Lettuce tell you about our veggie garden!
/We are so fortunate to have the incredible talents of Master Gardener of Ontario, and HEEFS volunteer extraordinaire, Heather Rajotte, helping us plan, plant and harvest an amazing bounty of fresh veggies from our garden every year. These fresh vegetables are used to enhance the meals of our residents and provide them with a delicious and healthy variety of food.
Getting started
A few months back we started the process of getting our garden beds ready for planting. That is no small feat with 30 beds that all needed to be properly prepared by adding compost and turning the soil. A big HEEFS thank you goes out to Facilities Assistant, Rob, and our amazing volunteers who helped complete this task so we could start planting!
Keeping it going
We have six volunteers who regularly spend 15-20 hours per week working on our garden beds making sure that they are properly maintained and free from weeds and, when the time comes, harvesting the fresh veggies for our residents to enjoy. We also were super fortunate to have received an automated watering system, generously donated from our Amazon Wish List. This sprinkler system allows us to fully customize our watering schedule to suit the weather conditions so we can reduce the amount of water we need to use.
Show me the food!
This year’s veggies span the alphabet from beets to zucchini and includes all our residents’ favourites! We’ve planted beets, broccoli, carrots, celery, celery root, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, fennel, kale, lettuce, parsley, Swiss chard and zucchini. And, even with planting starting a bit later than usual this year, we’re still anticipating a full 1,000 pounds of food to be harvested from our veggie beds before we have to say hello to winter.
