Preparing the garden and planting is well under way … around 150 tomato plants plus aubergines, onions etc went in on Saturday. Please come and lend an hour to the garden on Wednesday between 4-6pm and next Saturday from 9-11am

The Garden at Fritz has started it’s fourth season of growing food for food banks and meals on wheels … the ground has been opened up and the first rows have begun to take root.

Come and help please

The new season is starting and we invite you to come along and help us get the crops off to a good start once again … please come for as long or as little as you can manage.

The seedlings have germinated and will be ready for planting but first we have to get the ground ready, lay out the irrigation hoses and install the row covers. Work sessions have been arranged as follows (note If anyone wants to come at 8 or later than 11 just send us an email and someone will be there to supervise if possible):

Saturday 27 May from 9-11pm

Wed 31 May from 4-6pm

Saturday 3 June from 9-11 

and Saturday 10 June from  9-11am

*At the June 10 session we will be starting the childrens’ annual pumpkin planting contest. Bring your young gardeners along – special giant pumpkin seeds will be handed out, you choose your planting spot and keep an eye on your plants growth through the summer. There will be prizes in the fall for the largest/heaviest pumpkin grown.

We look forward to seeing you – please bring gardening tools if you can.  Remember that all our produce is donated to Meals on Wheels and local food banks.

At the end of 2016 The Garden at Fritz held a pot-luck evening to thank our volunteers for their work during the year.

We also extend kind acknowledgements to Mike Bleho and J.P from the McGill University Horticultural Center for once again plowing the field for us during the fall…. Mike and McGill university have been a tremendous help and strong promoters of the Fritz Farm Youth Gardening Program since its inception in the spring of 2013.

We will be starting soon on our plans for the 2017 season. Please look out for details of how you can once again help to help those who benefit from our fresh vegetables.

The garden was plowed yesterday thanks to the help of Mike Bleho from the McGill Horticultural Center.

We hope to next place leaves over the surface then roto till them into the soil next week, thereby getting the land into good condition for the 2017 season.

There is a brief video of the ploughing that you can download from goo.gl/ryxkpA

This morning (Saturday 22 October) The garden-at-Fritz ended a fabulously successful and productive year growing vegetables for local food banks by celebrating – in pouring rain – the weigh-in for our Annual Youth Pumpkin Contest.

Each season young people from the town are invited to “adopt” a pumpkin seed which they plant and tend during the summer months with the object of growing the largest pumpkin ready for Halloween.

• First prize was taken by Ana Gagnon at 110lbs
• Second prize went to Sophie Hamdan at 100 lbs
• Third prize was awarded to Claudia Tierry with a pumpkin of 80 lbs

Our congratulations to the winners and our thanks to the other 15 contestants for taking part.

(Click on any of the thumbnails below to see a full-size image in a slide show)

Sophie Hamdan and her prize-winning 100lb pumpkin

Not a pumpkin grower 🙂

Winning pumpkins ready for distribution to the homes of their growers

A message to the volunteers at the Garden from the town’s Mayor:

Thank you all for your generosity of time and labour to help provide fresh, naturally grown healthy vegetables for the benefit of many people in need.

We are very proud of the good work you do for the extended island community.

Maria Tutino

Harvested yesterday by Elias, his cousin and Gisela – 125 kg of tomatoes for the foodbanks plus peppers and beans

Today’s harvest was performed for the Garden-at-Fritz by Jorgia, Justin and Gabrielle from the McGill’s Farm to School program ….who enjoyed themselves this morning helping out with the gathering of crops.

Up to this morning (to which you can add the contents of these three boxes, at the moment un-weighed) the garden has provided the following vegetables to the food banks/meals-on-wheels we support:

Beans – 116.3 kg
Courgettes/Cucumbers – 37.8 kg (+ 4/5 unweighed boxes)
Tomatoes – 51.7 kg (+ 3 unweighed boxes from this morning)
Beets – 60 roots
Kale – 2 unweighed boxes
Celery – 21 stalks
Mixed salad – 14 4-litre bags
Celeriac – 6 bulbs

… and there’s plenty more to come, especially as the tomatoes ripen. We have hardly started.