This kale is NOT for sale

After a morning of volunteering at Purple Frog (http://purplefroggardens.org/) which is a family market farm about a half hour North of Somers in Whitefish, we returned to the greenhouse with our arms full of kale, celery, and tomatillo starts. The co-partners of Purple Frog are Pam Gerwe and Mike Jopek, the two of which could not be more outstanding. Thanks to the overwhelming compassion of Pam and Mike, Jordan managed to procure a tray of approximately 30 kale starts.

Additionally, not only did we leave Whitefish invigorated by the plant starts we toted to the car like trophies and the flood of endorphins we were experiencing after a solid couple hours worth of weeding, we picked up a number of tips that will improve our work in Somers. While this is not so much a tip as it is a painful and yet necessary gardening lesson, one of the more memorable/edifying/pathetic conversations occurred as follows-

Katie(attempting to remove the weeds from a row of mustard): Hey so is this mustard?

Mike(looking at the bucket at her feet that appears to consist almost entirely of little pulled mustard plants): Yeah, you probably shouldn't pull any more of those.

Katie: Oh.

Once we got back to our greenhouse home base, we planted our new kale starts. Katie began to dig holes for the Red Russian while Jordan carefully tucked each Dinosaur into the soil. FYI We're talking about types of kale. The long term goal for the kale is to introduce this into the middle schoolers' lunches in the form of yummy kale chips.

Jordan also took on the job of finally planting the borderline rootbound sunflowers seeded by Robin's students in their last weeks of school. Arranged on the South facing side of the greenhouse, the sunflowers will be able to lean against the building's walls, adding to the garden space aesthetically and saving us from having to put stakes up for them later on.

Meanwhile, Katie began collecting cardboard to lay out over the expanse of grass in the main garden. The plan is to basically smother the grass with cardboard and put woodchips down in their stead. This will save us, Robin, and next year's Summer Vistas a ton of time that could be spent on something other than weeding an area that is too awkward to mow and too large to efficiently weed whack.

The cardboard collection continued into Thursday and prompted a visit to the Kalispell Super 1 and Smith's. Driving back to Somers with a New York liscense plate and a car jampacked with cardboard, Katie looked like she had moved to the Big Sky state to build herself a nice box. Worth it.

The summer continues with more and more of our starts in the ground, but better yet, more and more of those starts taking to their new homes outside, growing new leaves and little buds that will soon enough be tasty, healthy veggies.