Freeway Estates Community Orchard

Old tech. Siphing water into the burried ollas at the tomato and
squash bed. The ollas are 2.5 gallon unglazed clay pots that slowly seep water right at the root level.

The parsley is retiring but the White Bullace plums are just now coming along.

Sharing our excess materials. Nicolette, FECO volunteer, and their
co-worker pick up extra soil and Loop compost for the new children's
vegetable garden at the Pacific Science Center.

The Harrow Delight pear tree is ready for a couple of Tylenol. The winter moth larvae destroyed flowers, the pear sawlfy chomped down leaves, and now it battles with pacific trellis rust and cankers. But today it is pushing out new leaves for another go-around. Resilience.

The World's Smallest Prairie
We have a prairie at FECO! It’s three feet by ten feet. (I didn’t want to take on too much.) The area is a bit wet; an apple tree rotted there. My goal was a mini prairie with edible native plants. In 2024, I planted early blue violet (Viola adunca), nodding onion (Allium cernuum ), glacier lily (Erythronium grandiflorum ), chocolate lily (Fritillaria camschatcensis L.), yampah (Perideridia ), and arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata). Most came up the first year but the only survivors this year are nodding onion and arrowleaf balasamroot. More knowledge needed!

Luckily, last week I was able to attend a tour of the new prairie project at Magnuson Park. Dean Drugge, self-described grunt and Jonathan Hallett, designer, described their process, successes and setbacks.
https://freewayestates.org/the-worlds-smallest-prairie/

All in an hour and a half: Plumbing pipe for trellising driven into
the ground, holes dug and 12 Cherry Bomb tomatoes planted, ollas
scraped of slugs then filled with water, Phacelia chopped and
installed as mulch. What a crew!

The ravenous larvae of the sawfly. Left - starting to chomp on the leaves, right - done eating. The larvae are the exact same color as the leaves! The pear will put out some new leaves but this is very hard on the tree.

Plants Without Borders – The Rhizomatous
Did you buy plants at our recent plant sale? If so, thank you very much for your support! In case you are new to the growing habits of certain native plants, I will share what I recently learned about reproductive advantages of certain plants.
https://freewayestates.org/plants-without-borders-the-rhizomatous/

Leftover plants from the FECO plant sale are dispersed to the City of Seattle Earth Day Resource Fair. Other plant donors - veggie starts from Seattle Tilth and Urban Feed & Garden.

Preparing a thermal compost. Leaves, seeds, small wood chips, grass, chopped weeds, coffee grounds, and beer mash. The microbes are so happy!