Not much new at the SACG this week. The weather was a lot better than last week. I thought that I could get in and out in two hours this morning, but it took me twice that long because I ended up harvesting from a few abandoned plots to collect food for the LSS food pantry and ran into Miss Jeanie for the first time in over a month. It turns out that she was growing okra and donated some (as well as butternut squash, greens, zucchini and tomatoes) to our Plant a Row program. She also mowed our grass for us this week because she wanted to master using our new reel mower. Keyante and Dionte moved away last weekend and left a lot of beans and tomatoes in their plot.
The squash bugs and borers have done their job on our curbits. I hauled a number of plants out to the dumpster with bugs in tow. (The bugs have moved on to climbing up my beans, peppers and sweet potatoes, but I doubt that they will eat them). The pumpkins are pretty much done for. I have one zucchini plant and one yellow squash plant left, but was delighted to discover I have a butternut squash plant hanging on as well (as well as the squash growing into my plot from Mike and Beth’s plot next door). I cleaned out the row of chickpeas and harvested a scad of bush and pole beans and reinforced with stakes some tomato cages that had fallen over on top of my precious peppers.
The neighborhood kids keep messing up the shed while trying to take seeds to plant at home. After I cleaned up the shed last week, boxed all of the seeds and put them on a shelf, I found them scattered around on the floor, in the cart and outside the shed. One of the neighbors stopped by to tell me that he had chased some kids away last night trying to break into the shed. Both of our very nice trowels are missing. No one under the age of 18 is supposed to be in the garden without an adult in the garden. I had to have a few parent conferences this morning about this problem and a score of unopened seed packets were returned (but, alas, no trowels as of yet). As Miss Jeannie and I discussed this morning, the garden is not a playground:-)
The birdhouse gourd plant is still going gangbusters, but Rayna told me that a number of the gourds (particularly the ones I photographed last week) have been cut from the vine. Do they know that the gourds are not edible?
The storm knocked over our pole bean teepee on Wednesday, but Keisha helped me put it back up. However, it had fallen again by the time I got there today and I put it back up. The one in my backyard has had similar trouble staying upright, but it has spread onto my climbing roses and Rose of Sharon bush, so those vines keep it from going too horizontal.
I’m going to try and finally schedule the tomato canning class next weekend. Another nice lady from my church’s knitting group mentioned that she has a lot of mason jars she could donate. I know that Barb and Miss Jeannie are interested in learning to can their abundant tomatoes.
Our flowers seem to get prettier every day. I was kicking myself for forgetting to bring sheers to cut some flowers from my plot to beautify my kitchen (and possibly my office).
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