Calling It A Year

The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden called it a year yesterday, a day later than usual.   With only a few hiccups, Sabrina, Phil and I were able to get the rest of the Garden put to bed despite having the cold and wet weather.  The Mid-Ohio Food Bank held a lovely reception on Thursday for the recipients of the 2018 Urban Agriculture Grant and we received formal Congressional Recognition from Representative Joyce Beatty’s office.  I dropped off our final produce donation of the year to Faith Mission around dinner time last night.

After the amazing progress that we made on October 20 in getting the exterior brambles pruned back, the weather was not so cooperative the following Saturday and we were rained out.  So much for any chance of completing the fence straightening project this year.   On November 3, we started later than usual, but still got a lot accomplished.  Amy arrived as early as usual and started clearing out some flower beds of dead annuals that had not survived our recent frosts.   Phil cut back the brambles in the food pantry plots, picked up litter in the neighborhood and consolidated our fence lumber to a sheltered location.  I emptied half of the big rain cistern, edged flower beds and trees so that they would look neat over the winter, mowed our lot, the orchard lot, the Block Watch lot, Urban Connections play lot, the strip along the alley and half of the lot next to the body shop’s paint shop in order to empty the mower.   I also harvested radishes, greens and turnips for the food pantry harvest and delivered it to Community Development for All People’s Fresh Market on Parson’s Avenue, which was pretty much empty of fresh produce when I arrived shortly before 1 p.m.   It was a long day.

On Thursday, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank formally recognized the recipients of the 2018 Urban Agriculture grants.  MOFB has such an amazing new facility in Grove City.  About half of their distributions consist of fresh produce. Matt Habash, Bobby Moser, Sarah Lenkay and a representative from Rep. Beatty’s office spoke.   The 2018 grant recipients included community gardens like the SACG as well as urban farms, including the Nabrit Memorial Garden on Brentnell, Foraged & Sown, Freshtown Farms, Happy Toes Homestead, Harriet Gardens, Highland Youth Garden, Magic House Farms, Mother’s Peace Urban Farm, Over the Fence Urban Farm, Second Baptist Community Garden, South Side Community Action Network, and Sunbury Urban Farm.  Our certificate, while lovely, was not entirely correct.  The SACG’s grant was focused only on obtaining running water, not an irrigation system, electricity or an outdoor community pavilion.  (Where would we find time?)  Seth from the City Land Bank was encouraging me to think about what else we might need next year.  I am too tired to consider another major project next year, other than adding another apple tree, although bee hives would be nice . . . .   There will be another (third) round of grant funding and this time will focus on youth education.  

It snowed on Friday morning.  When I woke up on Saturday for our 10^th Closing Day, the winds were whipping and the wind chill was only 6 degrees.  Marcel emailed me at 6:30 a.m. that it was too cold for her or her children to work.   So, I made a few calls (waking up a number of people) and postponed our work day until 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 11.    I cut back the native plants in the corner garden, cut back the annuals and tender perennials in the circle flower bed, and started cutting back all of the flowers (other than the coneflowers) in the south front flower bed.  Sabrina arrived and started to do the same on the north front flower bed.  We then tackled the center flower bed together (but Amy had already taken care of most of that).  I generally leave the coneflowers up for the winter to feed our neighborhood finches and sparrows.  I also left collard greens in our neighbor plot because they will survive and continue to grow most of the winter.

Seth had asked me on Thursday if we clean out the Garden at the end of the year.  Of course we do.  We like to remove places for mold, fungus and bugs to thrive.  However, we cut the plants down, instead of pulling them out of the ground, so that the soil microbes have something to eat and there are roots in place to hold in the soil from the winter winds.  Sabrina and I also rely on cover crops (sometimes known as weeds) to protect our plots over the winter.    Truth is, I still haven’t raked out my plot for the winter and may do that this afternoon.   (I would really like to take my lawn mower . . . . ) 

Phil arrived and helped to cover our lumber from the elements, I emptied the rest of the big rain cistern (so that Ken can replace the leaky spicket at his leisure before April) and unhooked a hydrant.  Sabrina and I harvested the rest of the winter crops and herbs for our final produce donation of the year.  Sabrina then cleaned out and organized the shed.  Phil picked up more litter than had blown into the area, cut out the broken umbrella stand from the picnic table, raked out one of the neighbor beds and helped me to take down the sign.  Nothing says that we are closed for the season like taking down our sign.

We ended the season with having donated 512 pounds of fresh produce.  This was better than our harvests in 2009-12 and 2014, but considerably below last year’s level.   While our 2018 harvest of potatoes and lettuce was better than last year, everything else was less.  This is most apparent when it comes to our donation of greens (i.e., kale and collards).  Last year we donated over 100 more pounds of greens than this year.  That was in no small part due to our CS volunteers killing our seedlings at the beginning of the season while weeding that plot.  Our greens crop was also adversely affected by our over tolerance of our abundant sunflowers (which shade everything around them).  We also had 100 sf of growing space out of circulation this year due to the water project.    I am thinking about no longer focusing on greens as a donation crop in the future because they have to be taken to a food pantry within 2 hours of harvest (in order to be edible) and there are no pantries open on Saturday afternoons any longer.   This makes me sad because greens are so nutritious and difficult to find at local food pantries, but it was created a lot of stress for me this year.  I may postpone the food pantry harvests to Sunday evenings next year and then make the donations on Mondays, like we did in 2009 and 2010.

We expanded our pantry distribution this year because of the unexpected closure of the Lutheran Social Services Choice food pantry at Champion and Frebis (where we have typically donated about 50% of our produce over the years).  This year, for the first time, we also donated produce to Redeemer Lutheran Church at James and Scottwood, the House of Hope on East Main Street in Whitehall, Bethlehem Temple Apostolic Church on East Main Street and the Community Development for All People Fresh Market on Parsons.  We also continued to donate produce to the Salvation Army on East Main Street, St. Vincent de Paul's pantry next to Christ the King Catholic Church on Livingston and Faith Mission's Homeless Shelter on Grant downtown. 

This afternoon, Amy will return to the SACG to carry the lawn waste bags to the curb (to be picked up by Rumpke tomorrow).  I realized this morning, that I forgot to clean out the raised vegetable bed in the orchard plot.   Maybe if I make it back to rake out my plot, I can clean it out then. . . . .  

Before I left yesterday, I harvested from my own plot some lettuce, arugula, parsley, cilantro, snow peas, leeks, bok choy and kale.    All of those are cold hardy and survived our recent cold nights.   The brussels sprouts and cabbage that I belatedly planted in mid-September still have not ripened, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will continue to grow, albeit slowly, before we suffer a polar vortex.   I’m even considering putting row covers on them to lengthen their growing season.