Fall Work Day 1

This was quite the work day! The event occurred during homecoming weekend, and we had a couple parents and students visit the garden to salvage the last of the sunflowers before they were cut down.

Thank you to Jay, Rebekah, Praisye, Eryn and my dad for all of your hard work. I could not have done this without your help (quite literally...do you see how many plants are in that loader?). Special shout out to our friend Mark over at physical plant! Thank you for bringing us the loader and lending us a loper cutter.

Here's a brief overview of what we did (scroll through to see each step in our process):

Work Day 1: Clearing Out the Garden

We cut down all the spent plants with loper cutters so that the garden was cleared. Why cut, and not completely uproot? Cutting the plant stems instead of completely uprooting them means that there will be roots in the soil that will break down over time and enrich the soil (thanks, fungi and worms!).
There is an element of sustainability in that we retain as much of the original plant as possible as a resource to further enhance the ecosystem of the garden.
Although this was less work than completely uprooting the plants, it still meant we had to use a great deal of force when working with very thick stems. Some plants with very thick stems are eggplants, summer squash, and sunflowers (which I'm tempted to classify as trees after today). Praisye was the champ that felled the eggplants and Jay was the one who got the sunflower plants.

For the tomatoes, we had to first take out the plastic yellow stakes that had secured their trellises to the ground. These stakes were a necessary precaution against heavy winds that would repeatedly knock down the tomato plants along with the trellises the year below. The stakes were collected and stored in the garden shed for reuse next year.
The trellises themselves were stacked next to the shed so we could use them again next year as well.
There were a lot of green tomatoes leftover; we collected them in a pile, handed them out to visitors, and took the rest of them home.
Jay and my dad really helped me out with the tomatoes.

The cucumbers and green beans had to be untangled from their trellises. I'm telling you, climbing plants are no joke. They have the ability to grow networks of vines and leaves that could probably take over campus.
Rebekah did a lot of the detangling. She also had the good sense to bring out the rake at the end and gather all the fallen vines together.

The strawberries were a bit difficult as well, as they are modified stem plants and even had stems reaching past the fence. The summer squash also had very long extensions; if you visited the garden earlier this year, you'll know that they pretty much took over the back corner of the garden.