If It’s Not One Thing

Whenever I think that I’m caught up on my work at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden, the next day always brings new surprises and tasks.    A downpour not only helps our plants, but it also fills the Garden with weeds and hours of work to remove them.  Strawberry season is upon us, which means another trip to Hann’s Farm and an evening of making shortcakes and jam or marmalade (or, in my case, syrup).   The beginning of summer also brings truckload after truckload of donations of vegetables and flowers from Straders’ Garden Centers to GCGC.  Accordingly, we have been busy filling flower and vegetable beds at the SACG.   However, horror of horrors.  Lutheran Social Services permanently closed the food pantry where we have been making  most of our produce donations for the last nine years and I’m at a loss as to what to do with all of our extra produce.  But, yesterday, we were visited by a large group of Ohio After School All-Stars from Toledo and Columbus, to help us weed, plant and water.

The lettuce we planted from seed has not grown particularly well this year, unless your first name is Phil.  His lettuce is amazing.  The rest of us, not so much.  Thank goodness that Bill had stopped to donate a bunch of lettuce seedlings for our food pantry plots.  I spoke with one other community garden that was similarly lettuce-challenged this year and we are blaming it on aged seeds or unseasonable soil temperatures.  The lettuce that I started in trays in March did great, so it might be a soil temperature thing. 

Our kale and other greens have been similarly challenged, but the villain has been the voracious flea beetles.  You can recognize their handiwork from the gazillions of tiny holes.  They make a kale leaf look lacy and not in a good way.  Diatomaceous earth is our first solution.   Then, I added row covers to two plots (mine and the food pantry), but that doesn’t help the other gardeners or the neighbor bed (and tends to contort the broccoli and brussel sprout plants).  So, I have resorted to insecticidal soap, diluted neem oil and a combination of the two to kill and (at least temporarily) deter those pests.

Our strawberries were in full season by Memorial Day weekend, so one of our volunteers picked a pound of strawberries for me to take to the food pantry.  But, when I arrived, there was not a car in sight.  I assumed that they had closed for the holiday and hoped that I would find time to take them to the Salvation Army panty later that week.  (I didn’t).   This weekend, I had more strawberries, a pound of leeks, some lettuce and herbs and, again, no cars at the LSS food pantry.  Shocked, I telephoned them and their answering machine said that they were open. So, I got out of my car and found the service entrance locked with a sign saying that they were permanently closed.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  This is one of the busiest food pantries in Columbus and it’s not like hunger has gone away. 

When I drove around the corner, I discovered that they had converted to an online ordering system and that they deliver the order to various community centers.  Now, what am I supposed to do with all of the fresh produce that we harvest every Saturday?  Last year we donated 550 pounds of fresh produce to LSS, mostly greens and tomatoes, but also corn and peppers.   We have donated over 2,100 pounds to that food pantry since 2012.  It’s not just the SACG, either.  Lots of farm and farm market vendors donate their excess on Saturdays just ahead of me.  Nice of LSS to tell me; clearly they do not want any more of our produce.  The Mid-Ohio Food Bank is the only pantry I know of that is open on Saturday afternoons and I’m not driving to and from Grove City every week, kids.   That’s a lot of gas, traffic cones and a lot of crazy traffic.   I ended up driving down to Faith Mission, but I don’t want to do that every week, particularly when I have volunteers waiting back at the Garden, and I’m not entirely convinced that they actually use our produce.  Sigh.  I’m not going to start taking Fridays or Mondays off work to harvest our food pantry plots and make a donation. 

Amy tried to convince me to start taking food to the Reeb Center, but the issue is not just location, it is what is open nearby on Saturday afternoons when I harvest the produce that accepts fresh produce (because some pantries only take non-perishable food).  Some of the produce (like tomatoes, beans, squash corn and onions) will keep in my basement until Monday when I could take it to the Salvation Army down Main Street, but we do not have the capacity to refrigerate our produce and the greens won’t keep in my basement overnight, let alone 36 hours.  I know our greens are popular because I often do not make inside the door of the pantry without a client grabbing them from me on the street when I unload my car.  Sigh.   Grumble.  Grumble.   Broad Street Presbyterian church has a food pantry nearby, but they are only open the morning of the second Saturday each month.   What's a gardener to do?!

This is not a problem that I anticipated ever facing and I’m amazed that LSS thinks that most hungry people own computers and have internet service so that they can order online because that has not been my experience.  Most elderly people (like myself) cannot live off of a cell phone because their eyesight makes it hard to read small type and their fingers don't like the tiny keys.  My own mother is too paranoid to put any personal information (like her name and address) on the internet.  (We feel blessed when she sends the occasional text message).    Oh well.  I guess I could just let it all rot and get back to my own life an hour or so earlier every week . . .  . .  so, if you know of a pantry that is open on the near East Side between noon and 3, please let me know asap.

[Editor's Note:  LSS's brand new Director of Food Pantries has contacted me.    We briefly chatted and LSS is still interested in receiving donations of produce, but not on Saturdays.  She is going to try and figure out how they can contact the growers that formerly donated fresh produce and how and when they can receive such donations.  They had not collected grower contact information in the past.  I'm hoping that she will add it to the LSS Pantry website, too.  I will be posting the new collection information, as well as information about other options to donate produce on Saturday mornings because I still have not found anyone on the Near East Side taking produce on Saturday afternoons.]

As previously mentioned, we have community service volunteers coming every week to help with all of the SACG work.  They weed, water, pick up litter, harvest, mow, etc.  I had made it a chore for our gardeners to supervise them for an hour each Saturday while I run to the food pantry with our donation.   Obviously, I was gone a bit longer than that this week when I had to detour from LSS to Faith Mission.  While I was gone, I had asked the volunteers to weed around the strawberry pot because there was tall grass around it.  Like most people, they don’t know anything about anything when it comes to gardening.   They pulled all of the strawberry plants out of the jar and bagged them along with the grass.   However, they did an excellent job weeding in and around the blueberry bushes and the tomato plot.  I also had them mulch the tomatoes, peppers and strawberries with straw.   Leigh Ann had another group of CS volunteers picking up 65 abandoned tires in the Linden area.   The Block Watch insisted on mowing the lots this weekend, and I was not going to protest too much since we had a lot of weeding and watering to do.  (Most of this week’s tropical storms went north or south of us, AGAIN.  Sunday and today, we received a bit of nice and gentle rain, so I guess that I cannot complain too much).

One of Ken’s neighbors donated their patio pavers and so I need a lot of strong volunteers to lug those around.  I’m thinking that we can put them under our benches and picnic table.  The Block Watch added a bench to their lot last weekend, and so we will divert some to them for the same purpose.

Sabrina, her son, her aunt and I went strawberry picking at Hann’s Farm right after Memorial Day. It’s so much nicer to pick berries at the beginning of the season instead of the end (when there are lots of rotting fruit to pick over).   We wanted to get our berries picked before Alberto’s rain came to Central Ohio.  Indeed, I was rained out of my usual Wednesday evening work at the SACG, so I made jam instead.  I had bought a “jam bucket” of past-prime strawberries at the Farm Market.  Mistake.  They do not jell as well and do not keep at all.  I always make too much jam (and I do not eat a lot of toast), so this year I just made one batch of strawberry-lemon marmalade.  It was yummy.

We had another slight crises (which is defined as anything that raises my blood pressure and pitch of voice).  The City contacted the Block Watch and me about putting a shipping container on the lot where our fruit orchard is so that someone can sell bicycles.  I can’t make this stuff up.  No way.  We were shocked and they were annoyed that we both immediately said no.   Cathy pointed out that it was nice of them to even ask us.  After spending my entire morning at a meeting about the Garden receiving a large grant to install running water (yea!), I lost a whole Thursday afternoon to this because I had to consult with our neighbor partners, loop in others who might be affected (and offended), personally travel to the Garden to take photos to demonstrate how remarkably stupid this idea was and visit with neighbors, visit the site a mile north of us to see similar projects that the City wanted to replicate on the orchard lot, etc.  I restrained myself for a full three hours before looping in the Civic Association President and sending off a ranting email.    Barb was so much more restrained and professional about it, but no less hot about it.  

We’ve been sitting on our hands for five years at the City’s request while two of our non-profit neighbors tried to raise money to build on that lot.  Once the clock ran out, we started planting fruit trees on it again.  We will probably add a row of apple trees this Fall or next Spring.   Then, we are considering adding a row of grape vines and possibly a bee hive.  I'm in favor of adding flower beds between the trees, but that will be a few years down the road.   We don’t have room for a shipping container.  Gee whiz.  We haven’t been mowing that lot every week for five years (at our own expense) so that it could become an eyesore that does not fit with the Franklin Park neighborhood.  Gee whiz. I thought that I had gotten the matter settled, but then they called Barb the next morning to discuss it again and told her to expect to hear more about it NEAC.   Sigh.  I’m getting too old to keep circling the wagons, but I know that none of the neighbors want a shipping container on that lot, so it might not been too hard to gather a crowd with pitchforks (from our shed) and torches to descend on NEAC and City Hall if necessary.   You’d think that there was a shortage of East Main Street store fronts or Land Bank lots so that there was no place else to start a bicycle business. 

We had almost a full house this Saturday.  I tied back my raspberry brambles to keep them from taking over my lettuce, spinach and tomatoes (and got scratched up pretty good) and weeded quite a bit so that I could mulch (with the two bales of straw that I brought back from Hann’s Farm).  I put the CS volunteers to work weeding the food pantry plots.  Sabrina and her entire family came to similarly weed and then left to look at a house she wants to buy.  Amy came and brought us brownies.  Score!  She weeded and mulched and re-edged our southern flower circle and supervised the volunteers when I left to make our weekly food pantry donation.  She has really missed her calling because her landscaping was a beautiful job.   Carly came to weed for an hour or so, but forgot to bring water.  (I always bring a large thermos for the volunteers, but one of them took off the lid (don’t ask me why) and spilled its entire contents).   Alyssa and Taylor came to weed and plant and water.  Three tween neighborhood girls came by to eat the strawberries that we hadn’t already harvested.  One of them expressed a preference for the white berries.  Then, Marcel and Zion came to weed and water (and ask whether Phil had quit because his plot was overcome with weeds, notwithstanding his lovely lettuce).  Barb spent the afternoon working to improve the large flower bed on the Block Watch lot.  I transplanted collards and zucchini and sunflowers and cosmos, sprayed neem oil, weeded what the volunteers could not, re-watered some plants, thinned more turnips, answered questions from passersby, planted more flowers, sprayed poison ivy, put row covers over my squash plants to protect them from squash borers, and pulled bind weed off of the brambles, etc.  I finally left around 7 p.m.  Yes, that’s a 10 hour day – which is why I am freaked about the LSS food pantry closing.  When am I supposed to find more time?  Can you hear me pounding my forehead on my desk?  As it was, I have to return momentarily on Sunday because I forgot to hang the fruit fly traps (to tell me when I need to spray the cherries), harvest daisies for my own house, plug the new spicket on our big rain cistern with one of my many corks because it leaks, and re-spray a big red X in front of our sign while we wait for a third week for a delivery of com-til (generously donated by the same City department that wants to put a shipping container next to the SACG). 

I had to return again on Monday because we were blessed to have volunteer teenagers from the annual all-state camp of the Ohio After-School All Stars.   That morning, I had to visit the Tool Library to borrow 10 trowels.  Until the kids arrived, I put another spicket on the tank because -- go figure -- my cork did not stop the drips.  Ken's head was about to explode when I told him that he could not remove the spicket from the tank to fix it because we could not spare the water.  I also mulched a flower bed (and got all of my clean clothes dirty just minutes before the kids arrived).  I sent half of them over to help Pastor Brown get seedlings into the ground at Kimball Farms and he tortured them by making them work for a while in his hot hoop house.

My team of ASAS (who were mostly from Toledo and Columbus) had a  much more enjoyable time.  I split them into three teams and gave them each a raised bed to weed and plant.  One team chose to plant a pepper seedling, tomatoes and cucumbers.  One was assigned 9 tomato plants and the other planted cucumbers and melons.  then, the first team planted petunias and watered everything south of the Garden.  The other two teams got to prepare the soil and plant two rows of bush beans, a row of pole beans (along a row of corn) and then a row of butternut squash (i.e., the three sisters) before watering everything in.  Then, I took them down to the strawberry patch for five or ten minutes to search and eat strawberries.   Finally, I took them to the southwestern flower bed and showed them how to make daisy chains and let them cut daisies and make their own, while debriefing them about what they learned.

Sadly, we lost two trowels in the process. I searched for them for an hour.  We had lost 3, but I found one underneath the petunia planting project.  I suspect that I might find some under the straw mulch around the tomatoes. 

There had been more Strader's donations (one yesterday when I was rushing around) and today in the rain.   It's that time of year.