Gardening with Grace

You may have noticed the new trellises going up in the field behind the OLG school playground, what you might not have seen is the expansion of the garden and all the potential that the OLG Garden crew are planning to coax out of that space! 

What's the goal of the OLG garden? Their hope is that our parish will be able to improve on last year's donation of 2800 lbs of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Those donations go to benefit those experiencing food insecurity in Noblesville. 

Donations from the OLG garden were accepted by St Vincent DePaul food pantry, St Louis de Monfort food pantry, White River Christian Church's food pantry, and the Hamilton County Food Bank which serves 14 different public food pantries.   

This spring, the garden team has worked to expand the community garden. Not only have they planted Brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, lettuce, onions, and potatoes but they have also put in some blackberry and raspberry bushes as an investment in the future of the garden.  That's not to mention summer vegetables still to go in next weekend!  On Saturday, May 20, you can join the OLG garden team in collaboration with the Justice and Charity Ministry and help to build new trellises, and tomato cages as well as get your hands dirty planting the tomato, pepper, squash, and cucumber starts that Hood Gardens donated.  Parishioners have already been helping out by planting, weeding, and even mowing the space around the garden to provide good organic mulch for the spaces around the crops.  

The garden team is working to make the OLG garden a contribution to the community and also to improve the soil quality in that space for future generations of parish farmers.  The new garden space is a low/no-till garden, meaning that they are not mixing in soil modifiers but instead attempting to leave the soil as it is and improve it year by year with the addition of organic compost.  You can check out the compost bins behind the garden. If you are interested in learning how to contribute in the garden or add your own compostable materials from home, please email [email protected] so you can get a crash course in compostables and help improve the soil for generations to come! If you're not quite ready for all of that, remember the garden next fall when you are ready to chuck your Halloween jack-o-lanterns! Pumpkins make excellent additions to compost and would be greatly appreciated for next season's soil improvement!