The Long and Winding Road to Season’s End

The long and balmy summer at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden has finally come to an end.  Like last year, we will be having a “late” frost – i.e., after mid-October.  It might come within the next week or, like last year, in November.  So, I still have fresh zinnias for vases at my house.   In the last 10 days, I have finally pulled almost all of the tomatoes, basil and beans from the food pantry and my plots.  Weather permitting, I may pull the rest of the winter (butternut) squash this weekend and harvest most of the rest of the peppers.   This is usually a sad time for me, but I’m actually looking forward to some time off to clean and organize my house and get to some home improvement projects that I never have time to finish during the growing season.

Last year, we were blessed to have help from an OSU sorority to pull out most of the food pantry tomatoes.  That was an ordeal, so this year I planted half of the tomatoes plants that we often plant and opted for a co-op plot of corn, winter squash and pole beans (i.e., the three sisters).    Sabrina cleaned out most of the co-op plot.  This year, no sorority came to my rescue, but Robert Seed from Keep Columbus Beautiful called me on Tuesday afternoon wondering where I was because he was willing to spend an hour helping me to break down the Garden and put it to bed.  I only go to the Garden on Tuesdays for emergencies, but he came back on Wednesday and helped to clean out the tomato food pantry plot and cut down all but two of the remaining corn stalks.   He then showed up again on Saturday morning (before I arrived and while I was washing my car down the street) to wreck more havoc.  I explained that we won’t be pulling out much more until after a hard frost (or our Closing Day(s), whichever comes first).    I told him about how we save seeds for the next year’s season and he started to tell me how organized the Linden area community gardens are with saving their seeds. 

To preserve the soil microbes and to keep the soil from blowing away over the winter, I strongly encourage the gardeners to cut the plants back at the ground instead of the easier action of pulling the plants out by their roots.    Because we are typically still growing food until November, we usually don’t have time to plant and establish a cover crop for the winter.   I’m also thinking about scavenging some shredded leaves from Capital University again to cover some of the plots over the winter, but I worry about those leaves protecting the beetles as well as the soil.  Our kale and collard greens were decimated this Fall by harlequin beetles.   Their damage has been so extensive that I’m not sure that we’ll have much of a final harvest when we close for the season on Saturday November 11.

On Saturday, I was there for most of the day.  I needed to clean out my own plot of two rows of tomatoes and a few eggplants that never produced much of anything (because, among other things, they were overly shaded by the tomatoes and zinnias).   Like last year, I decided to save vines which still had some good sized tomatoes on them.  One of my experiments from last year really paid off:  if you hang the vines in your garage, the tomatoes will continue to ripen.  While they do not taste quite as good as summer tomatoes, they are similar to grocery tomatoes and can be roasted.  Unlike last year, I only had one hook from which I could hang my tomatoes this year, which will impede air circulation.

In addition to spending a few hours cutting back, composting and bagging tomatoes, I had to rescue the tomato ties (to use next year), stack cages and trellises, paint the last portion of our new fence, harvest for the weekly food pantry donation, cut back three additional food pantry tomato plants (in other plots), clean out the rest of the tomatillos, harvest about 8 pounds of volunteer potatoes that came up in two plots from unharvested potatoes from last year, clean out some collards and kale plants that the beetles had killed, water some new flowers, cut back and bag some spent cosmos, empty the tall rain cistern, disconnect both rain cisterns, etc.  Sabrina was batching it this weekend because all of her men went on a cub scout camping trip in the Hocking Hills.  She watered all of the food pantry greens and peppers, kept neighbor, Rose, company, cleaned out some of her tomatoes, helped me with the rain cisterns, harvested a lot of peppers, etc.

There were lots of bees looking for food on Saturday (which was very warm).  I felt bad for them.  There were still some flowering basil, marigold, zinnias and cosmos.   In other words, there is not a lot to choose from these days.  When it gets cold, I always find bees that got stranded in a flower because they can apparently only fly when it is very warm.    Usually, I find them at the end of the season in my African marigolds, but this year, I found some in my basil.

I finally upgraded my cheap blender.  My new one is ridiculously expensive, but it makes kale smoothies that are a smooth as silk.  I finally found a reliable use for my bumper kale crop.  I often make  Tuscan kale (i.e., sautéed with anchovies, garlic and olive oil), kale chips, kale sautéed with Italian sausage and mushrooms, but there’s only so many times a month that you can force yourself to each the same recipe.

My garden experiment this year has been lemon grass.  I saw the seeds at Oakland Nursery in the spring and planted it at home and, I think, at the Garden.  It really looks like an ornamental grass and likes warmth and sun.  I think that I must have weeded it by mistake at the Garden, but I had three large clumps in my home herb garden next to my patio.  It’s a beautiful plant.  However, the bulbs did not really get big enough in one season to use in stir fries.   I found a youtube video that showed how to over winter it in northern climates to replant in the Spring (as well as how to harvest it).  On Sunday, I saved the smaller stalks to replant in the Spring and the rest I harvested to try and use  in recipes.  The grass leaves are razor sharp (and I have the paper cuts to prove it).  I am drying them to use in teas and broths.   The cut stems are already growing again, which is freaky.  I put two pots in a southern window and one pot will go in the basement (to see if it will go dormant and revive in the Spring as promised in the video). 

One of my prior experiments was saffron.  I replanted my crocus bulbs a month late this year, which I hoped would not matter in light of the weather.  However, they have only recently started to poke through the soil and I worry that they won’t bloom in time to avoid frost damage.   I had to order these by mail about five years ago and was surprised to see them now on sale at Oakland Nursery.  They look like regular crocuses, but bloom in the Fall instead of the Spring.  Then, you let the leaves be over the winter and they finally die back in the Spring (when it gets warm), when I dig them up again.   Like regular crocus bulbs, you have to plant them under chicken wire or other barrier to keep the squirrels from digging them up.    Some farmers plant them along side another crop that dies back in the early Fall, but I cannot do that because of those pesky squirrels and the need to use chicken wire.

We have set a new personal best record for food pantry donations this year.  With three weekly food pantry donations left to make in 2017, we have already exceeded last year’s record donation.    Whoo hoo!  That is, of course, largely a reflection of the fact that we had so few individual gardeners this year and, thus, lots of empty plots to use for our food pantry donations.   I’m hoping that with all of the new neighbors moving into the neighborhood and the expressions of interest that we have received so far that we will have more new gardeners next year and fewer food pantry plots.

Our next door neighbor Kimball Farms constructed a high tunnel next door and, I’ve learned, three others on three other plots that they have elsewhere on the Near East Side.  In the past week, they also topped off their raised beds with top soil.    I was speaking with Seth at the Land Bank about the SACG taking title to our lot and he tried to convince me to add a high tunnel to the SACG.  I really need my winters off dude.  Really.  I told him that Betty Weaver and I had considered adding a high tunnel over the middle section of the Garden back in 2010 or 2011, but Betty thought it would be ridiculous to trudge through knee high snow to get to the Garden.  I could not disagree.  We tried using low tunnels over the kids raised beds back in 2012 or 2013, but someone stole our tarps within a week after we installed the hoops, etc.  Those clear plastic tarps are very useful as tents and blankets for the area’s homeless population.  While I can’t say that I blame them for taking them, it killed my appetite for trying winter gardening outside my own back yard (where I occasionally still use a cold frame or low tunnel to extend the growing season for my kale).  However, last winter was so mild (and I expect this winter to be much the same) that ALL of my kale and most of my swiss chard from 2016 survived the winter and are still producing in my back yard. 

Our Closing  Day(s) will be Saturdays, November 4 and 11.  On November 4, some of us will spend

three hours between 9 and 12 cutting back and bagging the raspberry brambles.  There are also lots of volunteer raspberry bushes which we will be digging up and transplanting, so volunteers can take some home if they would like.   We will also probably cut back the remaining pepper plants (depending on the weather forecast).   From 9 until noon on  November 11, the rest of us will clean out the rest of the Garden, clean out the area around the shed where we will then re-stack and store our stakes, cages and trellises, empty the large rain cistern, conduct our final food pantry harvest for the season, (send some herbs and, if wanted, seeds home with our volunteers), etc.  Refreshments will be provided on both days.   Unlike last year, we will not have any capital improvement projects (like moving raised beds, etc.).

Feel free to join us.  Many hands make light work. 

Finally, our Free Little Library seems to be falling apart.  I hope to have time to reinforce it before the season's end.  (It was made with particle board, which is not the most durable material for an outdoor library).   A mysterious and unidentified volunteer (or volunteers) has been keeping it well stocked this Fall with books.  That is much appreciated!