June 14, our first workday, we learned how to carefully pull the tomato and pepper starts out of their pots, and plant them deep in the ground.

We pull the leaves off the stem and plant them deep so the where the stem is buried it will grow new roots.  Those stem cells can turn into anything, so burying them makes more roots.  More roots make more fruits!

 Tomatoes, peppers and basil now ready to grow in our first bed.  Things that taste good together often grow together well too.

And Jania scores a major win for the garden - pulling out a huge Burdock plant and most of it's tenacious tap root (which we learned is edible - though we'll try that another time).

Groundbreaking!

Our groundbreaking event resulted in the amazing construction of a recycled palate bench,

and making our first Huglekultur bed.  Hugulkultur is a permaculture technique where the use of logs (which we pulled from the back of the lot) as a base layer for the bed acts as a sponge, retaining moisture as it turns into dirt.  These logs are "pre-dirt" and will add organic matter and beneficial micro-organisms, fungi and bacteria,  to the soil as they decompose.  Check out this link for more info on hugulkulture: http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Man those kids really worked.  Moving new soil into place to make our lovely planting ground.