A Gardener's Retreat

Members met out at the garden on June 24 to kibbitz, compare notes, and talk about garden matters. Among our accomplishments, we narrowed down the list of possible garden names and decided to request votes by July 10. We also set garden workdays for July and a July meeting date. Read on for the straight dope:

Voting On A Garden Name

The group narrowed down the list of names to four possible choices that most people were amenable to. Those names are:

• Horse & Goose Community Garden
• Community Garden At Upper Dummerston Road
• Green Meadows Community Garden
• Green Goose Community Garden

Workdays and Meetings

The group also decided on dates for next work days and garden meeting.

July 8, 2009 – 9-11 AM – Workday

July 12, 2009 - 1-3 PM – Workday

July 22, 2009 – 5:30 PM Meet and Greet, 6:00 PM Meeting

According to Dora, the biggest maintenance issue right now is grass which is growing everywhere with great vigor. There will be need of weeding in the perennial plot. And Carole wants to put in a cutting garden in Plot 1 by the water barrels so she’ll need help clearing that bed. (Carole rec’d a plant donation from Walker Farm on behalf of the garden.)

_+_

Attending the meeting were Dora, Nancy, Lise, Francis, Chris, and Heather.

This weekend, we hit the garden ready to weed.  This was a good thing as we had plenty of volunteers to contend with, mostly tiny grass seedlings that love to spring up in colonies between carrot rows, in lettuce beds, and magically around the edges of everything.  We duly weeded, clearing maybe 2/3 of our plot of grass and lambs quarters.  I’m tolerating a few things, as always.  The clammy groundcherry would require me to dig up entire beds to remove it, something I’m not willing to do.  And there is a bladderwort that I’m letting be there, just because.  Red clover can stay if it wants but not the wild mustard which survives (imo) by impersonating radishes….

So what’s looking good this week — seedlings mostly.  I had to reseed the pickling cukes but they’re up now, along with the long green cucumbers, the pattypan squashes and the beans.  The carrots are growing in well too, now that they’re finally established.

Carrot tops

The tomatoes, peppers and basil that we put in last week are basically just sitting there.  I think it was a bit cool for them here in the early going.  But I’m hopeful that all this rain will help.  

Then there are the crops that we’ve already been getting:  The mesclun is still giving us lots of salads and greens but some of the plants, esp arugula, are starting to shoot to seed.  The first crop of radish is about gone by but we have a second crop coming along.  And in the last week, we’ve been able to enjoy small portions of snap peas which despite the puny size of the momma plants are still delicious and tasty.  I have a feeling they’d be taller if we’d fed them more but what the hey.  I wasn’t expecting much so anything we get is bonus.

And that’s it for the garden this week.  Overall, I think our plants are a bit small compared to other people’s and I think the difference is manure.  Most gardeners, I’ve noticed, seem to really pile on the manure.  We didn’t and our plants are definitely less lush.  I guess we’ll have to invest in a few extra buckets of the brown stuff and look into some of the other feeding methods so we can get our plants up to par, as it were.

C's Popcorn

The following are the minutes for the May garden meeting, which took place May 27, 2009.  Note that the meeting date that was scheduled below was never announced to we still need to set a date and time for the June meeting.  Look for an announcement on that soon.

Topics for Meeting 5/27

A lot of discussion and here are the major topics:

1- Committees: developing committees to aid in the running of the community garden
A. Finance committee to handle:
-budget
-purchasing
-fundraising
**as well as discussion for an appointed “treasurer” to handle taking of money for manure, hay etc…
B. Organization committee
- developing processes for making decisions regarding the community garden

2- Composting discussion
A. Are there different ways we can explore?
- hot composting
- cold composting
B. Necessity of having a decided system so we can all participate and all be responsible

3- Some important decisions that need to be addressed this gardening season
A. Lawn mower
B. Garden shed
- it is in the lease that we can have a 6×6 shed on the garden land
- this led to the discussion of a greenhouse/hoophouse as well
- need to acquire materials to build a shed
- donations?

4- The unused/unclaimed 1/2 garden plot
A. use as a community flower cutting garden

5- The use of the existing community herb garden as a means of fundraising
A. allowing herbalists to cut herbs in exchange for a donation

6- Next meeting date and work date
A. Meeting : June 8th (location?)
note: this meeting is postponed, date tbd

B. Work days : Sunday June 14th 3-6 p.m.
Thursday June 18th 9 a.m. -12 p.m.

For us, the highlight of the season is Tomato Planting Day.  Once last frost is over with, we get antsy.  So we took advantage of good weather this weekend to buy all our starts and set them out in the plot there.  It was great fun.

We bought all our plants at Walker Farm and only splurged a little.  We got a six pack each of basil,  mixed hot peppers (jalapeno, paprika, ancho, habanero, and our personal favorites, cherry bomb) and marigolds.  As for tomatoes, it’s hard to remember what we got exactly but I know Purple Calabash was one, as well as Old Brooks, a marbled yellow and pink number, and another pink eating tomato.  For cherry tomatoes, we got Sweet 100 because that’s what they had.

Once out at the plot, we had a lot of work to do watering, prepping, weeding, manuring and all the rest.  It was another marathon (by our standards) of around 3 hours.  When we were done, we had all the summer vegetables in the ground.  

As for everything else, our results remain mixed.  Going around the seed beds, the beans are up! the mesclun is starting to shoot to flower, there are three more kale seedlings than there were before (after reseeding), the second crop of radishes are up and it looks like some of the reseeded carrots are too, the eating cucumbers are up but the pickling cukes are not, the pattypan squashes are just getting started, and the lettuces remain pathetic.

If we’ve had one big crop so far this year, it’s radishes, which we always hope will be the case.  This year, as some readers may remember, I planted half brand new seed (Easter Egg Mix) and half mixed bag old seed.  I got great results from the new seed and very small radishes if any out of the old seed.  But yesterday was the big bonanza — I brought home at least 25 radishes, some quite large and globular.  We ate a bunch in salad last night and they were positively juicy, as well as spicy and sweet.  I’m not sure if there are any health bennies to radishes but I felt healthy eating them.

Now we’re just sitting back and hoping for rain.  If the current forecast is any indication, we’re bound to get lucky one of the next three days…

Come one, come all, to one of two garden workdays scheduled at the community garden for the month of June.  This is a great way to work off your hour a month chore duty while enjoying the camaraderie of your fellow gardeners.  The June workdays are scheduled for the following dates:

• Sunday, June 14, 2009 – 3:00 – 6:00 pm
• Thursday, June 18, 2009 – 9:00 – 12:00 noon

Be there or be square (I’ve got all the clichés today)…But really, last time it was fun.