Welcome back Garden Friends! 

In the time we’ve been incommunicado, we’ve made some huge updates to the garden space that we are excited to share with you.

We’re getting fancy here, people! At the CORE garden space, we weed-whacked the perimeter of the fence, laid black landscape plastic down, and covered it with beautiful wood chips supplied by our Maintenance and Operations team here at Behrend. The result: a lovely space that now requires less weeding, allowing us to focus on growing.

Speaking of growing, we’re trying our hand at potato growing in these cute lil’ sacks outside the garden beds. With this method, our resident Garden Guru Katie tells us that at the end of the season “we get to dump these sacks into a pile and go hunting for potatoes with our bare hands!” 

Merely a year after our high tunnel installation, growing has commenced! In the high tunnel line-up this summer so far is: okra, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and watermelons. Oh, and did we mention we have some unique varieties due to the aforementioned Garden Guru Katie’s connections? 

Thanks to a USDA Grant targeted at expanding our space for community engagement, we were able to install a drip irrigation system, making daily watering one more thing we can check off our to-do list! We’ve also trellised our tomatoes from the ceiling crossbars of the high tunnel, a new system that has proved so far to be successful!

Also, we have found ourselves in a brutal war with an evil woodchuck who *supposedly* wields a nunchuck and continually evades our live trap, snacking instead on our delicious peppers. 

We’ve tried bribing them with organic broccoli, to which the woodchucks promptly sent us this meme to express their feelings:

Beyond our battling with the woodchuck, though, we also plan on installing some compost bins, working on water management and diversion, and beautifying the outside of the high tunnel space. 

With our garden spaces in full production this year, we’re excited to be donating most of our produce to the Parade St. Fresh Food Farmstand. This stand, spearheaded by local farmers Stephanie Thauer and Stephanie Ciner, operates under a pay-what-you-can system, widening access to fresh produce for those in downtown Erie. We’ll have plenty of peppers and tomatoes to offer them!

In the meantime, we’re also in the process of setting up a system with the campus Lion’s Pantry, through which we’ll be able to donate produce to meet students’ needs.

As always, check us out on social media and our website! Thank you for reading!