BUMCCG

 Bearden UMC Community Garden - Gleaning Basket 8/4/26.  Yesterday at the Knox County Master Gardener's meeting, I heard a presentation by Pastor Chris Battle about starting the Battlefield Farms (https://battlefieldfarm.org/), which was to help solve the food desert problem in East Knoxville. He also talked about the start of the Knox County Community Gardens and Grower's Alliance (https://knoxgardenalliance.org/), which our community garden is a member of. When he started the farm, they added gleaning baskets to the fences surround the farm to distribute food, which was based on Leviticus 19:9-10. I loved this idea and today added a basket to our fence with a sign about the gleaning basket and placed our harvest in the basket and fence.  The sign says:  GLEANING BASKET at the edge of our field for YOU from the BUMC Community Garden. YOU MATTER! Leviticus 19:9-10 NIV “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather ...

 Bearden UMC Community Garden - Harvest week of 8/1/26.  This week, we have been harvesting about 10 lbs of produce every other day. We have plenty of cucumbers, green beans, okra, tomatoes, peppers, and tromboncino squash. This week, God has only water a quarter of an inches this week until today. We build a cement block wall by the first bed to divert the flooding to the path.  This week, Lee provided us with the lovely pile of mulched leaves that we will use between layers of food scraps in the compost bins.  The tromboncino squash plant is growing like crazy and producing a good amount squashes. These squashes are in the zucchini family and taste like zucchini when they are young. When they get really big and old, they are like butternut squashes.  Harvest of Cucucmbers, Tromboncino, and Okra.  Harvest of tomatoes, pepper, and green beans.  This week we gave away one of our harvest to a family listed in the careportal. We gave a harvest t...

 Bearden UMC Community Garden - Harvest 7/23/26.  On Thursday, my garden friend Carol and I harvested over 40 lbs of green beans, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, and tromboncino squash. The trombocino, which is in the zuchinni family, was very large (over 6 lbs) and our first squash. Because I had been with the Costa Mission Team, we had missed harvesting it earlier. The four squash plants had gone crazy growing up and out into the path and the fence by the shed. We have several more little trombocino squashes started and ready to harvest soon.   We had lots of large cucumbers, okra, and green beans.  Carol found alot of tomatoes that the excess rain had split.  We found a bee sleeping on a cucumber flower.  The garden plants are growing great with all the rain.  Our church operations and administrative assistant took a picture of our rain gauge last friday and we had 4 inches.  When I checked the rain gauge today we had over 8 inches. God ha...

 Bearden UMC Community Garden - Rain 7/13/26.  God has been watering the garden. This morning, He gave over 2.5 inches of rain.  Yesterday we planted collar greens seeds where we harvested cauliflower and cabbage. With all this rain, God well make then grow.   On Sunday 7/12, He gave us half an inch of rain.  On Saturday 7/11, He gave us an inch of rain. The water from God has good nitrogen to help plants grow. However too much rain will split the tomatoes In addition to watering, I am praying for God to also weed the garden.  Blessings, Leigh

 Bearden UMC Community Garden - Harvest for Giveaway on 7/9 and 7/11/26.  We harvested on Thursday and Saturday for our Saturday Giveaway. We gave away over 50 lbs of potatoes, cucumbers, okra, green beans, tomatoes, yellow squash, garlic, onions, basil, arugula, kale, collards, cauliflower and cabbage greens.  Blessings, Leigh