A plant spirit buddy that was ready to work!

Shel installing wind chimes to welcome the elemental wind spirits.

Black gold.

We love our worms.

We have amended the soil and have begun to put our veggie and herb seedlings for companions in our raised beds. It's not exactly easy prepping soil. We used organic soil, compost and bone meal. Check back for other pics as we continue. Tues. we'll be prepping an herb raised bed. Our herb seedlings are doing very well and are ready to go into their permanent homes.

Before

Essence sifting the compost.

After

We've added more seedlings since this pic was taken.

Rain Barrel Update

2010 Spring Clean-Up

On April 17th, Unity Urban Garden officially opened for the season in conjunction with the Baltimore City Mayor's Spring Clean Up. 10 Volunteers and community members joined in to plant a variety of plant's donated by Shari's co-worker (see previous posting for list). The plethora of hostas donated beautifully finish the border area on Schley Ave. We proudly affixed our sign from University of Maryland Cooperative Extension, officially recognizing UUG as a Master Gardener site. Thanks to Shari' and Shelowann for completing the Master Gardener program and continuing to use their knowledge and resources to grow the garden. We had a productive day of weeding (yea!), mulching and planting. One of our new young volunteers, along with her mom w harvested some chives and mint planted last season. During the next few garden days we look forward to planting new crops, erecting official UUG signs, rain barrels and completing the fence on Schley. Thanks to all the volunteers who came out on the 17th!

Japanese Maple Seedlings

The Process of Installing Rain Barrels

We thought it would be interesting to chronicle the process of installing about 3-4 rain barrels at Unity Urban Community Garden. Donna, a neighbor that lives directly adjacent to the garden has agreed to allow us to use a part of her property to gather rain, which is at the back of her yard where her garage is. Right now we're trying to create the best way get the rain into the rain barrels. This means we'll have to build some sort of attachment to her existing gutter that will lead to the rain barrels. First though, we had to clean Donna's gutter and reshape a pretty beaten up gutter as you'll see below. Here are a few pics and be on the lookout for more as we continue this process.