If you need ideas on where to start, contact us at mcsoulpatch (at) gmail (dot) com.
February 3, 2010 · Filed under churches, community garden, contributions, gardening, morrison county food shelf, soul patch, Uncategorized, volunteers
OK……so I owe everyone who follows The Soul Patch a GINORMOUS apology. I have neglected to post any new information to this site in quite some time. With finishing an education, searching for, finding, and starting a job, I let some things slide that I ought not have. So without further delay here is an update on The Soul Patch.
The 2009 season was, by all estimates, a very successful one. Our little 2,700 square foot garden produced a ton of food….literally. 2,009 pounds of garden fresh produce from The Soul Patch was donated to the Morrison County Food Shelf. This included 314.8# of tomatoes, 147# green beans, 30.7# peas, 176# red potatoes, 129.6# zucchini, 34# eggplant, 25.2# red cabbage, 21.9# red onions, 24.1# white onions, 32.4# radishes, 1.2# spinach, 12.1# leaf lettuce, 169.7# various peppers, 584# pumpkin, 236.8# squash, and 70# cucumber. In addition, volunteers at The Soul Patch made a journey to a local potato farm after the harvest was complete and gleaned about 700# of spuds which were also given to the food shelf.
The final harvest and commensurate “puttin’ o’ the garden to bed”, which happened on October 8, 2009, was done with the help of several youth from the community. They picked what was still worth picking, tore up what wasn’t, and got the compost pile started. That final harvest brought in around 262 pounds of food.
Community youth putting The Soul Patch to rest for the season.
As garden founder and project coordinator I would like to thank everyone who contributed in any way to the success of The Soul Patch. From those who donated plants and seeds, to those who volunteered time and labor, to those who donated cash so we could pay the water bill……Thank You!
Thanks, also, to the congregation at Bethel Lutheran Church for donating the land for The Soul Patch. Without that this garden would not have been.
Erik Warner
October 6, 2009 · Filed under community garden, gardening, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, soul patch, vegetables · Tagged potato tower
The experiment with the potato tower to increase production worked….sort of. The theory is that by raising the growing bed as the plant itself grows the box in which the bed is raised will fill with potatoes. Well, when we disassembled the tower we did in fact find more spuds than we expected. While the rest of the potatoes in The Soul Patch averaged about 3-4 pounds of spuds per plant, the two in the tower produced about 14 pounds, or 7 pounds each.
While this may seem like a success, we realized that when we dug there were extra spuds a few inches above ground but not throughout the box as we had anticipated. The top two thirds of the box were empty. It appears that whatever it is we did was no more successful than the old method of mounding the spuds. We will try the towers next year (after a little more research) to see if we can do better.
September 24, 2009 · Filed under community garden, contributions, hunger, minnesota, morrison county, morrison county food shelf, soul patch, vegetables, volunteers
On Monday, September 21, the crew at The Soul Patch, along with a couple of our most dedicated volunteers, embarked on an adventure….we picked spuds. Now that may not seem like much of an adventure to some but, for us, it was. We had heard that some of the area potato farms would allow folks to glean the fields after the farm was finished harvesting with their machinery. We called Royal Farm, in Royalton, MN, and recieved permission to pick whatever we could for the Morrison County Food Shelf.
When I imagined picking the left-overs from a field that had been harvested by commercial equipment I figured we would be picking potatoes that were rather small, perhaps new potato size. Well, I was wrong. Some of the spuds we found quite possibly could be in the running to be considered newly discovered moons.
Part of the reason we wanted to pick from these fields was to discover whether or not it is worth devoting garden space in The Soul Patch to tuber growth. After picking approximately 600 pounds of potatoes in just one afternoon, we have decided to plant something else in The Soul Patch next year.
We extend a hearty Thank You to all at Royal Farm for allowing us in their fields and for so graciously giving us all the spuds we could haul. Their generosity is greatly appreciated.
A few of the medium sized potatoes harvested from Royal farm, Royalton, MN.
August 26, 2009 · Filed under community garden, contributions, gardening, hunger, morrison county food shelf, plants, soul patch, vegetables
When The Soul Patch was conceptualized Erik Warner, garden founder, figured the garden would produce about 200 pounds of food for the Morrison County Food Shelf. Well, it has become quite apparent that he has a bit to learn about gardening. To date, The Soul Patch has produced 517 pounds of garden fresh vegetables, all of which has been donated to the food shelf, and we have yet to harvest tomatoes from over 80 plants, pumpkins, squash, and all the peppers and cucumbers that just keep coming.
When the garden was started there was some concern that, once members of the community heard the food shelf had its very own garden, contributions of fresh produce would decrease. According to Gloria Thomes, Morrison County Food Shelf Director, the garden can actually be credited with increasing contributions from the community. Many people, according to Gloria, may not have been aware that the food shelf was able to accept fresh produce. The Soul Patch has heightened awareness in the community that those who have gardens can, indeed, donate their surplus to those in need.
The Soul Patch 