A Wet June

It’s been a story of rain, fruit flies and compost at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden this week.    We received almost 3 inches of rain again the past week.  The plants are growing quickly and we have spent the last week weeding a lot.  We have tart cherries in season and our black raspberries should start producing this weekend. 

Because of the weird April weather, we seem to only have one cherry tree fruiting this year.  However, as the cherries began to ripen, I realized that I had again delayed too long to spray them to deter the fruit flies that increase in number every season.  I put up fruit fly traps to see if they had woken from their winter slumber.  They had.  So, I borrowed Cathy’s sprayer and sprayed the cherry and peach trees on Friday, an hour before it started raining.   Strader’s recommended Captain Jack’s Deadbug Brew, which is a bacteria that you spray on the plant and it kills the bugs when ingested.    I plan to spray again when it stops raining every day.   We need to kill the fruit flies because they lay eggs in the cherries and those eggs hatch to form caterpillars inside the fruit.  The spray apparently also works on cabbages and tomatoes, etc.

On Thursday, I attended the monthly GCGC meeting.  I started attending GCGC meetings back in 2011 when it was primarily a consortium of community gardeners.  However, in the interest of making it an influential political organization with a large membership, the leadership has greatly expanded the membership to include many more individual members (i.e., backyard gardeners).  This has completely changed the personality of the group.   It is less a time to network with friends and colleagues sharing tips and experiences and is far less personal.  The backyard gardeners are not that interested in fundraising, volunteer recruitment, hoop houses, etc.    The speaker was Carrie Kamm from the Columbus Public Health Department.  She covered food safety issues, i.e., how to wash produce and what temperature to store it.  There was a debate about cut leafy greens, because I do not deliver whole plants, but cut off of the outer leaves of the kale and collards for our weekly donations and leave the rest of the plant in the garden to continue growing more leaves.    There was confusion because a leafy green is not considered to be “cut” if you just remove the outer leaves and sell/buy the rest of the plant.  This is often done for aesthetic purposes because the outer leaves are sometimes dirty and bug eaten.  However, when you just harvest the outer leaves and not the rest of the plant, then those leaves are considered to be cut.  Cut leafy greens (and cut tomatoes, etc.) need to be stored at below 41 degrees, although Ms. Kamm thought that it would be ok to delay refrigeration for between 2 and 4 hours after the greens have been removed from the field.   The other interesting aspect of the lecture was that some attendees did not understand that Ms. Kamm was only discussing food safety and not food quality.  While it is true that you do not need to refrigerate fruit (like melons) in field cut form, we all know that it will go bad (as in bad tasting or slimy or wilty) if you do not eat it or refrigerate it soon.  

On Friday, the City delivered 10 cubic yards of com-til.  I had forgotten how large of a pile that was going to be and had envisioned only 2 cubic yards.  I had told the gardeners to take about a half-bag of the compost until I realized how much was there.  Then, I said take a couple of wheelbarrows full.  Now, I’m pushing them to take 4 wheelbarrows each.  They had been pestering me about when it would be delivered.  Ideally, we like to work it into the soil before we plant and now it is too late to do that.  So, we are side dressing the plants.  I will probably also pour it down the rows of plants.   Even though Sabrina already added manure to the corn rows, I will likely add some compost, too.   We need to get rid of the pile asap before it kills all of the grass underneath it.  Our community service volunteers returned for a second week and spent their time weeding the food pantry plot and spread compost.    (They are Westerville girls and were less than thrilled when I told them how com-til is made). 

It was hot on Saturday and it was Art Festival weekend.  However, I was rained out on Friday and then it started raining soon after we arrived on Saturday, so I did not even get to see 1/3 of the artists.  Sigh.   I’m always on the hunt for garden art, ceramic plant tags and pots, etc.   On Sunday, I attended the Orientation Tea for the Old Towne East Neighborhood Association Home and Garden Tour.   There are 14 stops on the tour.  It will start at Franklin Park Conservatory, have 7 more stops on Franklin Park South and will include the SACG.    The tour is on Sunday, July 15.   We will have a bake and lemonade sale for the thirsty trekkers. 

Our raspberries are starting to turn red, which means that we will have berries to pick this weekend.  I think that we will have our second annual Black Raspberry Festival next Saturday, with a bake and plant sale to celebrate our peak berry season.