Waiting for it to Rain on the SACG Parade

This week’s food pantry donation was so paltry that it probably didn’t even cover the cost of my gas driving to the pantry.  It was really, really pathetic.  How pathetic was it?  A couple of tomatoes and peppers, a few beans and only two bags of greens.  Like I said, pathetic.   It’s been so long since it rained that nothing is growing. Jym Ganahl is even referring it to a drought because we are more than 4 inches in rain deficit (i.e., below normal) just for the summer.   We spend hours and hours watering and that is just to keep the plants alive.  Ms. Julialynne from the Bethany Bronzeville Presbyterian Community Garden stopped by and we commiserated over how the rain clouds just pass the Near East Side by.  Our sunflowers, which are usually 10 feet high, are barely as tall as we are.  Sigh.  I can’t justify watering flowers in such situations, so I am glad that our canna lilies (that were donated by the Kossuth Community Garden) are blooming.   And, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we get at least a little bit of rain tomorrow (even if it makes most of our tomatoes burst their thick skins).  Jym’s predicting as much as two inches this week.  Maybe the Near East Side will get half of that .  . . .

The dry weather isn’t our only calamity, though.  Cathy emailed me Friday that the groundhog had
returned and wrecked havoc in her plot.  It chomped on some tomatoes, dug up some peanuts and ate much of her sweet potato vines.   Until this year, we had a gardener who owned a trap and could check it daily until we apprehended the four-legged thief, but we no longer have that luxury.  So, I conducted some internet research for possible solutions (because I had loaned all of my books on the subject to my brother-in-law, who has yet to return them).  When I arrived on Saturday, I discovered that it had also ate most of the leaves on the food pantry sweet potatoes and the leaves on my edamame.  Grrrr.  I brought some ammonia-soaked rags to strategically place around the Garden (with the thought that it might smell like predator urine) and sprinkled some Epsom salt (with the thought that it would taste bad).  We shall see.

With the promise of a cooler Saturday, I started at my normal time of 9 a.m., missed Amy, but found Sabrina already hard at work.  But she wasn’t weeding at the SACG, she was weeding the cabbage patch and squash bed at Kimball Farms next door.  She just couldn’t take walking by them anymore.  That’s a true gardener for you.  They can’t pass a weed without pulling it.  After she tended her plot, I directed her towards the overgrown brambles in one of the food pantry plots (in the hope that she might find where the gopher is entering the Garden) and she cut them back very aggressively to the fence.  No sign of the gopher gate.   Sadly, she also mistakenly cut back the beautiful clematis that Betty had planted back there a few years ago.  I’m hoping that its extensive root system helps it to recover.  But, Sabrina found enough room back there for us to possibly plant another row of something and to give Neal more room to water the tomatoes that Amy planted in June.

Stan came by to mow our lawn and then spent a lot of time digging up the weeds in the alley (between the pavement and the Garden).  What a guy.  However, I wish that he had used the broom I put in the shed a few weeks ago to sweep off the curb, etc.  Men!  His squash plant was crawling with squash bug nymphs, so I pulled it and carried it to the dumpster.  Bad. Bad. Boy.  He then pruned his tomatoes and straightened up his tomato trellises. 

I spent most of the morning watering my plot and then some extra beds.  Earlier this week, Kimball Farms received a large cistern from the City to store water and no longer needs our rain barrels.  So, I put one barrel back behind our shed and painted it a less conspicuous color on Saturday afternoon.  At Thursday’s GCGC meeting, I offered to loan a barrel to another community garden.  So, it’s going to Bethany-Bronzeville Presbyterian Church Community Garden on Garfield (behind the MLK Center).   I offered one of my extra barrels to my neighbor, but she doesn’t want it so I’m tracking down New Beginnings Community Garden on William Road, but if I can’t find her (or if she doesn’t want it), Andrew Proud has a garden which needs some help. 

Marcel and the men in her life stopped by to water.   Zion and she carried water while her husband held the baby.  We pruned her wild melon plants in order to force them to focus on the fruit.  Her beans all died and we talked about possibly starting Fall crops soon.  (Rayna planted lettuce last week). 

Speaking of beans, I am having the absolutely worse bean crop of my life.  I didn’t think it was possible.  But all of my plants are stunted and have produced virtually no beans.    I can’t blame it all on the grasshoppers either.  The only exception has been my peas and edamame.  I harvested three pounds of edamame on Saturday and froze two pounds of them to eat later. I may try some bloom buster this week to spur some flowering in my bean crop.  My asparagus beans have been stunted and many of them have been blanched (i.e., white instead of green).  It’s been sooooo weird.

Taylor was batching it this weekend and came by to water at the hottest time of the day.  I started pointing out some tall weeds in his plot (because that’s what I’m best at) and I disregarded his good advice to crop a weed and instead tried to pull it out by its roots. Sadly, I also pulled his pablano pepper plant out with it.  I tried to replant it, but it didn’t look as though it would make it.  I’ll have to dig up one of mine the next time I’m at the Garden and secretly transplant it in his plot when he’s not looking.  Sigh.  We also talked about his cauliflower, but I know virtually nothing about them because I never grow them. 

While I was painting the rain barrel to blend in with the shed, Micayla came by to water her bed and harvest more carrots.  I wish all of my neighborhood kids were that dedicated and responsible.

I have a funny guerrilla gardening story.  We usually think of guerrilla gardening as something we do in urban neighborhoods to brighten up abandoned and blighted lots.   However, as I was leaving my backyard on Friday night to catch The Force Awakens at the Great Event on Capital’s lawn, I found a couple of neighbors secretly pulling weeds in the dark from the yards of other neighbors along the alley.  You see, Saturday was Bexley’s Love Your Alley contest and the best looking alley gets a free block party from the City.  These neighbors had entered our alley, but not all of the neighbors bothered to trim their unruly bushes or pull their weeds.  I thought that this was hysterical.  It’s something that I would do.  I didn’t want to miss too much of the movie, but I went back into my garage and gave them a lawn waste bag to help them keep their activities tidy.    I don’t think it helped much.  I haven’t heard who won, but I doubt that it was us.  Sigh. 

In addition to freezing some edamame, I roasted and canned some tomatoes, whipped up some roasted tomatilla and chipotle salsa, and otherwise cooked up a storm to deal with my bumper zucchini and kale crop.  I did not, however, get around to making bread and butter pickles this weekend.  Taylor told me that Neal has been drying his hot peppers in order to turn them into a powder.  You could have knocked me over with a spoon.   So, I finally broke down and ordered a dehydrator of my own.   Now, I'll have to get cooking tips from Neal.  Stranger things have happened.

Finally, my body odor seems to attract preying mantises.  Last night, while I was chatting with a neighbor in the alley, something kept scratching the bottom of my  right leg.  I kept scratching it with my other foot.  Finally, I bent over to swat it and found a large, bright green preying mantis trying to get my attention.  I happened to have a coffee cup in my hand (don't ask) and so I swooped it in and dropped it off on my pole bean teepee to fend off my surplus Japanese beetle population.   I hope that I didn't hurt it too much when I was kicking at it.  What a sturdy insect.

Waiting for it to Rain on the SACG Parade

This week’s food pantry donation was so paltry that it probably didn’t even cover the cost of my gas driving to the pantry.  It was really, really pathetic.  How pathetic was it?  A couple of tomatoes and peppers, a few beans and only two bags of greens.  Like I said, pathetic.   It’s been so long since it rained that nothing is growing. Jym Ganahl is even referring it to a drought because we are more than 4 inches in rain deficit (i.e., below normal) just for the summer.   We spend hours and hours watering and that is just to keep the plants alive.  Ms. Julialynne from the Bethany Bronzeville Presbyterian Community Garden stopped by and we commiserated over how the rain clouds just pass the Near East Side by.  Our sunflowers, which are usually 10 feet high, are barely as tall as we are.  Sigh.  I can’t justify watering flowers in such situations, so I am glad that our canna lilies (that were donated by the Kossuth Community Garden) are blooming.   And, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we get at least a little bit of rain tomorrow (even if it makes most of our tomatoes burst their thick skins).  Jym’s predicting as much as two inches this week.  Maybe the Near East Side will get half of that .  . . .

The dry weather isn’t our only calamity, though.  Cathy emailed me Friday that the groundhog had
returned and wrecked havoc in her plot.  It chomped on some tomatoes, dug up some peanuts and ate much of her sweet potato vines.   Until this year, we had a gardener who owned a trap and could check it daily until we apprehended the four-legged thief, but we no longer have that luxury.  So, I conducted some internet research for possible solutions (because I had loaned all of my books on the subject to my brother-in-law, who has yet to return them).  When I arrived on Saturday, I discovered that it had also ate most of the leaves on the food pantry sweet potatoes and the leaves on my edamame.  Grrrr.  I brought some ammonia-soaked rags to strategically place around the Garden (with the thought that it might smell like predator urine) and sprinkled some Epsom salt (with the thought that it would taste bad).  We shall see.

With the promise of a cooler Saturday, I started at my normal time of 9 a.m., missed Amy, but found Sabrina already hard at work.  But she wasn’t weeding at the SACG, she was weeding the cabbage patch and squash bed at Kimball Farms next door.  She just couldn’t take walking by them anymore.  That’s a true gardener for you.  They can’t pass a weed without pulling it.  After she tended her plot, I directed her towards the overgrown brambles in one of the food pantry plots (in the hope that she might find where the gopher is entering the Garden) and she cut them back very aggressively to the fence.  No sign of the gopher gate.   Sadly, she also mistakenly cut back the beautiful clematis that Betty had planted back there a few years ago.  I’m hoping that its extensive root system helps it to recover.  But, Sabrina found enough room back there for us to possibly plant another row of something and to give Neal more room to water the tomatoes that Amy planted in June.

Stan came by to mow our lawn and then spent a lot of time digging up the weeds in the alley (between the pavement and the Garden).  What a guy.  However, I wish that he had used the broom I put in the shed a few weeks ago to sweep off the curb, etc.  Men!  His squash plant was crawling with squash bug nymphs, so I pulled it and carried it to the dumpster.  Bad. Bad. Boy.  He then pruned his tomatoes and straightened up his tomato trellises. 

I spent most of the morning watering my plot and then some extra beds.  Earlier this week, Kimball Farms received a large cistern from the City to store water and no longer needs our rain barrels.  So, I put one barrel back behind our shed and painted it a less conspicuous color on Saturday afternoon.  At Thursday’s GCGC meeting, I offered to loan a barrel to another community garden.  So, it’s going to Bethany-Bronzeville Presbyterian Church Community Garden on Garfield (behind the MLK Center).   I offered one of my extra barrels to my neighbor, but she doesn’t want it so I’m tracking down New Beginnings Community Garden on William Road, but if I can’t find her (or if she doesn’t want it), Andrew Proud has a garden which needs some help. 

Marcel and the men in her life stopped by to water.   Zion and she carried water while her husband held the baby.  We pruned her wild melon plants in order to force them to focus on the fruit.  Her beans all died and we talked about possibly starting Fall crops soon.  (Rayna planted lettuce last week). 

Speaking of beans, I am having the absolutely worse bean crop of my life.  I didn’t think it was possible.  But all of my plants are stunted and have produced virtually no beans.    I can’t blame it all on the grasshoppers either.  The only exception has been my peas and edamame.  I harvested three pounds of edamame on Saturday and froze two pounds of them to eat later. I may try some bloom buster this week to spur some flowering in my bean crop.  My asparagus beans have been stunted and many of them have been blanched (i.e., white instead of green).  It’s been sooooo weird.

Taylor was batching it this weekend and came by to water at the hottest time of the day.  I started pointing out some tall weeds in his plot (because that’s what I’m best at) and I disregarded his good advice to crop a weed and instead tried to pull it out by its roots. Sadly, I also pulled his pablano pepper plant out with it.  I tried to replant it, but it didn’t look as though it would make it.  I’ll have to dig up one of mine the next time I’m at the Garden and secretly transplant it in his plot when he’s not looking.  Sigh.  We also talked about his cauliflower, but I know virtually nothing about them because I never grow them. 

While I was painting the rain barrel to blend in with the shed, Micayla came by to water her bed and harvest more carrots.  I wish all of my neighborhood kids were that dedicated and responsible.

I have a funny guerrilla gardening story.  We usually think of guerrilla gardening as something we do in urban neighborhoods to brighten up abandoned and blighted lots.   However, as I was leaving my backyard on Friday night to catch The Force Awakens at the Great Event on Capital’s lawn, I found a couple of neighbors secretly pulling weeds in the dark from the yards of other neighbors along the alley.  You see, Saturday was Bexley’s Love Your Alley contest and the best looking alley gets a free block party from the City.  These neighbors had entered our alley, but not all of the neighbors bothered to trim their unruly bushes or pull their weeds.  I thought that this was hysterical.  It’s something that I would do.  I didn’t want to miss too much of the movie, but I went back into my garage and gave them a lawn waste bag to help them keep their activities tidy.    I don’t think it helped much.  I haven’t heard who won, but I doubt that it was us.  Sigh. 

In addition to freezing some edamame, I roasted and canned some tomatoes, whipped up some roasted tomatilla and chipotle salsa, and otherwise cooked up a storm to deal with my bumper zucchini and kale crop.  I did not, however, get around to making bread and butter pickles this weekend.  Taylor told me that Neal has been drying his hot peppers in order to turn them into a powder.  You could have knocked me over with a spoon.   So, I finally broke down and ordered a dehydrator of my own.   Now, I'll have to get cooking tips from Neal.  Stranger things have happened.

Finally, my body odor seems to attract preying mantises.  Last night, while I was chatting with a neighbor in the alley, something kept scratching the bottom of my  right leg.  I kept scratching it with my other foot.  Finally, I bent over to swat it and found a large, bright green preying mantis trying to get my attention.  I happened to have a coffee cup in my hand (don't ask) and so I swooped it in and dropped it off on my pole bean teepee to fend off my surplus Japanese beetle population.   I hope that I didn't hurt it too much when I was kicking at it.  What a sturdy insect.

Fighting the Dog Days of Summer at the SACG

We are into the dog days of summer at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden and nary a rain drop in sight (with our rainfall several inches below normal this year).  The squash borers (not the bugs I complain so much about) have wiped out all but three of the squash plants in the entire Garden and, I suspect, our neighbor’s squash crop as well.  Cathy even found numerous of the borer moths mating in the raspberry bushes at Urban Connections today.  Gross.  (Never fear.  I’ve planted more summer squash and zucchini).    Most of my beans are mysteriously stunted this year, but I’ve started to harvest some edamame – which have been exceptionally prolific this year.  I’m usually not a cucumber kind of girl, but my cukes have been very productive, although Neal’s have not.  Most of my basil has died, but Neal’s is kicking butt and taking names.  Go figure.  Finally, the grasshoppers are eating the leaves off the beans (and my basil)  and I have no stray cats to hunt them down.  

As I mentioned previously, one of the neighborhood landlords chopped down a tree which contained a bee hive.  I told my neighbor, but they didn’t seem to want it.  I then ran into that landlord and asked him for it.  (I planned to use volunteers who were supposed to be coming Thursday (but then cancelled on Wednesday) to put them behind our shed for the time being).  He pulled that portion of the trunk over to the Garden by the neighbor beds while Sabrina was there.  She didn’t like leaving the bees in the sun like that and contacted someone (I think at the Bexley Boy Scouts who are tending a hive for the Bexley Community Garden).  Then, within 24 hours, Dave Nobel, the beekeeper at the Stratford Ecological Center in Delaware, contacted me and generously visited the SACG the following evening when I was there. He inspected the hive wearing little more than a tank top because busy bees don’t really care about people.  He pulled out some combs (pictured) and  found that the hive was pretty much dead.  There were very few bees left and the bee beetles had already invaded it.  (The larvae were eating bee pupae and otherwise creating havoc).  Baby bees were being born and were starving because there wasn’t any honey, etc.  Sigh.  It was very educational.   Then, another bee guy heard in Orient about our problem and contacted me on Thursday and also volunteered to put me in touch with Dave.   It’s nice to see so many people concerned about bees.   I found a different neighbor landlord on Saturday (who was dealing with the problem of two burst water pipes) and he hauled the log back to its breathern across the alley (because I’m too puny for such work).   What would I do without my neighborhood landlords, I ask you?

One of the neighbors pulled out half of the crops by the roots from the neighbor plot (probably because they didn’t recognize them or know how to properly harvest them).  You just pull the outer leaves; kale and collards will continue to leaf out as long as the center stem remains intact.

Last night, I grabbed a few of the neighborhood kids to coerce them to harvest their tomatoes and to weed and water their beds.  It was pretty hot, but not as humid as it has been.  Sabrina’s been coming to help me a lot the last few weeks, like she used to do when she first joined the Garden.  It’s her down time away from the men in her life.  She reported that neighbor Rose (who took in Ms. D’s beautiful black-and-white cat when she suddenly died in March 2015) now had three kittens.  Sabrina took one and someone else took another.  Rose wants to find a home for the last kitten and Ms. D’s cat (or to at least get her fixed).  I passed on information about area cat shelters, etc.  (I already have two cats and can’t take in another). 

Our food pantry donations are head of where we were this time the last two years and on pace for where we were in 2012 and 2013.  Our tomatoes have come in on time, but we have been inundated with blossom end rot and with split tomatoes from sudden rain storms following extended heat waves.   I thought that I had been watering my tomatoes enough, but apparently not. 

Our neighbor Kimball Farms just got their own 550 gallon tank, so they no longer need our rain barrels.  I took mine home and my next door neighbor may add it to her collection.  I put one behind our shed (to collect rain from that tiny gutter) and hope to paint it this weekend so that it doesn't look quite so conspicuous from Main Street).  I have no idea where we can store the last one.  Contact me if you need a rain barrel for your community garden or want to rent it for a nominal fee for your home.

We cannot finish the strawberry retaining wall without the City vouchers

As for the ongoing saga with the City trying to coerce us into weighing all of the produce from each and every plot, the Land Bank emailed us last week that they "have not received the Crop Diversity and Garden Outreach forms from many people."  What a shock.  I've told them repeatedly that it's too much work to keep track of how much we grow.  While I keep track of what we donate, I don't keep track of what I grow, let alone what the other gardeners grow.  I  often can't even get them to do their chores or weed their own plots.  Why on earth would they start keeping track of what they grow so that I can compare it to what we donate in order to report a percentage to the City? It's not like we're getting paid for any of it like real farmers and have to know the pounds, etc. in order to charge for it.    Asking us to "estimate" under those circumstances is tantamount to asking us to make up a number in order to receiving funding and that is blatant fraud.  No wonder hardly anyone has responded.  

Also, the questionnaire creates a disincentive for us to donate any food because it would be easier to say that we just keep all that we grow.  Flower gardeners don't have to report that piece at all, but still get their $250 voucher.  In fact, I turned down a donation of wildflower seeds because it would be too hard to estimate what flowers we are growing with a wildflower mix, n'est pas?  With all of the hot, unpaid, dirty work that we do, we should not be treated like this.   I don't think that someone who has no actual community gardening experience should be able to blackmail us like this.  But that's just my humble opinion.  I certainly don't want to imply that I think these people are evil; just seriously delusional. Anyway, Keep Columbus Beautiful (which is part of the City) helped us out last week by donating a stack of lawn waste bags so that we can cut back our spreading raspberry brambles.  KCB also has extensive gardening supplies for anyone who may need something (like seeds or fertilizer, etc.).

Finally, the canna lilies which the Kossuth Community Garden donated to us in June are starting to bloom.  Whoo hoo!

Fighting the Dog Days of Summer at the SACG

We are into the dog days of summer at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden and nary a rain drop in sight (with our rainfall several inches below normal this year).  The squash borers (not the bugs I complain so much about) have wiped out all but three of the squash plants in the entire Garden and, I suspect, our neighbor’s squash crop as well.  Cathy even found numerous of the borer moths mating in the raspberry bushes at Urban Connections today.  Gross.  (Never fear.  I’ve planted more summer squash and zucchini).    Most of my beans are mysteriously stunted this year, but I’ve started to harvest some edamame – which have been exceptionally prolific this year.  I’m usually not a cucumber kind of girl, but my cukes have been very productive, although Neal’s have not.  Most of my basil has died, but Neal’s is kicking butt and taking names.  Go figure.  Finally, the grasshoppers are eating the leaves off the beans (and my basil)  and I have no stray cats to hunt them down.  

As I mentioned previously, one of the neighborhood landlords chopped down a tree which contained a bee hive.  I told my neighbor, but they didn’t seem to want it.  I then ran into that landlord and asked him for it.  (I planned to use volunteers who were supposed to be coming Thursday (but then cancelled on Wednesday) to put them behind our shed for the time being).  He pulled that portion of the trunk over to the Garden by the neighbor beds while Sabrina was there.  She didn’t like leaving the bees in the sun like that and contacted someone (I think at the Bexley Boy Scouts who are tending a hive for the Bexley Community Garden).  Then, within 24 hours, Dave Nobel, the beekeeper at the Stratford Ecological Center in Delaware, contacted me and generously visited the SACG the following evening when I was there. He inspected the hive wearing little more than a tank top because busy bees don’t really care about people.  He pulled out some combs (pictured) and  found that the hive was pretty much dead.  There were very few bees left and the bee beetles had already invaded it.  (The larvae were eating bee pupae and otherwise creating havoc).  Baby bees were being born and were starving because there wasn’t any honey, etc.  Sigh.  It was very educational.   Then, another bee guy heard in Orient about our problem and contacted me on Thursday and also volunteered to put me in touch with Dave.   It’s nice to see so many people concerned about bees.   I found a different neighbor landlord on Saturday (who was dealing with the problem of two burst water pipes) and he hauled the log back to its breathern across the alley (because I’m too puny for such work).   What would I do without my neighborhood landlords, I ask you?

One of the neighbors pulled out half of the crops by the roots from the neighbor plot (probably because they didn’t recognize them or know how to properly harvest them).  You just pull the outer leaves; kale and collards will continue to leaf out as long as the center stem remains intact.

Last night, I grabbed a few of the neighborhood kids to coerce them to harvest their tomatoes and to weed and water their beds.  It was pretty hot, but not as humid as it has been.  Sabrina’s been coming to help me a lot the last few weeks, like she used to do when she first joined the Garden.  It’s her down time away from the men in her life.  She reported that neighbor Rose (who took in Ms. D’s beautiful black-and-white cat when she suddenly died in March 2015) now had three kittens.  Sabrina took one and someone else took another.  Rose wants to find a home for the last kitten and Ms. D’s cat (or to at least get her fixed).  I passed on information about area cat shelters, etc.  (I already have two cats and can’t take in another). 

Our food pantry donations are head of where we were this time the last two years and on pace for where we were in 2012 and 2013.  Our tomatoes have come in on time, but we have been inundated with blossom end rot and with split tomatoes from sudden rain storms following extended heat waves.   I thought that I had been watering my tomatoes enough, but apparently not. 

Our neighbor Kimball Farms just got their own 550 gallon tank, so they no longer need our rain barrels.  I took mine home and my next door neighbor may add it to her collection.  I put one behind our shed (to collect rain from that tiny gutter) and hope to paint it this weekend so that it doesn't look quite so conspicuous from Main Street).  I have no idea where we can store the last one.  Contact me if you need a rain barrel for your community garden or want to rent it for a nominal fee for your home.

We cannot finish the strawberry retaining wall without the City vouchers

As for the ongoing saga with the City trying to coerce us into weighing all of the produce from each and every plot, the Land Bank emailed us last week that they "have not received the Crop Diversity and Garden Outreach forms from many people."  What a shock.  I've told them repeatedly that it's too much work to keep track of how much we grow.  While I keep track of what we donate, I don't keep track of what I grow, let alone what the other gardeners grow.  I  often can't even get them to do their chores or weed their own plots.  Why on earth would they start keeping track of what they grow so that I can compare it to what we donate in order to report a percentage to the City? It's not like we're getting paid for any of it like real farmers and have to know the pounds, etc. in order to charge for it.    Asking us to "estimate" under those circumstances is tantamount to asking us to make up a number in order to receiving funding and that is blatant fraud.  No wonder hardly anyone has responded.  

Also, the questionnaire creates a disincentive for us to donate any food because it would be easier to say that we just keep all that we grow.  Flower gardeners don't have to report that piece at all, but still get their $250 voucher.  In fact, I turned down a donation of wildflower seeds because it would be too hard to estimate what flowers we are growing with a wildflower mix, n'est pas?  With all of the hot, unpaid, dirty work that we do, we should not be treated like this.   I don't think that someone who has no actual community gardening experience should be able to blackmail us like this.  But that's just my humble opinion.  I certainly don't want to imply that I think these people are evil; just seriously delusional. Anyway, Keep Columbus Beautiful (which is part of the City) helped us out last week by donating a stack of lawn waste bags so that we can cut back our spreading raspberry brambles.  KCB also has extensive gardening supplies for anyone who may need something (like seeds or fertilizer, etc.).

Finally, the canna lilies which the Kossuth Community Garden donated to us in June are starting to bloom.  Whoo hoo!

What Heat Dome? BUMCYF Perks at SACG.

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year, but that did not deter the very perky Bexley United Methodist Church Youth Fellowship from volunteering at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden at the hottest time of the day.  On Thursday, Keep Columbus Beautiful notified its partners, including the SACG, to only schedule beautification projects in the morning for this weekend because of the heat. I heeded this warning on Saturday and was able to get out by noon (for a delightful change of pace).   However, instead of whining or moving very slowly, the YF seemed completely oblivious to the heat and humidity on Sunday.   I purposely restricted their to-do list, but they completed it so fast that I had to add to it.  They tidied up the strawberry patch, weeded along the alley, watered the kid beds, strawberry patch, blueberry bushes, new cherry trees, flower beds and most of the food pantry plots, pulled bind weed off of the southern raspberry bushes, and then sanded and stained our picnic table.

Wednesday was our annual water gun fight (shootout at the SACG Corral)  with the neighborhood kids at the SACG.  I had warned the gardeners not to come unless they wanted to risk getting wet.  It was very hot and humid.   When I arrived, Neal was there tending his plot, and had planted new cucumber seedlings a few days earlier.  He had extra, so I put them in other plots.   Paulie from Highland Youth Garden (in the Hilltop) stopped by to drop off some cinder blocks for one of our compost bins.  I also gave him a tour of the Garden, where he admired the strawberry patch and our rain cisterns. After Neal left, I invited the neighborhood kids to a water gun fight.  Shae initially said no (because she didn’t want to mess up her new hairdo), but came back with her own gun.  Miko, Chris and Jo all borrowed guns from me (who kept my supersoaker).  Micayla came over, but hung out near her garden bed instead of joining in.   She and Jo harvested carrots from their bed and left.  After I was pretty soaked and we had each refilled twice, I withdrew to finish watering my plot, but was still able to get home early. 

On Saturday, I arrived at 8:30 and found that the squash borers had really demolished a number of our squash plants.  I was so excited that I did not have to water anything because we had received more than an inch of rain around lunchtime on Friday.  Weeding does not take nearly as much time as watering.  I found Miko across the street playing basketball and recruited him (with his uncle’s push) to come and weed his bed.  He had some blank spaces, so we filled them in with sweet potatoes and beets.    Miko’s one of those rare children that knows how to weed and can distinguish between a weed and a plant based on his prior experience of helping his grandmother with her garden.

Stan stopped by to tend his plot, harvest some summer squash and to complete the cinder block compost bin.   I told him that I wanted the BUMCYF to complete the bin on Sunday, but he had been waiting for months to finish it and would not be deterred.   I had been saving two bags of leaves to put in it, but he put the leaves in a different bin.  (Not to be deterred, I put one of the bags in the cinder block bin on Sunday).

One of our neighbors had chopped down a large tree growing near the alley on  Thursday.  I discovered on Saturday morning that there was a honey bee hive living in a hollow portion of the tree.  Excited, I found Pastor Brown's assistant and relayed that Kimball Farms should rescue that piece of the tree to start their own beehive next door.  (But the tree and the bees were still in the alley when I returned on Sunday).  We had a light food pantry harvest, but I was delighted to get home by 12:30 and be able to mow my own lawn and clean/repair the northern gutters on my garage. 

In May, the BUMC Youth Fellowship contacted me about volunteering at the end of July (at the suggestion of one of our neighborhood landlords).  I was thrilled because none of the Bexley churches has ever volunteered here.  (We’ve had churches from other suburbs, but not neighbor Bexley).   Their leader wanted to keep their normal meeting time of 5 p.m., although I told her that  most rational gardeners work during cooler morning or evening hours.   Neither of us realized that Sunday would be the hottest day of the year near the end of a regional heat dome.   Then, a half-hour before they were supposed to arrive, the weather radar revealed a large line of thunderstorms.  While I wanted the rain, I also wanted the volunteers.  But, I knew –and turned out to be correct -- that the storms would break up as the approached downtown so that the SACG ended up not getting a drop of rain.

The YF arrived on time and ready to work. I gave them a quick tour and brief history of the Garden.  Then,  I assigned two of them watering duties and showed them how to water the roots, instead of the leaves.  Plants do not absorb water through their leaves, so the spouts need to be pointed  near the ground.  The rest were tasked with weeding the strawberry patch, adding some new garden soil (that had been donated a few months ago by the Conservatory), watering the patch, spreading straw, and weeding along the alley.  I even was able to show them a creepy, crawly squash borer in the stem of another dead squash plant after I pulled and pitched it.   I thought that this would keep them busy until their 6:30 departure, but they were finished in pretty short order, so I assigned another team with sanding and staining our picnic table.    They were old hands at this kind of task from their prior mission camps (at, for instance, West Virginia earlier this summer).

They completed that task before 6:15.  Rather than let them leave early, I explained our problem with bind weed and let them pull it away from the bushes.  (I suppose that I could have loaned them my water guns to cool themselves off). Then, they were off to Johnson’s ice cream while I locked up. 

We've been very blessed to have so many great volunteer groups this summer to help with our major "extra" projects.  Our next major task is to create a new post for our sign so that we can take group pictures beneath it like we used to do.   I thought it would be too hot to do that yesterday, so it will probably be the primary task for YouthBuild when it returns in mid-August.  Of course, I reminded the YF that I'm there every Saturday morning and we don't close until mid-November . . .

What Heat Dome? BUMCYF Perks at SACG.

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year, but that did not deter the very perky Bexley United Methodist Church Youth Fellowship from volunteering at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden at the hottest time of the day.  On Thursday, Keep Columbus Beautiful notified its partners, including the SACG, to only schedule beautification projects in the morning for this weekend because of the heat. I heeded this warning on Saturday and was able to get out by noon (for a delightful change of pace).   However, instead of whining or moving very slowly, the YF seemed completely oblivious to the heat and humidity on Sunday.   I purposely restricted their to-do list, but they completed it so fast that I had to add to it.  They tidied up the strawberry patch, weeded along the alley, watered the kid beds, strawberry patch, blueberry bushes, new cherry trees, flower beds and most of the food pantry plots, pulled bind weed off of the southern raspberry bushes, and then sanded and stained our picnic table.

Wednesday was our annual water gun fight (shootout at the SACG Corral)  with the neighborhood kids at the SACG.  I had warned the gardeners not to come unless they wanted to risk getting wet.  It was very hot and humid.   When I arrived, Neal was there tending his plot, and had planted new cucumber seedlings a few days earlier.  He had extra, so I put them in other plots.   Paulie from Highland Youth Garden (in the Hilltop) stopped by to drop off some cinder blocks for one of our compost bins.  I also gave him a tour of the Garden, where he admired the strawberry patch and our rain cisterns. After Neal left, I invited the neighborhood kids to a water gun fight.  Shae initially said no (because she didn’t want to mess up her new hairdo), but came back with her own gun.  Miko, Chris and Jo all borrowed guns from me (who kept my supersoaker).  Micayla came over, but hung out near her garden bed instead of joining in.   She and Jo harvested carrots from their bed and left.  After I was pretty soaked and we had each refilled twice, I withdrew to finish watering my plot, but was still able to get home early. 

On Saturday, I arrived at 8:30 and found that the squash borers had really demolished a number of our squash plants.  I was so excited that I did not have to water anything because we had received more than an inch of rain around lunchtime on Friday.  Weeding does not take nearly as much time as watering.  I found Miko across the street playing basketball and recruited him (with his uncle’s push) to come and weed his bed.  He had some blank spaces, so we filled them in with sweet potatoes and beets.    Miko’s one of those rare children that knows how to weed and can distinguish between a weed and a plant based on his prior experience of helping his grandmother with her garden.

Stan stopped by to tend his plot, harvest some summer squash and to complete the cinder block compost bin.   I told him that I wanted the BUMCYF to complete the bin on Sunday, but he had been waiting for months to finish it and would not be deterred.   I had been saving two bags of leaves to put in it, but he put the leaves in a different bin.  (Not to be deterred, I put one of the bags in the cinder block bin on Sunday).

One of our neighbors had chopped down a large tree growing near the alley on  Thursday.  I discovered on Saturday morning that there was a honey bee hive living in a hollow portion of the tree.  Excited, I found Pastor Brown's assistant and relayed that Kimball Farms should rescue that piece of the tree to start their own beehive next door.  (But the tree and the bees were still in the alley when I returned on Sunday).  We had a light food pantry harvest, but I was delighted to get home by 12:30 and be able to mow my own lawn and clean/repair the northern gutters on my garage. 

In May, the BUMC Youth Fellowship contacted me about volunteering at the end of July (at the suggestion of one of our neighborhood landlords).  I was thrilled because none of the Bexley churches has ever volunteered here.  (We’ve had churches from other suburbs, but not neighbor Bexley).   Their leader wanted to keep their normal meeting time of 5 p.m., although I told her that  most rational gardeners work during cooler morning or evening hours.   Neither of us realized that Sunday would be the hottest day of the year near the end of a regional heat dome.   Then, a half-hour before they were supposed to arrive, the weather radar revealed a large line of thunderstorms.  While I wanted the rain, I also wanted the volunteers.  But, I knew –and turned out to be correct -- that the storms would break up as the approached downtown so that the SACG ended up not getting a drop of rain.

The YF arrived on time and ready to work. I gave them a quick tour and brief history of the Garden.  Then,  I assigned two of them watering duties and showed them how to water the roots, instead of the leaves.  Plants do not absorb water through their leaves, so the spouts need to be pointed  near the ground.  The rest were tasked with weeding the strawberry patch, adding some new garden soil (that had been donated a few months ago by the Conservatory), watering the patch, spreading straw, and weeding along the alley.  I even was able to show them a creepy, crawly squash borer in the stem of another dead squash plant after I pulled and pitched it.   I thought that this would keep them busy until their 6:30 departure, but they were finished in pretty short order, so I assigned another team with sanding and staining our picnic table.    They were old hands at this kind of task from their prior mission camps (at, for instance, West Virginia earlier this summer).

They completed that task before 6:15.  Rather than let them leave early, I explained our problem with bind weed and let them pull it away from the bushes.  (I suppose that I could have loaned them my water guns to cool themselves off). Then, they were off to Johnson’s ice cream while I locked up. 

We've been very blessed to have so many great volunteer groups this summer to help with our major "extra" projects.  Our next major task is to create a new post for our sign so that we can take group pictures beneath it like we used to do.   I thought it would be too hot to do that yesterday, so it will probably be the primary task for YouthBuild when it returns in mid-August.  Of course, I reminded the YF that I'm there every Saturday morning and we don't close until mid-November . . .

Urban Connections’ Girl Power Slays Fence and Lawn at SACG

Sunday afternoon, Gardener Cathy from Urban Connectionsemailed me and asked if I wanted any extra volunteers this week.  Like she had to ask!  This is the second week of Urban Connections' annual youth day camp for the neighborhood kids and they were being assisted by a large number of out-of-town volunteers from Old North Alliance Church in Canfield, Ohio (near Youngstown).   Some help with the camp, but Urban Connections generally shares their volunteers with nearby non-profit groups, like the SACG and the Franklin Park Neighborhood Block Watch, and schools to tackle some of our projects or to lighten our regular load for a week.  While the guys worked on installing new flooring at a housing rehabilitation project a half-block away, we had four female volunteers to remove the back fence bordering our youth gardening area to give the kids more room to get around.  Also, Columbus City Councilman Shannon Hardin stopped by to see what Urban Connections has been up to and stopped by to see what the SACG is doing as well.

After all the work that went into getting ready for the FPC Women’s Board tour last week, I thought that I would be able to have a short day on Saturday, but it didn’t work out that way.  We didn’t get the expected rain on Friday, so I spent an hour or so watering my plot, and a few other areas of the Garden (which were supposed to be Rayna’s chore this month).  Sabrina came by to water and weed the food pantry plots (her monthly chore) and her own plot.  I love it when she comes because she almost always volunteers to do some extra work, too (like spreading diatomaceous earth on our bean seedlings which are getting eaten to the stubs by beetles and grasshoppers).   Amy came by to tend her plot, work with the compost and weed a little of our flower beds.  The broccoli has been disappointing this year (by going directly to flower), so I pulled four plants and ended up planting some summer squash.  Marcel came by with her husband to tend her plot.  She just had a baby two weeks ago, so Sabrina weeded her plot (to keep her from having to bend over) while Marcel watered and her husband took photographs.  She donated this weeks’ kale and lettuce crop to our food pantry contribution.  (Her refrigerator isn't big enough to hold all of the produce which she grows -- a problem I can also relate to).    Neal and Leandra came by and fretted over the powdery mildew that has taken over his significant cucumber crop.  His chili peppers are doing fantastic, though.

My butternut squash had been infected with squash borers, so I pulled them out and showed the worm living in the stem to Neal and LeAndra.  I transplanted some other squash there and hoped that it would have better luck. 

Some new neighborhood kids came by and we chatted about their getting plots next year and our Free Little Library.  They were too old for the books in the library, so I grabbed some out of the trunk of my car. 

One of the neighborhood landlords has a significant garden behind his properties and we talked about his sizeable zucchini crop.  However, something had been mysteriously and suddenly killing them.  I suspected borers, but we hadn’t seen any frass.  He didn’t have any squash bugs!   I have no words.  He was having some mildew issues and had been using dish soap sprays, which I suggested was bad for the plants.    I recommended a proper fungicide or insecticidal soap instead.  

The mother of two our youth gardeners came out to thank me for the flower planter that I dropped off on their front porch on Thursday.  I invited her to see her children’s garden beds (which, quite frankly, they had neglected all summer).  She had no idea that they had garden beds and promised to send them over regularly to start watering  and weeding so that she could have fresh produce the rest of the summer.  Busted!  Another gentleman was walking down the alley with his Kroger groceries and I saw him checking out the Garden, so I showed him the neighbor plot and encouraged him to stop by and get some kale, tomatoes and peppers.  He harvested some kale to take home with him and said he wanted to get a plot next year that he could weed himself.  I finally left around 4 p.m. and mowed my own lawn, etc.

This morning, I got to the Garden while it was still cool to get ready for the volunteers. I was hoping that our cinder blocks would be delivered this morning so that we could finish that compost bin, but they won’t be coming until late this afternoon.   Then, I thought that I might have them sand and stain our picnic table, but I left the supplies at home.  (I went to pick them up).  I thought that we might try to re-hang our gate sign, but I didn’t have any of the necessary materials.  I need not have worried, because I had more than enough work to keep the ladies busy.  I also finally remembered to post a scarecrow that Straders donated to us last Fall.  I wish that I had remembered it in time for the Women’s Tour last week, but at least I got it up this morning, right?

When YouthBuild installed our new trellis/front gate, Cathy and I had cut back the raspberry brambles behind the youth gardening area.  Since Kimball Farms installed a six-foot chain link fence back there in November 2014, we no longer need our wire fence in that area.  Indeed, it has become impossible to weed back there or to rescue the daffodils that we planted back there in 2011 or 2012.    The brambles tend to shade the kids’ gardens and make it dangerous to tend (with the thorns and all).   I will have to chat with the kids about whether we want to have any raspberries back there (so that they can pick and eat them) or whether they want to plant flowers back there next Spring.

The Old North volunteers cut back the brambles even further, removed the fence posts and then dug out the fence.   I bagged the brambles and ran a few errands around the Garden.  One of their husbands came up and helped me carry out the fence and then roll it up and store it (so that we can use it for trellising later).  Two of them mowed our lawn and the two block watch lots.  Some of the Old North volunteers will later be coming back on Thursday to help the Block Watch cut down the scrub brush that grows up on their lot around the old foundations of the building that used to be there.   Two of them went around and picked up litter near the Garden.  Finally, they helped to weed the paths.    They were supposed to stick around until 11:45, but this old lady was hot and wanted to go home.  So, I kicked them out a little early.  Cathy put them to work helping to make lunch for everyone.

Micayla stopped by with a friend to show off her plot (again) and harvested a yellow carrot.  (She planted multi-colored carrots).   I suggested that her lettuce was past its prime and should be pulled out and that she should take some greens home to eat.

While all of this was going on, City Councilman Hardin stopped by.   He was all dressed up in this heat.  (Unlike last week, I did not dress up in clean street clothes, but was wearing my typical gardening garb).   Cathy showed him a bit of camp (and, I hope, their extensive bike loan program for the neighborhood kids).  On their way up to see the house rehabilitation project, they stopped by the SACG to see the UC volunteers hard at work.  I told him how we were a plot garden which drew gardeners from the neighborhood, Bexley, Eastmoor, Berwick, German Village and the Short North.  Plots are only $10 each (with the fee waived for neighborhood gardeners who cannot afford it).  We spent our entire earned income for the year by getting one tank refilled (not both tanks) this summer.    I told him about the various groups who come to volunteer, our berries, cherries, peaches, Free Little Library and  neighbor beds and how supportive the neighborhood landlords have been.  He also likes to garden.   I told him about Colonia (who had been a UC kid over 10 years ago) and Marcel, who has taken the bus – with a transfer – to get to the SACG from where she lives at James and Livingston for the past three years to learn to grow food.   I also explained that the Conservatory donates most of our seeds and that I start seedlings in February and March so that none of the gardeners have to buy anything unless they really want to do so.  Because we were standing next to the compost bins, I also explained how Stan had become obsessed with leveling them out and we hoped to finish the cinder block bin this Sunday when the Bexley United Methodist Youth Fellowship are volunteering.

I also – as you can expect – told him that I have no idea how much food each gardener grows and have no way of estimating it.  Some grow a lot and some a little.  Some are good and some are new.  They don’t have report it to me.  I do, however, keep track of what we donate to area food pantries and Faith Mission, which, to date, exceeds 3,000 pounds.   For this reason, we cannot provide information to the City as requested about how much we grow so that we can get a$250 Lowe’s voucher.  He asked who was requiring this and said it would get worked out.

I didn’t tell him about how the other community gardens are affected.  For instance, Highland Youth is able to pay staff to complete the City’s questionnaire (unlike the SACG which relies exclusively on volunteers like me).  Nonetheless, the HYG didn’t try (like we did) to list all of the vegetables and flowers that they grow pursuant to the City’s request.  They are centrally organized (unlike the SACG where each gardener decides for herself or himself what to grow and how much to grow and how much to harvest, etc), so they are able to create an estimate of how much they give away and to where.   In essence, a percentage is fraction.  I know the numerator (the top number of the fraction), but not the bottom number, so that I cannot estimate a percentage.  While the top number may be 500, I don’t know if the denominator (bottom number) is 1000, 2000, 3000, 5,000 or 10,000 and that makes a big difference in trying to estimate a percentage.     

My view is if the City wants a number pulled out of thin air, they should come over and look at the Garden for themselves and make their own estimate because their guess would be as good as mine.  But if a guess is all they want, then what good is the number anyway?  If the number is unreliable, why should we have to provide one at all?    Another option would be to simply come up with the square footage of the land growing vegetables and then extrapolate from a couple of gardens which keep track of such information how much of what is likely being grown.   Either solution would not create more work and more burdens for overworked community gardeners like me.  Gee whiz. 

I also spent some time this morning hunting squash bugs, of course.  And I am trying out a fungicide for the powdery mildew attacking our squash.  I only sprayed half of my crop (to see how it does in this sun) and will spray the rest if my squash is still alive tomorrow evening when I will next visit the Garden.  Wednesday evening is our annual water shoot out at the SACG Coral.  Don’t stop by if you don’t want to risk getting wet.

We’ve also been contacted by the OSU Honor’s program about possibly providing us with a couple of volunteer honor students this Fall who are working on a project involving food security.  I offered to put them in charge of our weekly food pantry harvest so that they could harvest the produce (weigh and record it for me) and then deliver it to the food pantry or shelter of their choice.  I could even arrange for them to chat with pantry/shelter staff.  If they start early enough, they can even have input into what Fall crops we plant for our final harvest in mid-November.  

We are well into another rotation of crops at the SACG.  Our lettuce has pretty much all been harvested (or has gone bitter and to seed).  I’ve planted several rows of bush beans (which are getting eaten by beetles and grasshoppers) and a row of beets.   When the beans go, we’ll be ready to plant Fall crops at the end of August (when we’re expecting a group of OSU Pay-it-Forward volunteers).   

Someone (likely a SACG gardener) anonymously dropped off six or seven cucumber seedlings at my plot. (This is likely because I let it slip last weekend that I cannot get my hair cut again until I have a fresh cucumber to produce to my hairdresser as I promised during my last haircut on June 10).   I put a couple cucumber plants in the kids' beds and a few in the food pantry plots.    I’ve even been thinking about starting some new broccoli seedlings for Fall.  I planted some more basil last night because our herb garden needs to be filled in and Marcel wants some (but, mysteriously, won’t try planting it herself despite the dozens of basil seed packets in the shed).