Going Out with a Hot Bang

As you know, it has been a very wet June.  Unlike the last couple of years, the rain has been spread out over each of the weeks, which has in many ways made it easier for us to garden at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  We haven’t had to spend a lot of time watering our plants, but have had to spend more time weeding.  Because we are trying out a pilot program with the Municipal Court to use community service volunteers (very few of which have ANY gardening experience), we have been delegating more to volunteers than we usually do.  However, this has proved fatal to our kale and collard crops because some of the volunteers weeded them along with the lambs quarter and pigweed.  Sigh.  The com-til donated by the City and all of the rain has made everything grow into giant versions of themselves, but it also left a giant bare spot in our front lawn just weeks before a the Old Towne East Neighborhood Association Historic Home and Garden tour.

Some of the volunteers have been great.  Others not so much.  Some are stoic and some never stop whining.  Wayne returned last week after a month’s absence and helped to finish off the com-til project for us.  It's too bad (for us) that it was his last week of community service.   I imagine that most of them thought their community service would involve picking up litter and were surprised that they were given weeding or shoveling duties at the SACG.  For two weeks, they did nothing but shovel and dump com-til.  Usually, it also involves some mowing, picking up litter and weeding. Yesterday, we spent half the time watering and then the rest weeding along the alley and the street curb as well as the west fence and a raised bed and some paths.   In the past month, we even had a volunteer that grew up on a farm in Albania.  Yesterday, a neighbor gave one of our volunteers brand new tennis shoes just because he had the right size of foot.  

It was so hot yesterday, that Cathy and I picked up some ice cream sandwiches and popsicles and Cathy brought them down for our volunteers, as well as Sabrina, Amy and myself and offered some to Frank and Barb across the street who were tending the Block Watch lot. 

As faithful readers may recall, I have faced a crises this year since Lutheran Social Services closed its southside food pantry earlier this year and that is where I typically donate most of our fresh produce.  Since that report, LSS has re-opened that food pantry but not on Saturdays.    Sigh.  So, I reached out to some other gardens (who had been as surprised as I to learn about the closure) and I still do not have an early Saturday afternoon location to take fresh produce.    This is highly inconvenient for me

(since weekdays are a non-starter), but I guess that it cannot be helped.   I still go to Faith Mission when we are running late or have to make a Sunday delivery because it is the only place in town which is open 7 days each week until 5 (and serves three free meals a day to anyone who shows up).   I have had to make arrangements with my Board to cover for me at the SACG on Saturday mornings (so that the community service volunteers have a responsible supervisor) so that I can make Saturday morning produce donations and it has not gone smoothly.    Here are the locations that take fresh produce on Saturday mornings: 

1)      Broad Street Presbyterian Church pantry – but only Second Saturdays -- until 10:30 am

2)      Community Kitchen 640 South Ohio Street, but only until 10:00 am

3)      MOFB Kroger Pantry in Grove City 9-1 (if you are not as terrified as I am of the construction, traffic and potholes when driving on I-71 South)

4)      Redeemer Lutheran Church (at James and Scotwood) from 9 until 10:30 a.m.  [Editor's note:  They told me noon and I  delivered July 1 at 11:30, but I showed up at 11 a.m. on July 7 and they had packed up and were heading home even though I had emailed the day before that I was bringing squash.  So, don't bother to come if you can't get there before 10:30 a.m.]

I’ve been going to Redeemer, but yesterday did not arrive until around 11:30 when they were winding down and only had one van there.  

Aside from our strawberries, our fruit has not done well this year.  We only had about a quarter as many cherries and raspberries as usual.  We only have about 5% of last year’s peaches.  I was speaking with Marge at St. Vincent de Paul’s Community Garden and she estimated that they will have virtually no peaches this year (after 120 pounds last year from a single tree) because of their late May cold snap.  
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We had our second Black Raspberry Festival last week, but could not promote it at the Bexley Farmer’s Market because we got rained out (with two inches of rain in just a few hours).  What few people arrived to our Festival  ended up fleeing in short order because it rained on us twice.   

Nonetheless, Amy made some brownies and muffins for our bake sale before she left for  Kentucky for the weekend.  Cathy baked some awesome chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting (which I did not think was even an option).  I made tiny black raspberry pies (complete with lattice or spiral tops) by cutting out circles from regular pie crust and then baking them in giant muffin tins.  They were yummy if I do say so myself.   I also sold perennial plants (like ferns, bee balm, cone flowers, garden phlox, and yarrow) from my yard.  Daniel from Four Seasons City Farm came by and mocked me for not also arranging for a live band and other entertainment.  Sorry buddy, I was busy directing visitors and volunteers.   

I was hoping that the grass on our front lawn would recover quickly once we removed the com-til, but I think most of it is really, really dead.  A couple of days after the com-til was finally taken off the front lawn, I kinda aerated the patch and spread some grass seed.  Because it, of course, stopped raining about then, I have been going to the Garden each night to water that giant patch by hand with watering cans.   This, I know, is probably a fool's errand when the daytime temperatures are routinely above 90 degrees.  I am a wet sloppy mess by the time that I am done. 

I also planted a few flats of flowers that Straders Garden Centers donated through GCGC.  They also have to be watered each night until their roots spread out and become better established.   I am not going to thank the thief who came by and dug up and took home the dozen begonias that I planted in the southeast bed (just a few days after I planted them) along with our strawberry pot filled with petunias.   This is the first theft we have had in a very long time.

Sabrina came by and weeded half of the co-op plot on Saturday and returned last night to water and weed her own plot.  I have been getting mocked a lot about the corn.   Last year, we planted 6-8  twenty-foot rows all at once.  We then planted pole beans a few weeks later among the corn and planted winter squash along the west side of that plot.   Some of you may know this as the Three Sisters.  Naturally, the corn ripened all at once, which is a bit inconvenient.   The beans did not grow up their assigned  corn stalk and made it difficult to walk between the rows, let alone find and harvest the beans before they went to seed.  This year, we planted four twenty-four feet rows.  The second two rows were planted a few weeks after the first couple of rows so that we can space out the harvest.  This is a form of succession planting.  I also decided to only plant beans along the outside rows of corn (even though the whole point is to fix nitrogen in the ground) so that we do not have so much trouble walking in the rows when we are trying to water, weed and harvest.  After all, we have had com-til this year to supply the depleted nitrogen.    We planted quite a few winter squashes along the northside of the plot and they are starting to spread.   Again, their planting has been spread out so that the squash doesn’t ripe all at once.   We will have butternut, delicatta and acorn squash.   

Speaking of squash, despite my best laid plans, the squash bugs and borers found my zucchini.  I had used the wrong sized row cover on them and it never  completely covered them.  Two of the plants have died already.   We have a whole 100 square foot food pantry plot growing zucchini and the bugs are there, too.  So far, I have not found any hatchlings, but it is only a matter of time.    Between the rain and the com-til, those plants are the size of a small car.   When they die, I’ll replace them with bush beans.  I’ve had my best crop of bush beans ever. 

The lack of a real Spring this year has had some weird results.  As mentioned, we lost a lot of fruit.   However, the tomatoes and eggplant have loved the weather. I already have red San Marzano tomatoes and the cherries are not far behind.   I harvested four Asian eggplants on Saturday.   That is just crazy.  We have also had giant peppers on plants.     I had to pull the rest of our lettuce out yesterday, though, because lettuce goes to seed and becomes bitter in hot weather.  Sabrina pulled out most of her romaine a couple of weeks ago and gave me a full basket of it.    She offered me even more last night, but I still haven't eaten the rest of what she had already given me. 

The flowers have looked very good this year.  I think that they may have peaked early, though, instead of mid-July as we would have preferred.  Hopefully, the sunflowers will be in bloom for the ONTENA tour.  We actually had an offer to sell our flowers, but I always decline such offers.  If someone picks our flowers, the neighbors and bees would not get to enjoy them.  Our bee balm has been especially pretty this year.  We have a large patch of it on the northeast and southeast corners of the Garden.  I think that this Fall or next Spring, though, I will dig out the day lilies  and replace them with a large plant with tall pink spikes, like an Angelonia.   I have some in my back yard and my neighbor has some, too.  Capital U has a LOT of it this year as well.