OTENA Tour to Include the SACG

This Sunday, July 15, 2018, the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden will be one of 14 stops on the Old Towne East Neighborhood Association’s Historic Home and Garden Tour.  We are one of two community gardens on the tour and there is also a church.  This is a very popular annual event in Columbus and will this year focus on the Franklin Park neighborhood, which has had many changes in the past couple of years.   The tour begins at 1 p.m. at the Franklin Park Conservatory’s Education Pavillion (off Franklin Park South) on its community garden campus and ends at 6 p.m.   Tickets cost only $20 until Sunday, when they will be $25.  The tour is expected to take approximately 3 hours.  Half of the stops are on Franklin Park South (on the south side of Franklin Park Conservatory).  While most people will walk (despite the predicted heat), there will be a shuttle and food trucks along the way.  The SACG -- which is at the tour mid-point -- will have pink lemonade and mint tea.

Most of the SACG gardeners were very busy last night polishing the SACG to get ready for the tour, but we will be far from perfection.  I think that our flowers peaked last week, although you can see from the photos that I took last night that they still look pretty good.  I expect that all the blooms will fall off by Sunday.  One of our giant sunflowers was knocked over last week.  Sigh.  We have not had the time nor volunteers to get the paving stones installed as I planned either.  Double sigh.     One of our neighbors pretty much cleaned out our neighbor bed of the collard greens and beautiful and giant cabbages.   That’s what it is there for, but it would have been more considerate to have taken the collard leaves, instead of breaking off the stem, so that the plant would continue to grow and produce more collard leaves for the next person.  Triple sigh.  I will plant some kale seedlings in the bed tonight, but they will look pretty pathetic for a while. 

You can get a sneak peak of some of the homes on the OTENA’s Facebook page.  There should be a link to purchase tickets there, or here.    While I will stop by periodically at the SACG during the tour, my shift does not begin until 4. 

In preparation for the tour, one of our neighbors on Fairwood installed a new native plant flower bed right at the corner of East Main and Stoddart Avenue.  The plants have not yet been there a week, and so will not be in flower.  The bed was prepared by Andy Buss from Applied Ecological Services and the plants were donated by Restoration Nurseries.   Our neighborhood block watch donated soil and mulch towards the project and we contributed compost (which had been donated to us by the City of Columbus).  Block Watch Barb and I have been keeping them watered in for their first week until they get established in this heat. 

We have been very blessed to not have any thefts or vandalism in a couple of years at the SACG.  However, just a week before the OTNEA tour, our front gate was attacked last Friday night/early Saturday morning. Someone bashed the heavy duty latch in order to dislodge it from the gate and enter the Garden.  We’re not exactly sure why.  No one has reported any obvious theft or vandalism and the person could have climbed over the gate without having to destroy the latch to get in.   I had to replace the upper latch already and so did that last week and Ken repaired the heavier latch yesterday. 

The food pantry deliveries continue to be an issue.  I am finally resigned to the fact that we will have to deliver them late Saturday afternoon to Faith Mission.  We tried to get to Redeemer in time last Saturday morning, but it did not work out.  I got there before 11 am. (after emailing them on Friday that I would be bringing them a bunch of zucchini) and that was 30 minutes earlier than the week before.  However, they had already closed up shop when I arrived with beets, zucchini, beans, and eggplants, oregano, basil, etc.   So, while Sabrina was waiting for me at the SACG, I had to turn around and drive downtown.   Also, one of the reasons that we are working with the Community Service volunteers is so that they can help with the food pantry harvests.  It typically takes an hour, for instance, to pick a couple of rows of green beans.  They do not even arrive until 10 a.m., which is too late to help with the food pantry harvest if we try to make it to Redeemer, or BSPC or Community Kitchen, etc.   Because of the OTNEA tour, this week I will harvest on Sunday evening and deliver it the next morning at Salvation Army. 

Despite the heat and lack of rain over the past week, the SACG is very green at present.   Half of our corn is in tassle and the winter squashes are spreading through our three sisters plot as planned.  The weeds should be kept to a minimum.  After Sunday, I’ll try to kick back for a few days before we get ready for our next big project: to have a water line installed.  This will involve cutting back a bunch of brambles and fence to make room for the equipment.  But that’s next  week. 

Last week, I attended the monthly meeting of the Great Columbus Growing Coalition at the  Greater Southeast Community United Community Garden at the Gethsemane United Methodist Church. (I took my roasted eggplant, onion and pepper salad with orzo and quinoa).  Last April, I helped Ava with getting cedar wood donated for two gates that they needed at their community garden.  Trudeau's Fence in Hilliard again showed their tremendous support for the local community garden movement by donating scrap cedar lumber that is simply not good enough for their paying customers.  Ava and I drove over to pick up the wood last April (and I picked up some wood for our fence straightening project as well).     The local Carpenters Union did a fabulous job last month constructing the gates for Ava.   When I left the GCGC meeting (to pick up more free seedlings that had been donated by Strader's Garden Center), there was a double rainbow waiting for us.   

I also won a baby apricot tree sapling which had been donated by GCGC officer, Andrew Proud.  I planted it at the SACG orchard on Saturday.   Most of our peaches are gone.  I picked one myself (for the first time since we planted the
trees in 2012) last week.  It was not quite ripe.  It was hard like grocery store peaches.  But it was quite tasty.   We checked the peach trees last night and the Contender yellow cling peaches are all gone.  The Red Haven peaches have not filled out yet and probably won't for a few weeks.