My Name is Kristen, and I'm an AmeriCorps Volunteer...

Day 8

My morning started with an AA meeting. I got introduced to the class of veterans who is supposed to be the target audience for the garden. It was surreal to attend an addict's meeting as an observer. It went almost exactly as it happens on television shows. An introduction: "Hi, my name is _(fill in your name)_ and I'm a _(fill in your addiction)_" followed by something like a mix between a murmur and shout as each person's "Hi _(fill in your name)_" blends together. I had no idea what I should say when it came to me. I looked at my supervisor and then back at the rows of veterans looking back at me and said, 

           "Hi, I'm Kristen and I'm an AmeriCorps Volunteer" accompanied by an awkward half wave and smile. 

After the introduction I walked out to the garden and went back to work on the carrots. The weeds that used to cover the entire area where the carrots were are now gone! You can clearly see the rows of baby carrot tops stretch down the width of the garden. I also spent a little bit of time with the tomatoes. As a reward for all my weeding work, I allowed myself to prune three tomato bushes. I had stopped pruning them last week when I found out the ones I had been pruning were determinate tomatoes. 

Now, before I don't know probably Monday, I had no idea you should prune tomatoes. Or that there were two different kinds of tomato plants: Determinate and Indeterminate. Determinate tomato plants have a set number of fruit they will produce. They stop growing once the fruit has been produced and generally bear all of their fruit at once. You don't really want to prune these or I guess you will be taking off potential fruit bearing shoots without really helping the plant at all. 

Indeterminate tomatoes on the other hand, act like vines and will continue producing until the end of the season. These are usually what cherry and salad tomatoes are. I think I am more excited for these guys to start going wild than the others. I like the idea of being so overwhelmed with tomatoes that we still have enough left over to give to the veterans after donating some to the food bank. 

I had one veteran out today. It was his first day and he was very chatty. We weeded between the carrots and it was really nice to have someone new in the garden with me. I told him about the compost bin and he said he would like to help (I'm not quite sure how much of it is caring about the garden and compost though...) and I told him I would love to have his help and that he should bring friends! We will see if I get any more visitors tomorrow. 

In other news, I dropped off four wooden pallets at the garden this afternoon so that we can start work on putting the bin together in a few days. I just need to get some zip ties and we will be on our way. Maybe this project will spark some interest with the veterans and I can give them a little spiel about how compost works and what to put in to it to get the most out of it as quickly as possible. I want to make a little plastic sign for the bin so that people will know what can go in there and what can't. Maybe a group of veterans could be in charge of compost. They could turn it a few times a week and put new things in it.