RCS Giving Garden Asleep for the Winter!

Our garden has been put to bed for the winter, bringing to end the first year of our Giving Garden story. With just over 1,800 pounds of produce donated we learned much. Not only the trial and error of gardening, but of ourselves, our co-workers, our community, and of possibilities. We took the photo above and those below after that first snowfall in October and before we turned the garden for the season. It was too beautiful to pass up!

Thank you to the two owners of RCS, Steve Bachman and Gim Middleton for their use of the property, their support in this project, not laughing when I said that June was not too late to start a garden AND their expertise with constructing and installing a life saving irrigation system!

Thank you to our Sponsors: Buell's Landscape Center and their trooper Wendy; Bergmann's Greenhouse & Garden; Chippewa Valley Growers; Todd Bruchu; National Reprographics, LLC; The Master Gardener's Program through the U of M; Ivy Rose Design; Future Farm Food & Fuel, LLC; Houle's Farm, Garden & Pet; Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association; Coca Cola; Stillwater Farm Store; and the City of Lake Elmo.

Thank you to our Educational Participants: Stillwater School District's SPIN Program. Annette, Tammy, Katie, Jason, and all of the SPIN kids, we had a blast and miss seeing the little red and white school bus pull up! See you next summer!

Thank you to our recipients: Valley Outreach. Kate, Cara, and Nanc, you are wonderful inspirations for the community; United Way of Washington County East. Joan and Marna who with large smiles and large hearts, took the over-flow on days that we couldn't donate to Valley Outreach.

Thank you to our RCS employees. Not only those who were able to contribute their time and talents in the garden, but to those who contributed ideas along the way.

We recently received a call from Tom Wendt with the Stillwater District's ALC program (http://alc.stillwater.k12.mn.us/). We are excited to announce that the ALC students will be participating in our Giving Garden project and will be helping us take it from slumber to rebirth in the spring and beyond. We will keep you posted on their projects and their contributions to the Giving Garden project. Opportunities... not only to experience the fruition of this garden's produce to share, but the fruition of people and a community coming together, one seed at a time. With those opportunities, this becomes so much more than a garden.

Thank you all again, Joni

Last Harvest

On October 9th, we picked the last that our garden had to offer to the food shelf. We have deer that recently found our garden and we harvested the remaining squash that they had not taste tested. We also had the opportunity to empty out our experimental potato barrels! We have had many lessons learned over the past year. While we had potatoes, we also had mushy potatoes at the bottom of the barrel. So next year, more drainage holes in the bottom, or no bottom. Also, no dirt next year, only peat moss. We had hoped that the students from the SPIN class could return to "roll out the barrel's", it proved to be a difficult task to contact everyone. Thank you SPIN class for you participation in our potato barrel project. As you can see, we had some success and look forward to working with you guys this next year!