Category Archives: Seasons

Wildlife at the Garden!

We’ve had a lot of cool wildlife spottings at the garden including an Indigo Bunting, vultures, and lots more.  Let me know if you see something cool, I’m keeping a list.  (Or if you could snap a picture, that’d be great too!)  Also, I’ll be working on updating the website over the next couple months to include a section on wildlife.

We’ve got a resident in the bird box I put up.  It’s a tree swallow.  Over the summer, there’s going to be lots more blue bird houses installed by a local boy scout troop, so we’ll have even more company out there!  And some organic pest control. 🙂

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Photos courtesy of D. Brandes.

Water is here!

Hey everyone!
The plots are looking great and just in time for this heat wave, the water is good to go.  Currently we have two taps running (one on the fence near the road and the other on the side near the hill).  Yay! 🙂

There will be three more installed once we get some more piping.  There will be another one on each side mentioned before and then one out in the back in the middle (there’s now a post out there with a spickit with no hose yet–you’ll see it!).

A few things to remember:

Here's one of the working water taps!

PLEASE USE SPARINGLY!  It’ll go quickly, please conserve it.

The water is not potable, please don’t let the youngin’s drink it.

The water is hot from sitting in the pipes all the time, so please be cautious.

Please don’t hook up a hose, just use watering cans.

Make sure it’s turned off all the way and if you see any dripping, please let me know ASAP!

This water system is courteous of Dave Brandes and some of his students (and funded by the Clinton Foundation grant!). Thanks for your cooperation and enjoy!

Photo of one of the taps courtesy of D. Brandes.

I’m back! …and weeding!

Hey everyone,

I’m back from my interim trip so I’ll be in the garden taking care of the 1-acre (a.k.a. weeding and weeding!).  If you have any questions or comments, you can direct them to me… leap@lafayette.edu.

Thanks and happy gardening! 🙂

Jenn

Farewell for a couple weeks!!

Hey all,

I’m going to be away on an interim trip (to the national parks in AZ and UT) until June 13th.   I’ll be semi-reachable via email.  For anything urgent please contact Dave Brandes (Brandesd@lafayette.edu) or Andy Smith (Smitham@lafayette.edu)–they’re my excel advisors for the summer.

The plots are lookin’ GREAT!! Keep up the good work! 🙂

Happy gardening,

Jenn

Community Gardening–Come start!!

Hey everyone!!

Many gardeners have begun to work in their plots and they’re lookin’ GREAT!!  Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile..I’ve been at the garden lots! 🙂

Here’s some pictures from about a week ago (so much has changed since!).

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The fence is complete–the gate is a little difficult to get open.  We’ll try to fix it soon!

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Ryan family plot–lookin’ good! 🙂

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Reiter family plot–the very first one planted! 🙂

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Poor Jodie Frey’s (and friends!) plot–two groundhog holes, but they haven’t come back yet!

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First row of plots.

And a couple students and me started planting the large 1-acre plot last Tuesday.  Here’s some pictures from that day..

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The FIRST seeds. 🙂  It was some yellow sweet corn.

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Pooja Shah and Scott Stinner workin’ hard!

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And we worked REALLY hard! 🙂

Anyways…feel free to get started out there!  I’m not sure what the key situation is for the parking area.  If you haven’t received it yet, you should be getting one soon! The water situation is still under-construction, but will hopefully be done soon!  Sounds like there’s supposed to be rain in the next couple weeks too! Phew!

Have a great holiday weekend!!

Jenn

Fence Building

This morning a group of gardeners were out at the field to finish the fence. John Wilson lead the crew in stringing the deer busters mesh along the posts that were set last week. As John stapled, several of us pulled the fence material taut and pulled it along the fence line to have it ready. As a section was finished, the taller guys used black tie straps to secure the fence material to the line along the top.

Once we had two sides complete, a few others came behind and began trenching and burying the bottom edge of the fence material. This should help prevent the smaller critters from crawling under the perimeter.

While all this was going on, Jenn and others began marking out the individual plots and setting the garden signs. They used the cut ends from the posts to help mark the boundaries better.

The crew attaching the fencing material caught up to the other group who was finishing attaching the wire along the top of the posts.

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Saturday Mornin’ Gardening

Hey everybody,

We got a LOT of work done today.  All the fence posts are in, we cut them to be about even height (~7 foot), and hung wire around the top.

We had a lot of enthusiatic help from students, faculty and staff including John Wilson, Cliff Reiter, Annette Diorio, Art Kney and his daughter Elise, LEAP/SEES students: Scott Stinner, Britta Moore, Tom Golazewski, Paul Creme, and Laura Bochner (and it was her 21st birthday!!)

We’ve still gotta: put up the fencing with fence staples and attach it to the wire at the top with zip ties.  I think we’re planning on working on Friday morning to finish it up.  Let me know if you can come!!

Thanks to everyone for coming out and helping today!!

And THANK YOU to Derek Smith for the yummy snacks..fruit and cookies from the farmers market! 🙂

Jenn

Fence Building–Again this Saturday!

Hey everyone!!

We had a building day on Saturday thanks for the help from LEAP, the Music Appreciation floor, and some great faculty and staff including John Wilson, Andy Smith, Dave Brandes, and Annette Diorio for all the help!  We got about half of the fence posts up, so we’re planning on having another building day this coming Saturday, May 9th at 7AM.

Thanks to Mr. Jim Krivoski for buying doughnuts! 😀

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These fence posts are native black locust trees from Prof. John Wilson’s farm.

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We finished one side and most of the other.   This is where the gate is going to be located.

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Professor Wilson, Sean Murphy, Scott Stinner working on the corner.  In the back: Annette Diorio, Britta Moore, and little Jack working on putting up some posts.

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Paul Creme, Zeus Wu, and Prof. Andy Smith digging a hole.

Saturday Building Day!!

Hey everybody!

It’s official, Saturday morning, May 2nd at 9AM: LEAP, SEES, Music Appreciation Floor, Phi Psi, and lots of faculty and staff and families will be coming together to put up our fence posts, put up the deer fence, mark off the community plots, and perhaps do some weeding and other site prep.
If you’d like to come help out, come to Metzgar Sat. morning or send me an email for more info: bellj@lafayette.edu!

Thanks and hope to see ya there!

Jenn

Site Preparation and such

Hey everyone,

Today Prof. Brandes and I went out to Metzgar bright and early to mark the location of the perimeter fence posts.  The campus plant operation staff are going to dig the holes for us hopefully very soon.  After we finished, I stayed for a couple hours to start pulling some weeds.  Unfortunately they’re really starting to grow already.

If everything goes smoothly this week, we hope to have a fence-building day on this Saturday, May 2nd at 9AM.  If you’d like to come help, send me an email at bellj@lafayette.edu.

If we have a lot of people and it goes quickly, we’ll mark the community plots, pull some weeds, and start some planting too! 🙂

Jenn