A Gardener's Retreat

At the Community Garden, gardeners sign up for teams to do various jobs around the garden.  In addition to the Leadership Team, there are teams in charge of fencing, mowing, special projects, and the herb garden.  All teams are underway.

The fence team has done an amazing job, digging a trench and laying in an underlayer of chicken wire to (hopefully) deter groundhogs.  A mesh deer fence will follow.

A mowing team has been assembled and the garden has both a scythe and a push mower.  Both tools work fine if you want to mow around your plot.  Chris of the Special Projects team has offered to fix a power mower for garden use as well.

And finally, the herb garden refurbishment has begun, with a center established and a perimeter dug.  Now we’re clearing out the grass and  cleaning up the perennial herbs that are already in the garden.  We’re hopeful to have the plot cleared in the next two weeks, and then we’ll be ready to lay paths and put in some new plants.  At that time, we’ll put out a call to any community gardeners with herb plants to contribute.

When you add in all the gardening folks have done in their own plots, the garden is coming along well this year.  If you have time after your chores, take a stroll around the garden and see what interesting things other gardeners are doing.

Not too many people showed up for the July workdays which was unsurprising given the weather.  Dora reported that no one was around for Thursday morning while on Sunday afternoon, there were four of us.  Not a problem.  We had fun.

Dora and Chris whacked grass with scythes, clearing walkways all around the right side of the garden and some of the front.  I did not do community sports but weeded our own plot of endless tiny grasslets.

Chris took pictures and we admired everyone’s gardens.

Birds sang, Tom showed up and we chatted for a bit, then we harvested a few things and went home.  Very quiet, peaceful and pleasant.

See you next time!

The garden looking scenic

Beans and a blue sky

So many things are on the verge.  There are blooming beans and blooming zucchini and tiny green tomatoes on the vine.  Our carrots are growing underground while nearby the cabbages look like giant purple roses as they start to take shape.  The cucumbers are proving to be a bit slow this year but I think in two weeks we’ll be pickling cukes.  And our red lettuces (from the second crop of seeds that we thinned and transplanted) are looking fine and almost ready to start eating.  I hope the buttercrunch (a few weeks behind) do as well.

As our plants grow and make fruit, the grasses likewise grow. They grew between and among each carrot plant, throughout the lettuce beds, the cucumber and squash patch, and all around the herbs.  They grew abundantly despite the fact that I had just fully weeded those beds a few weeks before.  Grass is inexorable — it has great life spirit.  Says Ray Bradbury in Dandelion Wine:

“It was this then, the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won, they merely existed in calm peril, fully accoutered with lawn mower, bug spray and hedge shears, swimming steadily as long as civilization said to swim, but each house ready to sink in green tides, buried forever, when the last man ceased and his trowels and mowers shattered to cereal flakes of rust.”

That said, we play our role in the annual battle between man and grass.  We weed.  I have learned that the best way to pull a grass plant from the ground (a little one, that is) is to grasp the stem firmly but gently and gently pull it out, roots and all.  This method feels slow but as soon as you speed up, you succeed only in ripping off their tops leaving roots intact and ready to send up more shoots.  So slow and steady wins the race with grass weeding.  And the result — weed-free beds with plenty of room for our vegetables to grow.

Knee-high by July