Hey Folks!  We have the beginning of our barley crop, beds 9 and 28 have been planted with Copeland barley seed, and since it has been so nice out, the seed is up!

We have a lot of spare Copeland seed, so if anyone wants to practice malting barley, I can portion it out and we can get the interested people trying out the malting.

I've found a few resources that step through the malting process (basically starting germination in the seeds, then interrupting it part way through, drying, and potentially roasting the seed).  The malting process is required to get the seeds converted into a consumable sugar so that you can make beer!

If you want to join the fun, please drop us an email to our contact or on our Facebook page and we can get you some seed to play with!

For those willing to try it out, I've linked in a few resources that seem to step out the process so that it can be easily done using fairly standard kitchen equipment (the one specialty item appears to be a dehydrator that can hold a low temperature for drying - or oven, depending how cool it is), the drying temperature needs to be below 50 degrees C/125 F for the drying, then the roasting temperature can be anywhere between 100 and 200 degrees C (200 to 400 F) for varying times to get the colour/roast level desired (we'll have to pick this later).

http://beersmith.com/blog/2009/12/05/malting-barley-grain-at-home/

http://byo.com/malt/item/1108-malting-your-own-techniques/

https://beerandbrewing.com/malt-your-own-barley/

Happy planting everyone :)

Spring seems to be having a hard time showing up this year... Despite the clouds and the cold, a few of us gathered this evening to get the garden ready for the season. We cleared the snow fence and tree covers, took down some solar lights and put up sweet pea towers (formerly bean towers) and picked up some weeds and garbage. We also added compost to each of the remaining beds that had not yet been amended. Please spread the compost and work it into the soil of your bed by digging down and turning it under.  This should be done for the beds that we amended last fall, as well as the ones that were just amended today. Also, in some of the beds you will notice that there is some winter rye growing. This is a green compost crop that can be turned under when you are ready to plant your box. It will add nitrogen to your soil. However, please remember some of you may have planted red and white bulbs in the fall, so you may want to wait a bit until you see what is about to come up!

We also gathered all the rocks from around the bean towers and trees and placed them bottom side up on a tarp beside the shed. These will be repainted by grade 9 art students as well as by grade 1 students this year. 

We finished off the evening with some hot coffee and rice krispie squares.
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Hopefully the weather will shape up and spring will be here soon! Even the ladybugs are not ready to wake up!

Tonight we had the spring blessing in the garden, our spring potluck and preseason garden meeting. It was great to see everyone again after the winter months. We first gathered in the garden to talk about our hopes for the coming season, and remembered our first spring blessing 2 years ago, where in the open empty field we symbolically turned over the soil with compost, as a sign of renewal and new things to come for this land. Tonight we used compost again, this time from our very own compost pile, to amend and renew one of the garden beds.

At the potluck I was amazed at all the interesting and wonderful dishes that people brought, it was delicious! Look as one of the creative desserts!

At our meeting we allocated garden plots, signed Garden Contracts and signed up some more Friends of the Garden. 

Welcome to the third season of the Sunshine Garden!

Last fall we discussed the idea of trying to make a Fulton Place Garden Local Brew.  So we decided to grow our own barley (knowing we have various neighbours with hops and honey bees), well, we've finally gotten some malting barley seed, so the project is on!  Our end goal is to have the beer ready for our year end potluck so we can all share in the goodness!

We had a fair amount of difficulty finding an Edmonton supplier for malting barley, but thanks to a retired farmer passing over the Alberta Seed Guide, we found a local seed grower, Galloway Seeds Ltd. by Fort Saskatchewan that had malting barley seed, CDC Copeland variety.

Galloway Seeds was kind enough to donate the seed we needed, so we now have sufficient seed for our community beds and the donated back yard beds.  Thank you very much Jim!

Next steps are to turn the beds, take out any weeds that have started already, seed out the Barley, then watch the barley grow and keep up on weeding and watering to keep them happy. Please drop us an email if you want to get more involved in this project or have any brewing experience you are willing to pass on!

See you all at the pre-season meeting on the 20th, and enjoy the spring season :)
Reminder for the 20th meeting:
5:30 pm is the Spring Blessing in the Garden - led by Rector Jonathan Crane
6:00 pm is the Spring Potluck - all are welcome, bring a friend
7:00 pm is the Pre-Season Garden Meeting - all gardeners must attend

The Fulton Place Planting Committee was reviewing plantings in common beds this year, we will be planting:

• a shared potato bed (with many varieties)
  
• shelling peas
  
• bush beans of various colours
  
• carrots
  
• beets
  
• cherry tomatoes
  
• corn (coloured), pole beans and crookneck squash (in the three sisters bed)
  
• large pumpkins under the fruit trees
  
• onion sets
  

We are recommending that our gardeners avoid planting squash this season because of the powdery mildew we saw last year. 

The shared area squash will include mildew resistant varieties only, and we will have a treatment and instruction s on 'how to use it' in the shed to help control powdery mildew if it shows up.  We are planning to plant the squash in areas that maintain sufficient air flow reducing the chances of outbreak and hope that a year without closely packed squash leaves will interrupt the powdery mildew cycle.

If you absolutely MUST grow squash, please consider growing one of the mildew resistant varieties listed below, limit the number of plants, use a trellis to keep it off the ground, and keep an eye out for white powder on your leaves.  If one of the garden committee members sees powdery mildew, we will be proactively removing the leaves to keep the issue under control.

Crook neck squash - Delta Squash
Zucchini - Anton Summer Squash
Acorn Squash - Celebration Winter Squash, Tay Belle Winter Squash
Pumpkin - Magic Lantern Pumpkin, Cougar Pumpkin
Anything where the package/seed details EXPLICITLY state Powdery Mildew resistant

Thanks for your help in controlling the Powdery Mildew outbreak!

The Sunshine Garden was awarded 1st place in the community garden category in the garden competition hosted by the Edmonton Horticultural Society.  Way to go gardeners!  Thank you for all your efforts to make the Sunshine Garden a beautiful place.

Fall is coming, and 2016 has been quite the year!  We had so much rain this year that the rain system didn't seem like it ever got fully drained - such a change from last year :)

All of the boxes have been lush all year long, but it looks like harvest is underway as boxes start being more empty with the harvest of carrots and potatoes, though the lettuce and tomatoes are going strong.

We have a few sessions coming up this fall:
Mead Making Workshop - mid September - registration mandatory, $20 fee. 
Jam Session - Sunday Sept 11 - registration mandatory, but free event as long as you bring 12 1 cup canning jars (with lids/seals).

Happy Harvest Everyone!

Details of the events are on our FB page

We held the Pruning and Grafting Seminar last week and had a great turnout!  Joachim took us through what to look for when pruning, how to shape early trees, and how and when to clean up old/overgrown trees!  We also went through how to do bud grafting - covering both how to gather buds from the tree you wish to have, and how to complete the grafts on the tree you have!

Photos are below!

We are also trying out having kids events in the garden to encourage curiosity and interest in nature for our kids!

May 27:  Kids can come and help us plant warm weather crops like onions, corn, beans, sunflowers and more
June 3: Kids can come and help us transplant flowers, tomatoes, and peppers into the shared beds
Sept 16: Kids can come and help us harvest crops and seeds
Sept 23: Kids can come and help us harvest crops and seeds

Keep an eye on the calendar to keep up with planned events!

We added the requirement to attend two work sessions to the gardener's contract this year.  Thanks to everyone who signed up for their work sessions at the meeting last week! 

As always, it is great if you can help at additional sessions as many hands make light work.

The scheduled work sessions are:
April 23: 9 - 12 pm - Complete & thank you!
May 15: 1 - 4 pm
May 28: 12 - 3 pm
June 18: 9 - 12 pm
June 26: 1 - 4 pm
July 23: 9 - 12 pm
Oct 22: 9 - 12 pm


Keep an eye on the calendar to keep up with planned events!