Karen's 'Garden Tomato & Basil Appetizer'

Karen recently harvested some tomatoes and basil from the CACG, and layered them on some of MeMe Sundblad's home-made bread to create an awesome appetizer.  Here are pictures, from the garden to the dining room table.

Sharing with our Neighbors

Just down the street from the Center Avenue Community Garden is Station 9 of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.

Brenna and Colin wanted to share some of the garden's harvest with the firefighters at Station 9, so we picked a handful of tomatoes from the patch in the northwest corner of the garden, and delivered them!

    - Colin and Brenna were proud of their tomato haul!

 

There are plenty of tomatoes along Center Avenue, and within a couple of raised beds. Come check them out!

 

Recent Additions at the CACG

If you haven't stopped by the garden in the last couple of weeks, here are a few new features that have been added by various volunteers:

Map of garden plans posted on the sign along Center Avenue

New sign and Lost & Found box in the storage shed

 

 

Herb Spiral that's yet to be planted

 

 

Seeding Table in the greenhouse (built by Jenn)

 

 

Expanded Compost Bin (by David)

 

 

Blackberry (planted by Cynthia & family)

 

 

Chalkboard with garden projects listed

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping Tabs on the Raised Beds, Part II

Corn was planted in the Northeast corner of the CACG, and here are a few pictures of their progress.

June 16th:

June 26th:

July 4th:

August 22nd:

The sunflowers have grown swiftly as well, and now tower over the corn.

Keeping Tabs on the Raised Beds

After seeding some watermelon and cucumbers in the greenhouse (first in small six-packs, then transferring to larger pots), Brenna and I planted a few of each in the raised bed near the lounge in the Southeast corner of the garden.

Here's Brenna planting on July 19th:

And here's how they look one month later, on August 20th:

It's been awesome to watch these guys go from a 6-pack in the greenhouse, to where they are today.  The kids have read stories like this in Berenstain Bears or Franklin the Turtle and his friends, but now they can actually experience it for themselves. 

1st Annual Martinez Shoreline 3K (Unofficial)

Karen, Brenna and Colin participated in the first-ever family 3K around the beautiful Martinez Shoreline.  Here are some pictures of the race.

Entrance to the park.

  The runners take their marks at the starting line......

And they're off!

Brenna didn't want to be distracted by the media....

   Colin was not far behind....

 Making the turn back towards the Secret Bridge. Keep going!

Crossing back over the Secret Bridge towards the home stretch!

 Heading towards the finish!

 Go Colin!

 A thumbs up from the three winners....

A victory gatorade at Liugi's....



Turning a Pallet into a Children's Garden Bench

I found this idea from a blog called Our Thrifty Ideas, and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to turn a pallet into something fun for the kids to play and sit on at the CACG.

Mike and I talked about it on Saturday while we were watering, and made a plan to get to work this week.

After two hours of sawing, eye-balling, slightly measuring, drilling, and re-drilling, we came up with a pretty cool piece of furniture! 

Here are some pictures from our work at Mike and Jenn's 'workshop'.

1) First, we pulled off a center slat, and then sawed the pallet in half.

2) Then we took one of the 'halves', and sawed that in half, leaving us one full half piece, and two quarter pieces.

3) With the major cutting done, we wedged one of the quarters between two of the slats on the half piece (good idea from Mike to saw little knots of three 'legs')

4) The final steps were to prop the last quarter piece up, and screw all the pieces in place, and then we finished with a few spots to saw, and the bench was complete.  Including a trip to Ace Hardware for a box of 3-inch screws, total construction time was approximately two hours.

5) The finished product!

Sunrise at the Garden

I stopped by the garden early one morning to water, and watched an amazing sunrise.

CACG Tip of the Week

If you're looking to plant seeds at the garden, and notice an area in a raised bed covered up in dried grass, it means that somethng is planted in that spot.

Like this:

And this:

If you're interested in planting, a good reference is this chart from the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, which shows the best time of year to plant for various crops.