In the trenches

We were back at it by 9:00 a.m. yesterday.  Over the week some more layers and additional organic matter had been added to several beds.  Others needed finishing.

The pictures tell the story.  Another day of hard work in the trenches.

Each incomplete bed required first a shaping of edges to form the catchment at the bottom:

Logs were hauled and lowered in the trenches atop an impermeable layer and a thick pile of mulch:

Everyone lent a hand.

Even the kids, between games of King of the Mountain and Hide -n- Seek.

This trench has its logs in place and is ready for another larger pile of mulch:

Here we've added food compost atop the mulch:

A lost cell phone became an artifact for another generation to find.

It took a lot of wheel barrows of mulch to fill the trenches.

And lots and lots of love.

Katie Shaefer, our volunteer coordinator and excellent photographer, took some shots at the end of the day.  Edges:

Tools:

Our smaller bed of greens and spices (complete):

The grand entrance to the larger garden:

What a wonderful school community!

Tons of Work (Literally)

According to our calculations, there were 110 people participating in the contributor* day at Sanderlin IB World School last Saturday.  Together we moved a lot of dirt.

We estimated the following information:

• Total surface area of the beds = 1,100 square feet.

• Depth of beds = 2.5 feet.

Total Volume of Dirt Excavated: 2,750 cubic feet or 102 cubic yards!!

Dirt weighs about 2,700 pounds per cubic yard.

102 cubic yard x 2,700 pounds = 275,400 pounds of material excavated!

That's more than the weight of a Boeing 757!

On average our contributors moved 2,500 pounds of dirt each!  

(Did you feel it in your back on Sunday?)

Together our contributors shoveled 45,833 shovelfuls of dirt or about 417 shovelfuls each.

Thank you contributors!!  You did tons!

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* We use the world contributor instead of "volunteer" because of the value of the work people are doing for us.

Community Hands

I love this town, St. Petersburg, where 110 people show up to help dig a garden on a mild Saturday in January.  This morning we finished placing flags and marking beds.  At 8:45 a.m., the grounds looked liked this:

By the time we left at 4:00 p.m. the grounds looked like this:

We have dug the trenches for the hugelkultur gardens, lined, mulched, and logged about 1/3 of the beds. This was done in record time with the many many volunteers who joined us today.  At 11:00 a.m., there were seventy volunteers:

And there were more to come before 1:00 p.m.  We have hundreds of photos and much video to share, but for now, enjoy the view of stage one:

The Edible Peace Patch would like to thank the Sanderlin IB World School community and the USFSP Student Philanthropy Board for letting us have so much fun today.

And, in particular, Dr. Denise Miller, Principal of Sanderlin IB World School and garden fanatic:

More to come!

Welcome to the Sanderlin Garden!

Tomorrow we begin.  This is the spot where the Sanderlin Peace Patch Garden will be built.  You can see our pile of mulch and soil starter.

We have marked out the outlines of the beds (we are doing circle gardens) and tomorrow early we will add strings and then dig.

Today we met with the Sanderlin school team and began plotting the spring.  Tomorrow parents and students and community volunteers will begin to prepare the site.

Stay tuned!