NOVEMBER 2012
We’ve wrapped up the garden season and are headed into the holidays. Come join us on Saturday, December 8 at 5pm as we decorate and light our community Christmas tree! This has become a neighborhood tradition over the past few years as we gather to celebrate the Christmas season with friends and neighbors. We’ll have refreshments, music and lots of fun. Don’t miss it!

AUGUST
On August 18, about forty volunteers from the surrounding community, Georgia Tech, and AmeriCorps gathered for our “Love Your Block” day. The neighborhood received a grant from the Mayor’s Office and Home Depot Foundation to plant shrubs, install sod, and make garden repairs to enhance the area. Thanks to the committed group who saw these projects through!

APRIL
Our recent work day was successful - about a dozen people came out to plant the beds, make improvements to the tool shed and spread wood chips. Several more folks will plant their plots in the coming days. We look forward to seeing each other’s plants grow and yield a great harvest.

The garden also hosted powerful Holy Week services of New Life Covenant Church. Thanks to so many who made the services and the garden so beautiful!

MARCH
We are excited to plant our beds at the upcoming garden work day at the end of the month. All but one of the eleven raised beds have been adopted by neighbors for the spring/summer season. This has been a goal of ours from the beginning! Come by and take a look at the garden and spruced-up area after our work day!

SEPTEMBER 2011
The cooler weather has come on us and with it, the promise of a different set of crops - beets, radishes, collards, lettuce and cabbage among others. Our September 10 workday was a success with around 30 volunteers from the community and Georgia Tech’s city planning program. We hauled away garbage, planted the fall garden, spread a mountain of wood chips, moved the compost bin, repaired and stained the playground, stained the new storage shed, installed landscape timbers and painted the posts around the edge of the field. Thanks again to everyone who joined us! Stay tuned for more workdays through the fall.

AUGUST
Summer is winding down, but we’ve seen a great harvest and a lot of activity in the garden. Our plans for the fall include painting our brand new tool shed (thanks to Alex Hill and his group!), planting some cool weather crops, spreading wood chips and more. The garden has been a constant gathering spot for kids and neighbors throughout the summer.

JUNE
The garden has been planted - tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, green beans, sweet potatoes and much more! Children from the SAY Yes summer program will be involved in maintenance and harvesting of the crops as Krista Ehst, our summer intern, teaches them about plants and how they grow to provide food for us.

APRIL
We are just about ready to get started with the new garden season! Volunteers met in February and decided what to plant this year. We will have an intern come on this summer to help with garden maintenance and programs for the kids.

Thanks again to Trees Atlanta and their committed volunteers for returning to spread wood chips around the trees they planted in the community last March. They look great!

The garden will again host Holy Week services of New Life Covenant Church. All are welcome to join services at 7pm on April 20-22.

MARCH
About twenty folks gathered in late February to plan for the coming garden season and decided that our two main priorities this year would be: 1) continuing to build up the area as a community gathering spot and 2) providing some type of educational component for neighbors and kids.

SEPTEMBER 2010
I have to be honest and say the cooler weather is welcome - this summer was a beast! Some of our crops survived, but a sustainable watering system is still in progress. We’re looking forward to installing brand new playground equipment on October 23.

JULY
The heat is taking its toll on the garden and has slowed volunteers’ energy and desire to water and weed! The crops are growing nicely though - tomatoes, green beans, and peppers are coming up in abundance. Does anyone have a solution for small, furry yellow worms that crawl around on cucumber and squash leaves and eat them? We’re launching a campaign against them!

MAY
Our seeds have sprouted and it looks like we are in for a good garden season. Peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, green beans, cucumber, zucchini, squash and soybeans were planted. We are excited to see what kind of harvest comes. This month has been busy with the kids garden club, cleaning up the garden area and preparing our 20‘x20’ plot for our squash/beans/corn garden. Soaker hoses will help us water the garden more efficiently this year. Now if we can get them hooked up to our newly installed rainwater tank!

APRIL
The garden is shaping up, as we’ve spent the past several weekends cleaning up, spreading mulch, tilling our small garden plot and planting seeds. We held our spring planting and the first kids garden club on April 10 - both were a great success.

MARCH
Our neighborhood tree planting on March 6 was a great success, thanks to Trees Atlanta and the many volunteers from the community, Georgia Tech, Morehouse College and other groups. Come by to visit and see our beautiful Princeton American elms, raintrees, persimmon trees, birches and oaks. Trees Atlanta also made a gift of a large water tank to assist with watering the trees and our garden. We hope to host another tree planting day in the fall.

JANUARY
It's hard to imagine that in the midst of the cold January we've had that the warmth of March and April are just around the corner! We are planning for the spring planting, including some great new plans for our expansion area, added last year.

A S.A.Y. Yes! kids garden will accompany our usual garden spot, thanks to a materials donation and volunteers from AirTran Airways and Hands On Atlanta. Neighborhood kids will join us several Saturdays during the season to hear from experts on topics ranging from organic gardening and eating healthy to worms and bugs! Plans for the garden club are forthcoming - look for flyers toward the end of January.

DECEMBER 2009
While the weather is cold outside, preparations are underway for our spring garden! Children in the S.A.Y Yes! program will start tomatoes and peppers from seed in only a few weeks. And before we know it, it will be time to till the soil again, plant, and watch!

NOVEMBER
Harvest from the fall garden was fairly impressive: lots of greenleaf lettuce, mixed greens, mesclun, about fifty decent radishes, continued peppers and tomatoes, basil, rosemary, oregano and parsley. If anyone has tips on protecting broccoli or greens, we'd be interested to know - ours got chewed up and were most disappointing.

The neighborhood fire pit has grown popular with the onset of colder weather - thanks again to all the volunteers who helped install it. Work days are being planned to finish up some of the season's last projects, I can't believe it's already fall!

OCTOBER
A great crowd of volunteers through Hands On Atlanta joined us on October 3 and five new raised beds were constructed along with several picnic and seating benches. In later weeks, fresh wood chips were spread over parts of the formerly abandoned and littered lot to which we recently ganied access. A fire pit, small picnic/barbecuing area and composting spot have also been added.

SEPTEMBER
We planted our fall garden of spinach, 4 kinds of lettuce, mustard and collard greens, cabbage, winter kale and broccoli.  Chives, sage and cilantro were also added to the herb box. Farmer Dontario also harvested (and divided up) a crop of about 30 very respectable-looking carrots!

JULY
The summer brought some pretty extreme heat, but our garden has provided tomatoes, bell peppers, okra, basil, green beans, peas, and cucumbers in abundance. The small greenspace next to the garden has seen many football games and cookouts.

APRIL
On April 11, thirty neighbors and volunteers gathered to plant the garden's raised beds and dig out a curb on one side of the lot. A couple weeks later, sod was installed and shrubs planted in the area directly behind the garden. Thanks to all the folks who showed up to help! We plan on having more work days in the future to flesh out the plan for the area. So far, the garden is planted with tomatoes, peppers, green beans, okra, peas, carrots, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli, yellow squash, oregano, parsley and basil. All the crops are filling in nicely.