Seeds Of Change Grant

Crescent Academy, the day treatment program that my mother works for at Nazareth Children's home, is applying for a gardening grant through Seeds of Change. Check out the Seeds of Change website here. 

My Mother, Judy, pictured in the garden.

The goal is to use the grant money to revamp the raised bed garden already in place at Nazareth, potentially even to add a greenhouse or a hoop house, and would focus on teaching the students how to grow their own food! 

How To Vote 

• Individuals can vote once every calendar day. So essentially, you could vote for Crescent Academy every day, from now till April 18th! 
• The top 50 organizations with the most votes will move onto the final judging phase, where 20 organizations will be chosen to receive the grants. 
• The grant recipients will be announced around May 3, 2016. 
• For more specifics on the grant itself, visit the grant website here.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would vote at the link below!

Link: https://www.seedsofchangegrant.com/GalleryDetail.aspx?id=2238

I am really excited about this opportunity because I believe the $10,000 or even $20,000 grant could impact the lives of the students and the community of Rockwell, NC at large.

Let me know if you have any questions, as I hope to volunteering with Crescent Academy's school garden this summer. 

More pictures of the garden:

Planting Spinach

Hoss Tools

First off, I would like to introduce you all to the company that produced the wheel hoe I used before planting the spinach [see video below]. More specifically, the hoe had the oscillating hoe attachment: Check out the company website here. 

Using the oscillating hoe, I went over the row where the spinach would be planted and uprooting the existing weeds. These were the weeds that grew while the previous crop was there. I must say that these tools use a different set of muscles, that irregular farmers like myself may not be used to exercising... aka I was hurtin'!  The cool news is that Hoss tools states that you can adjust such tools to your personal height, which may be helpful for short folks like myself.

Seeds in the ground:

1. Within the desired area make 3 rows that are equally spaced apart the length of the row. This can be done with something as simple as a the end of a shovel stick.
2. Place a seed in the carved out row, each seed about 3 inches apart. 
3. Carefully cover the carved out row with dirt using a garden rake.

And there you have it, the directions that I received to plant a ton of spinach and now I have relayed them to all of you. I'll keep you posted as to whether my planting skills follow through! Here is the completed product at the end of the day. 

Who knew garden planting could be so simply stated....now we wait!