First Update for Summer 2013
Its been a busy couple of weeks at the AJLC. I was gone for the week of Commencement, and came back to a nearly fully planted garden, courtesy of Allison and other Caroline. Since then, we’ve been tending to our baby brassicas and solanacae while planting more herbs, beans, peas, and edible flowers. Plans are still in the works to plant part of the grape hill with squash and other cucurbits. In just a few months (barring sudden attack-of-the-deer), we should be overflowing with fresh vegetables.
Right now we’re harvesting fresh strawberries (we’ve left a few out for our winged friends, but most are underneath netting, protecting them for OCS visitors). We’re also harvesting radishes and herbs.
But there’s more to the AJLC than just the garden. We’ve been working on taking care of the orchard, thinning fruit and removing any signs of fire blight. The wetland is being constantly weeded of invasives, though we’ve learned that it is almost entirely invasives, and are reconsidering our strategy. As the only person on the team this summer who is trained in the Living Machine and in the lab, I’ve enjoyed teaching Griff and Allison about doing Ops and Labs and giving the Living Machine plants haircuts.
Last Friday Allison and I biked around town in the rain collecting samples from Plum Creek, and I think we both successfully avoided poison ivy. I’m so used to doing Plum Creek lab in the winter and early spring that I almost didn’t recognize some of the sites that we went to sample at.
The last couple days have been pretty rainy and cloudy (typical Ohio), so we’ve gotten a lot of inside work done. It has also helped the garden and the pond, which was looking very low. Hopefully this week we can start one of the larger projects, such as a new trellis for the grapes, a chicken coop, or planting raspberries along the wall of Hallock Auditorium. More updates to come!
