07/02/2020
June at CREEC is a month of critical rearranging and watering of all the potted plants. With the weather getting warmer, watering is the most important task to do well. Plant lives are at stake, so we must take special care to water every plant. Making sure each plant has the right amount of light to grow well is also essential. After seedlings are potted up, they are placed in a sheltered spot to find their roots. After a week or so they are ready to start growing, but they need more light. That’s when students work to find the perfect place for each plant to grow! Learning about each plant and its ideal place in our butterfly-friendly habitat is all part of this process.
We have been potting up many of the seedlings and acorn sprouts (both native and non-native) including several oak varieties, roses, salvias, grasses, herbs, and vegetables. There are still LOTS of seeds sprouting.
As always, we just keep w**ding. We try to w**d each pot at least once every few months. Battling w**ds is an ongoing effort, and I plan to spend Mondays 9am-1pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9am-12pm, and Saturdays 10am-2pm making a major dent in the number of w**ds we have at CREEC. To anyone who would like to join me (socially distancing, of course) for this stress-relieving activity, I invite you to come on down to the greenhouse. There is such a good feeling that comes from helping a plant so it has a chance to grow! Just pull all those interlopers out, add a little soil, check that label, prune it nicely, and give it a sip of compost tea!
With all this w**ding comes lots of composting. CREEC uses four methods to compost green waste. We place invasive plants like blackberry and Bermuda grass into the green bin so they can be commercially composted by the waste disposal company. We have a worm composter that produces compost tea that we use on our transplants, and we harvest finished compost from it a couple times a month. We also have three composters that we place w**ds into and water. Every month we open up the bottom of the composters and pull out compost. At the back of the property, we have a giant compost pile for the overflow w**ds.
Mrs. Sonja New comes each Saturday, and she and some or all of our youth group joins her in grooming the gardens and making everything neat and tidy. The students and I really enjoy all of her help and ❤️. Thank you to all the people who keep CREEC going; our volunteer board of directors, our grant sponsors, the growing group of plant buyers, the friends of CREEC, and the growing group of volunteers who support this wonderful place. We really appreciate your support.
Our youth group is working on Mondays from 9am-1pm and Saturdays from 10am-2pm. We will be closed on the 4th of July. Kay Smith will be at CREEC on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am-12pm. Feel free to come by and see this wonderful place in Crockett under the bridge.
