By Carey Thornton, Garden Educator

Curious about how things are going at Seattle Tilth’s learning garden at Bradner Park? Well, here’s an update!

The volunteer Veggie Crew has been hard at work with planting, watering, weeding, harvesting and trellising the veggie gardens. With all the sun we’ve seen in the past few weeks, the plants have gone bonkers and seem to be doubling in size every day. We’re all amazed at how different the garden looks each time we come together to work.

Brassica flowers are delicious in stir-fries and salads.

Lupines provide a spike of color and attract hummingbirds.

We’re also learning new things together every week with the Bradner Skill Share program. A couple weeks ago, Veggie Crew volunteer Matt Maria gave us a tour of the fruit trees at Bradner Park. He shared with us how he takes care of them and we got to help with pruning away water sprouts that were growing from the base of the columnar apple trees.

Matt Maria discusses the finer points of fruiting trees.

Pruning away water sprouts allows a fruit tree to direct its energy towards fruit production.

Later in the work party, we snacked on the first strawberries of the season and harvested some lettuce and radishes for the food bank.

There is a lot of produce coming out of the garden now and so far we’ve donated 30 pounds of lettuce and 10 pounds of radishes to the Rainier Valley Food Bank.

Veggie Crew work parties continue every Tuesday evening from 5-8 p.m. Come join in our work in the garden, eat freshly harvested salad and learn something new at Bradner Skill Share. Here’s to a great summer at Bradner!