Seems Like Old Times Except for this Week’s Tornado

We have had a beautiful weekend at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  It seems like old times because it is the first weekend in ages and ages that I was there most of the day Saturday all by myself.  However, I sadly discovered that Wednesday’s tornado (which  had hit Old Towne East, Bexley and Eastmoor  and ripped out giant trees and ripped off tree branches, except at my house)  also touched down at the SACG, ripped apart and bent our patio umbrella, ripped leaves off two new apple trees and dumped part of a neighbor’s roof onto the orchard plot.  All things considered, we and our neighbors were very lucky because no one was killed and I have not heard of any serious damage, beyond fallen trees and some damaged cars.  I had checked on the Garden briefly, but only to confirm that the shed and fences were still standing and that our neighbor's black walnut tree had not hurt anyone (as it did a few Halloween's ago when it knocked off a spicket off a rain tank).  I didn't notice the broken umbrella until Saturday morning.   Anyone who is looking to upgrade their patio umbrella should feel free to donate their old umbrella to us.  For that matter, one of our benches has broken a slat, so we need help either repairing it or replacing it for next season. 

The CS volunteers had transportation difficulties and had to cancel at the last minute.  We had a day planned of painting fence posts and braces for our Fall capital improvement project and, of course, mowing after all of the rain that we received this week.  It will be important to get those posts and braces painted before it becomes too cold to do so in a few weeks.  However, it can wait another week.  

I spent the day re-stocking the Free Little Library, weeding the neighbor beds and along the alley compost bins,  clearing out 1-1/2 rows of tomato plants, a row of beans (and trellis) and the dead squash plants from my plot,  clearing out 1-1/2 rows of dead corn stalks from the co-op plot, planting in the food pantry plot  a row of lettuce seedlings that were donated to GCGC on Friday by Strader’s Garden Centers, watering in the new seedlings planted last week, watering four rows of radish seedlings that had sprouted from what the Capital University volunteers planted last week, watering the row of turnips planted by OSU students a few weeks ago,  and then harvesting for our weekly food pantry delivery, which was to Faith Mission’s Homeless Shelter.   I then returned to harvest my own produce and pick some flowers for myself and an OSU football watch party that I was attending.  

Our donations are behind year to date from last year, but then we had to keep a plot out of cultivation pending completion of our water project.   We are still ahead of or at the pace for 2014, 2015 and 2016, but I do not expect to exceed those years either because we had gardeners drop out late those seasons, resulting in the donation of all of their produce. 

We will miss our patio umbrella.  Shame on you Tornado

Although I enjoyed the peace and quiet on Saturday and being able to work at a leisurely pace without running around answering questions, I look forward to company next weekend.  This week looks to continue summer weather until October 13, by which time I will be pulling the rest of the hot weather crops, especially basil and probably our sweet potatoes.   We will spend Saturday painting posts and braces and won’t have time for anything else until everything that needs to be painted has been painted.  That will leave us one month to prune the berry brambles, put in the posts and attach the braces to straighten the fence along the north and south sides of the Garden.   I hope that we have some big strong men to dig those posts, because it requires effort.

Seems Like Old Times Except for this Week’s Tornado

We have had a beautiful weekend at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  It seems like old times because it is the first weekend in ages and ages that I was there most of the day Saturday all by myself.  However, I sadly discovered that Wednesday’s tornado (which  had hit Old Towne East, Bexley and Eastmoor  and ripped out giant trees and ripped off tree branches, except at my house)  also touched down at the SACG, ripped apart and bent our patio umbrella, ripped leaves off two new apple trees and dumped part of a neighbor’s roof onto the orchard plot.  All things considered, we and our neighbors were very lucky because no one was killed and I have not heard of any serious damage, beyond fallen trees and some damaged cars.  I had checked on the Garden briefly, but only to confirm that the shed and fences were still standing and that our neighbor's black walnut tree had not hurt anyone (as it did a few Halloween's ago when it knocked off a spicket off a rain tank).  I didn't notice the broken umbrella until Saturday morning.   Anyone who is looking to upgrade their patio umbrella should feel free to donate their old umbrella to us.  For that matter, one of our benches has broken a slat, so we need help either repairing it or replacing it for next season. 

The CS volunteers had transportation difficulties and had to cancel at the last minute.  We had a day planned of painting fence posts and braces for our Fall capital improvement project and, of course, mowing after all of the rain that we received this week.  It will be important to get those posts and braces painted before it becomes too cold to do so in a few weeks.  However, it can wait another week.  

I spent the day re-stocking the Free Little Library, weeding the neighbor beds and along the alley compost bins,  clearing out 1-1/2 rows of tomato plants, a row of beans (and trellis) and the dead squash plants from my plot,  clearing out 1-1/2 rows of dead corn stalks from the co-op plot, planting in the food pantry plot  a row of lettuce seedlings that were donated to GCGC on Friday by Strader’s Garden Centers, watering in the new seedlings planted last week, watering four rows of radish seedlings that had sprouted from what the Capital University volunteers planted last week, watering the row of turnips planted by OSU students a few weeks ago,  and then harvesting for our weekly food pantry delivery, which was to Faith Mission’s Homeless Shelter.   I then returned to harvest my own produce and pick some flowers for myself and an OSU football watch party that I was attending.  

Our donations are behind year to date from last year, but then we had to keep a plot out of cultivation pending completion of our water project.   We are still ahead of or at the pace for 2014, 2015 and 2016, but I do not expect to exceed those years either because we had gardeners drop out late those seasons, resulting in the donation of all of their produce. 

We will miss our patio umbrella.  Shame on you Tornado

Although I enjoyed the peace and quiet on Saturday and being able to work at a leisurely pace without running around answering questions, I look forward to company next weekend.  This week looks to continue summer weather until October 13, by which time I will be pulling the rest of the hot weather crops, especially basil and probably our sweet potatoes.   We will spend Saturday painting posts and braces and won’t have time for anything else until everything that needs to be painted has been painted.  That will leave us one month to prune the berry brambles, put in the posts and attach the braces to straighten the fence along the north and south sides of the Garden.   I hope that we have some big strong men to dig those posts, because it requires effort.

When There Are No Words

We have always been particularly blessed at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.   We have had nice volunteer groups the past two Saturdays.  We FINALLY have running water as a backup. But sometimes, the sun doesn’t shine and everything goes wrong.  This has been that kind of month.   We lost another giant in the local community garden movement 50 years too soon.  Although obviously not as sad in the great scheme of things, my personal sweet potato crop is looking like a bust (from lack of sun where I planted them in my plot).   A corporate volunteer group that contacted me out of the blue in August to volunteer last week, then emailed me just 13 hours before they were to arrive by saying “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter.”  What is a food shelter?  Of course, Cathy and I already spent an hour on Sunday picking up Granny Smith, Jonathan and McIntosh apple trees for them to plant and I ran to Lowes the night before (instead of getting some exercise) to get them paint.  Although I returned to water the saplings once during the week’s heat wave, the Granny Smith tree died before we could plant it on Saturday.     But the weekend ended on a high note when one of my best high school buddies stopped by on his way back to NYC. 

The annual Growing to Green Awards Banquet was earlier this month. Just hours earlier, we learned that Patrick Kaufman, one of the co-founders of Franklinton Gardens n/k/a Franklinton Farms had been moved to hospice.  He died as the event was ending.  He was only 40 years old.  Bill Dawson had been particularly fond of Patrick and was always giving him things for his community garden, like scales, tools, etc.  Bill created a beautiful vegetable memorial to Patrick and Marie Moreland (who died last yearjust after we all learned that Patrick had Stage IV Melanoma that had spread to his brain).  A Go Fund Me campaign raised money to support his young family.  Patrick was so devoted to community gardening and agriculture, was much loved and will be much missed.  The ceremony of his life was standing room only at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Delaware.   Nick and Rain Brother Jonathan gave particularly moving eulogies.   "Real quick" is a phrase that I will be adding to my regular vocabulary.

The following Saturday, we had some great volunteers.  They put our compost bins back together (while ensuring easy access to our water meter and tap), putting com-til into the bins, mowing our lawn, the orchard lawn and the Block Watch lot, cleaned the brambles from around the shed to make room for us to store our trellises and cages as the season winds down, started cleaning out the tomato plot that had been damaged by a trespassing vandal the week before, harvested for our weekly donation, etc.  While they were extremely helpful, they were not perfect.  One of them inadvertently hacked way too much of our raspberry bushes, and they failed to find and pick many green beans for our food pantry donation.  (I kept finding more after they left).  

The City came to install the meter, but thought that the pit had flooded (which it had not).   The next time, the City thought that there was hissing.  Our plumber from Rain One objected and the meter was then installed the following week.  Hooray!  Our plumber then showed me how to access the meter, how to use a curb key to control each hydrant, how to use these special hydrants (which have built-in backflow preventers), etc.  We need to find locks, though, because our bibb locks will not work on these hydrants because of the special built-in backflow preventer.  He is looking into it.   We are not going to need the water this year because of the buckets of rain that we have received.   I’m sure that Rain One is as glad as I am that we are finished with this project.

Our water connection was provided through a grant that we received from the Mid-Ohio Food Bank’s Urban Agriculture program through a grant received from the USDA to support urban agriculture.    We are seriously excited.  While leaving Marion Smithberger’s 40^thanniversary with the CBA party, I ran into Alyssa who was my co-conspirator in starting the SACG in 2009 and in getting the the Bexley Community Garden (n/k/a the south garden) operating that first year.  I told her that we had finally gotten running water.  She observed that the new Bexley Community Garden (k/a the north garden) has a dozen water hydrants and they had running water overnight from the very beginning.  Nice compare and contrast, n’est pas?  (But the north garden has really crappy soil). 

In August, I received an email from  Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical.  “My team (10 total) would like to spend our day volunteering at the Stoddart Avenue Garden.  Would you be able to help me coordinate time, day and activities?”  I would be “delighted.”  The volunteer organizer wanted to know what they would be doing, which, of course, depended on when they came and I described the various activities that we do depending on the time of the month.  “The exact date of service is September 19th. 9am- 12pm., “ she responds.   Great, I say, I have put you on our calendar.  I gave her our address, gave her directions, and told her not to wear white or open toed shoes because they were likely to get dirty.  Then, crickets.  I heard nothing for six weeks.  

Because I had described that they could possibly plant apple trees if they came mid-to-late September, we purchased three apple trees on sale from Strader’s Garden Centers.   Cathy was supposed to pick up her children from their out-of-town grandparents, but she cancelled that to pick up our trees for the J&J volunteers.  I was supposed to work out on Tuesday evening, but cancelled it to pick up paint for the J&J volunteers.  We like our volunteers to have fun and to make a real difference at the SACG.  

I sent another confirmatory email on September 17.  Again, crickets.  I became concerned.  Cathy shared with me that corporate groups are highly unreliable and high maintenance.  She told me horror stories.  I’m not a newbie in working with Fortune 500 corporations, so I thought that I had this covered.  But, after 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the organizer finally emails me: “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter. We will keep the garden in mind for next summer.”  Seriously?!  Don’t bother.  She clearly did not understand that I am a volunteer and she wasted my time.   I was taking time off from work to be there.   Not just my time, but Cathy’s time, too.    She could not care less about how much she inconvenienced people who have never done her any harm.   If this is the kind of person that J&J is counting on to lead it in the future, I have doubts that the company is likely to do well against more sensible and responsible competitors.    

Luckily, we had a great group of student volunteers coming from Capital University.   We also had two big strong guys sent to us by the Municipal Court.   Digging tree holes is serious work, so I had the CS volunteers attack that.   I gave them donuts to energize them.   They told me that it was very hard work.  They backfilled the holes with a mixture of the soil and com-til and then watered them in.   When they finished, one mowed the lawn, and  one moved the rest of the com-til to the rest of the compost bins. They also helped me to remove more of the spent sunflowers (whose seeds had been picked clean by the neighborhood finches).    

When the first group of Capital students came, I gave them donuts while I oriented them.  After explaining what projects we had available (including helping to plant the trees), they wanted to clean out the tomato plot and plant radishes.  However, at that point, they remembered that they were supposed to be next door at Kimball Farms.  Yikes!  

Luckily, about 10 minutes later, a larger Capital student group appeared.  By then, the donuts were gone.  So, I oriented them, too, and they did not want to pick their own project.  Gee.  So, I assigned them to clean out the tomato plot and plant rows and rows of radishes.  One of them was originally from Thailand, which is our first.  I did not bore her with how much I love Thai food (how cliché), or that I’m growing a GIANT lemon grass bush at home, etc., because she had never grown anything in her life.  She had a great time using the cultivator preparing the ground for planting.  I had to take it away so that the other students could take turns.   So, this year, we have now had volunteers from Korea, Thailand, and Albania.   I'm feeling quite cosmopolitan for someone who rarely travels more than a few miles from my community garden.

One student picked up neighborhood litter.  They all picked about four pounds of green beans.    Good job!  They also had to nest the tomato cages and stack and roll the trellises, weeded the paths and around the raised beds, and helped me to weed along the southern fence line and remove the weed trees.  The compatriots next door cleaned out garden beds and filled the neighborhood’s trash dumpsters all along the alley with weeds and vegetable plants.

Both of these guys ended up in NYC and I'm here

Fall finally arrived on Saturday and it was too cool to paint.  But it was so much more pleasant to work in this weather.   Earlier in the morning, one of my best friends from high school emailed me that he was going to be in our hometown (from NYC where he currently lives).  I hadn’t seen him since the summer that I graduated from college.   He graduated from Colby and then went to Ecuador with the Peace Corps.  He later started a recycling business in NYC (years ahead of anyone else), paying homeless individuals for finding and returning bottles and cans, but it only lasted four years.  For the last 20 years, he has had a landscaping business in NYC during our growing season and a fruit farm in Ecuador during our winter.  When I explained that I could not get away very quickly because we were planting apple trees, he decided that he had to see the Garden and suggested driving by on his way back to NYC.  (I then had to quickly clean up my house and yard.  Yikes.).  

He and his wife stopped by Sunday morning.  Sabrina was at the Garden harvesting sweet potatoes and cleaning out her plot.  She offered them some of her produce (including giant sweet potatoes), which delighted Paul’s wife.   They live in a high-rise apartment on the upper west side and can’t grow their own food while up here.  She clearly misses it and has her own dehydrator when in Ecuador.  I sent her home with some of my poblano and jalapeno peppers and three types of homemade jam from cherries that we grew, and strawberries and peaches  that we picked. 

So, it’s been a busy week with both highs and lows. 

When There Are No Words

We have always been particularly blessed at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.   We have had nice volunteer groups the past two Saturdays.  We FINALLY have running water as a backup. But sometimes, the sun doesn’t shine and everything goes wrong.  This has been that kind of month.   We lost another giant in the local community garden movement 50 years too soon.  Although obviously not as sad in the great scheme of things, my personal sweet potato crop is looking like a bust (from lack of sun where I planted them in my plot).   A corporate volunteer group that contacted me out of the blue in August to volunteer last week, then emailed me just 13 hours before they were to arrive by saying “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter.”  What is a food shelter?  Of course, Cathy and I already spent an hour on Sunday picking up Granny Smith, Jonathan and McIntosh apple trees for them to plant and I ran to Lowes the night before (instead of getting some exercise) to get them paint.  Although I returned to water the saplings once during the week’s heat wave, the Granny Smith tree died before we could plant it on Saturday.     But the weekend ended on a high note when one of my best high school buddies stopped by on his way back to NYC. 

The annual Growing to Green Awards Banquet was earlier this month. Just hours earlier, we learned that Patrick Kaufman, one of the co-founders of Franklinton Gardens n/k/a Franklinton Farms had been moved to hospice.  He died as the event was ending.  He was only 40 years old.  Bill Dawson had been particularly fond of Patrick and was always giving him things for his community garden, like scales, tools, etc.  Bill created a beautiful vegetable memorial to Patrick and Marie Moreland (who died last year just after we all learned that Patrick had Stage IV Melanoma that had spread to his brain).  A Go Fund Me campaign raised money to support his young family.  Patrick was so devoted to community gardening and agriculture, was much loved and will be much missed.  The ceremony of his life was standing room only at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Delaware.   Nick and Rain Brother Jonathan gave particularly moving eulogies.   "Real quick" is a phrase that I will be adding to my regular vocabulary.

The following Saturday, we had some great volunteers.  They put our compost bins back together (while ensuring easy access to our water meter and tap), putting com-til into the bins, mowing our lawn, the orchard lawn and the Block Watch lot, cleaned the brambles from around the shed to make room for us to store our trellises and cages as the season winds down, started cleaning out the tomato plot that had been damaged by a trespassing vandal the week before, harvested for our weekly donation, etc.  While they were extremely helpful, they were not perfect.  One of them inadvertently hacked way too much of our raspberry bushes, and they failed to find and pick many green beans for our food pantry donation.  (I kept finding more after they left).  

The City came to install the meter, but thought that the pit had flooded (which it had not).   The next time, the City thought that there was hissing.  Our plumber from Rain One objected and the meter was then installed the following week.  Hooray!  Our plumber then showed me how to access the meter, how to use a curb key to control each hydrant, how to use these special hydrants (which have built-in backflow preventers), etc.  We need to find locks, though, because our bibb locks will not work on these hydrants because of the special built-in backflow preventer.  He is looking into it.   We are not going to need the water this year because of the buckets of rain that we have received.   I’m sure that Rain One is as glad as I am that we are finished with this project.

Our water connection was provided through a grant that we received from the Mid-Ohio Food Bank’s Urban Agriculture program through a grant received from the USDA to support urban agriculture.    We are seriously excited.  While leaving Marion Smithberger’s 40^th anniversary with the CBA party, I ran into Alyssa who was my co-conspirator in starting the SACG in 2009 and in getting the the Bexley Community Garden (n/k/a the south garden) operating that first year.  I told her that we had finally gotten running water.  She observed that the new Bexley Community Garden (k/a the north garden) has a dozen water hydrants and they had running water overnight from the very beginning.  Nice compare and contrast, n’est pas?  (But the north garden has really crappy soil). 

In August, I received an email from  Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical.  “My team (10 total) would like to spend our day volunteering at the Stoddart Avenue Garden.  Would you be able to help me coordinate time, day and activities?”  I would be “delighted.”  The volunteer organizer wanted to know what they would be doing, which, of course, depended on when they came and I described the various activities that we do depending on the time of the month.  “The exact date of service is September 19th. 9am- 12pm., “ she responds.   Great, I say, I have put you on our calendar.  I gave her our address, gave her directions, and told her not to wear white or open toed shoes because they were likely to get dirty.  Then, crickets.  I heard nothing for six weeks.  

Because I had described that they could possibly plant apple trees if they came mid-to-late September, we purchased three apple trees on sale from Strader’s Garden Centers.   Cathy was supposed to pick up her children from their out-of-town grandparents, but she cancelled that to pick up our trees for the J&J volunteers.  I was supposed to work out on Tuesday evening, but cancelled it to pick up paint for the J&J volunteers.  We like our volunteers to have fun and to make a real difference at the SACG.  

I sent another confirmatory email on September 17.  Again, crickets.  I became concerned.  Cathy shared with me that corporate groups are highly unreliable and high maintenance.  She told me horror stories.  I’m not a newbie in working with Fortune 500 corporations, so I thought that I had this covered.  But, after 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the organizer finally emails me: “Apologies. We have chosen to do our service at a nearby food shelter. We will keep the garden in mind for next summer.”  Seriously?!  Don’t bother.  She clearly did not understand that I am a volunteer and she wasted my time.   I was taking time off from work to be there.   Not just my time, but Cathy’s time, too.    She could not care less about how much she inconvenienced people who have never done her any harm.   If this is the kind of person that J&J is counting on to lead it in the future, I have doubts that the company is likely to do well against more sensible and responsible competitors.    

Luckily, we had a great group of student volunteers coming from Capital University.   We also had two big strong guys sent to us by the Municipal Court.   Digging tree holes is serious work, so I had the CS volunteers attack that.   I gave them donuts to energize them.   They told me that it was very hard work.  They backfilled the holes with a mixture of the soil and com-til and then watered them in.   When they finished, one mowed the lawn, and  one moved the rest of the com-til to the rest of the compost bins. They also helped me to remove more of the spent sunflowers (whose seeds had been picked clean by the neighborhood finches).    

When the first group of Capital students came, I gave them donuts while I oriented them.  After explaining what projects we had available (including helping to plant the trees), they wanted to clean out the tomato plot and plant radishes.  However, at that point, they remembered that they were supposed to be next door at Kimball Farms.  Yikes!  

Luckily, about 10 minutes later, a larger Capital student group appeared.  By then, the donuts were gone.  So, I oriented them, too, and they did not want to pick their own project.  Gee.  So, I assigned them to clean out the tomato plot and plant rows and rows of radishes.  One of them was originally from Thailand, which is our first.  I did not bore her with how much I love Thai food (how cliché), or that I’m growing a GIANT lemon grass bush at home, etc., because she had never grown anything in her life.  She had a great time using the cultivator preparing the ground for planting.  I had to take it away so that the other students could take turns.   So, this year, we have now had volunteers from Korea, Thailand, and Albania.   I'm feeling quite cosmopolitan for someone who rarely travels more than a few miles from my community garden.

One student picked up neighborhood litter.  They all picked about four pounds of green beans.    Good job!  They also had to nest the tomato cages and stack and roll the trellises, weeded the paths and around the raised beds, and helped me to weed along the southern fence line and remove the weed trees.  The compatriots next door cleaned out garden beds and filled the neighborhood’s trash dumpsters all along the alley with weeds and vegetable plants.

Both of these guys ended up in NYC and I'm here

Fall finally arrived on Saturday and it was too cool to paint.  But it was so much more pleasant to work in this weather.   Earlier in the morning, one of my best friends from high school emailed me that he was going to be in our hometown (from NYC where he currently lives).  I hadn’t seen him since the summer that I graduated from college.   He graduated from Colby and then went to Ecuador with the Peace Corps.  He later started a recycling business in NYC (years ahead of anyone else), paying homeless individuals for finding and returning bottles and cans, but it only lasted four years.  For the last 20 years, he has had a landscaping business in NYC during our growing season and a fruit farm in Ecuador during our winter.  When I explained that I could not get away very quickly because we were planting apple trees, he decided that he had to see the Garden and suggested driving by on his way back to NYC.  (I then had to quickly clean up my house and yard.  Yikes.).  

He and his wife stopped by Sunday morning.  Sabrina was at the Garden harvesting sweet potatoes and cleaning out her plot.  She offered them some of her produce (including giant sweet potatoes), which delighted Paul’s wife.   They live in a high-rise apartment on the upper west side and can’t grow their own food while up here.  She clearly misses it and has her own dehydrator when in Ecuador.  I sent her home with some of my poblano and jalapeno peppers and three types of homemade jam from cherries that we grew, and strawberries and peaches  that we picked. 

So, it’s been a busy week with both highs and lows. 

Oh The Drama! As The Garden Turns . . . .

We have had a bit of excitement at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden in the last ten days.  Although our harvests peaked at the end of August, there is still a lot going on.  Our water lines have finally been connected to the City water main tap and passed inspection.  Yea!  A vandal came, caused a bit of senseless damage and stole pieces from the water connections.  Boo!  We expanded our pantry list. Yea!  The groundhog returned to Sabrina’s plot.  Boo!  Sabrina had to harvest her sweet potatoes early to keep the groundhog from getting them and they were large and prolific.  Yea!   I had to miss a weekend because of funerals.  Boo!  Amy stepped in with our returning CS volunteers and got the alley cleaned up in the three-day downpour known as Gordon.  Wow!

Since my last post, we had a long hot and dry spell over the three day Labor Day weekend.  Instead of my usual long Saturday, I spent just Saturday and Monday morning at the SACG.   On Saturday, I cleaned out the squash plot because it was apparent that there would be no more zucchini this season.  I also pruned back many dying sunflowers.  I don’t pull them out because our neighborhood finches love to eat the seeds in the dead flower heads.  I had watered my plot in very well on Wednesday and watered the food pantry plots heavily this morning.   I took Saturday’s food pantry harvest (melons, tomatoes, beans, eggplant, corn, collards, etc.) to Redeemer before they closed up shop for the day.   It was very hot.

On Monday, I prepared the zucchini plot to get it ready for planting on Wednesday (because it was supposed to rain all weekend).  I decided to try double digging the rows for a change of pace.  I harvested even more tomatoes and eggplant, etc., watered my plot, etc.  On Tuesday, I took the food pantry harvest to the House of Hope pantry on East Main Street in Whitehall. They were closed when I arrived, but there were volunteers inside.   Apparently, I was supposed to know to take the produce around back.  (I had called earlier and not been told that, but now I know).  

On Wednesday, our water lines were supposed to be connected and inspected that afternoon by the City.  I heard nothing.  After 30 minutes, I could not take the suspense any longer and drove over to the Garden.   I could tell that work had been done because the trench was gone and a mess was left.  I did not find a tag or anything, so I went into the Garden and was distressed by what I found.  The first thing that I noticed was that the front hydrant was in the on position.  The water has not been turned on, so we were not losing a fortune.   I turned right and the tomato plot had been ravaged.  The trellises were all horizontal and vines were damaged.  The yard waste bag that held all of the diseased and dead squash plants and sunflower branches (from my work on Saturday) had been emptied back into the plot on top of the cleaned and cultivated rows.  A green tomato was on the path with a bite taken out of it. A waste can was lying sideways in the path.  Potting soil bags had been tossed around.  Weeds had been pulled out and thrown around from one of the platform raised beds.  Wow.  

I walked out and stood along the alley when neighbor Karen came home. I asked what she knew about this.   She told me a crazy or drugged person had been there screaming that he was looking for something.  The police were called.  He was found hiding in the plumbing trench underneath the plywood.  He was taken away.  Yikes.

I went home and called our plumbing contractor.  No answer.  I called the plumber’s cell phone and he says:  What do you know?  I told him what I had just seen.  He then tells me that he was there on Tuesday, which is when the inspection was held and we passed. Yea!  When he returned to fill in the trench, he discovered the vandalism and then reported that the vandal took pieces from the plumbing fixtures, so that we could not connect the water meter until those pieces were replaced.  AAAGGGHHH.    He has since taken care of that.   I had to call the Water Department to get our meter installed, which will happen next week.   He will then return and turn the water on and test our hydrants.   Then, we will be ready for the next drought or extended dry spell.  Yea!

That night, I returned (and almost had a car accident when I ran another car off the street when pulling over without using my turn signal to offer neighbor Rose a ride back to her house.  Yikes).  Sabrina came with Finn.  That stupid groundhog had been munching on her sweet potato vines again and had even begun to dig them up.   I thought that I had plugged the hole in the fence with bricks last week, so I threw some more stones around.  Maybe it’s coming in under the gate.   I was curious how our sweet potato crop was doing because I’m not really an expert.  I wasn’t going to start any this year when one of my sweet potatoes started forming its own leaves off of its eyes.  That’s not usually how I start our plants, but I decided to go with it this year and see how it went.  They got off to a slow start, but the vines have quite literally taken over about 25% of the SACG.  I’ve been a little concerned that they might be all vines and no potatoes.  (Like a Texan with all hat and no cattle).  But when Sabrina dug up just one of her four hills, she brought fourth many large sweet potatoes and sent one home with me.  Sweet potato fries anyone?  I’ll have to borrow the air fryer that I gave my sister for Xmas. . . . Sabrina is worn out with the Garden, her kids and her new job.  So, she’s going to pack it up early this year and put in a cover crop.

Sabrina helped me to fix the vandalism to the tomato plot and I planted a couple rows of lettuce and a row of turnips for our November harvest.   I'm not optimistic that the beets we planted with the OSU students in late August survived the heat wave over Labor Day weekend.  

On Thursday, I attended the monthly meeting of the Greater Columbus Growing Coalition at the Bethany Garfield Presbyterian Church.  I was late because the mother of one of my college-Bexley friends died quite unexpectedly on Tuesday, so I baked and delivered a cherry pie (with some cherries that I picked at the SACG).   Our featured speaker was OSU Extension educator Tim McDermott who was talking about putting our gardens to bed and growing spinach over the winter.  Tim recommended planting oats right now as a cover crop in non-corn plots because it dies back pretty well when pulled up in the Spring.  In contrast, in a few weeks, rye is the recommended cover crop and it is almost impossible to kill in the Spring.    Oats and rye are not recommended for our corn plot because they are plants in the same family.  He talked about a three-year crop rotation (although I practice a four-year crop rotation with tomatoes/peppers/eggplants – beans/peas – squash – brassicas/lettuce/onions/root crops).   You can also use radishes, field peas, cow peas, Austrian winter peas, vetch, and crimson clover.   I have become partial to chick weed because it dies back on its own in the Spring and I roll it up like carpet as I plant in my plot. 

Like I tell our gardeners at the SACG, he does not recommend pulling plants out the ground at the end of the season unless they are diseased or are tomatoes, which are always diseased by the end of the season.  It is especially stupid to pull beans out of the ground because the nitrogen nodules on their roots fertilize the soil.   Pulling roots out leaves the soil without nutrients and encourages erosion over the winter.    If we don’t have time or money for cover crops, he recommends that we cover our vegetable beds with shredded leaves (which we’ve done once or twice at the SACG).   Like me, he also discourages throwing tomato vines or other diseased plants and leaves into the compost bins because then you will be cursing your compost to spread those diseases when you distribute it in your beds next season.  

He recommended that we prepare any new planting beds in the Fall instead of waiting until the Spring.  The weather is warmer now and it will not require as much work because we can kill the grass by simply depriving it of sunlight by burying it with mulch and leaves and compost, etc. 

As for growing a winter spinach crop, spinach is freakishly cold hardy.    It does NOT require a cold frame or plastic row covers.  Instead, just fold over regular row covers to make a double or triple thickness.  That will sufficiently insulate the bed and permit both oxygen and water to permeate into the bed.  You only need to check on your crop when the weather is pleasant enough.   He does not recommend planting before October because the soil is currently too warm for the seeds to germinate.  You can also plant other cold crops, like kale, bok choy and lettuce, although they will die back by Xmas because they are not as cold tolerant as spinach.  He put lots of information about growing winter spinach on his Growing Franklin blog. 

Because the father of some high school friends died, I could not make to the Garden on Saturday.  I managed to get there Friday afternoon for our food pantry harvest and delivered it to St. Vincent de Paul’s pantry.  Poor Marge told me that she has been managing 60 kids from Bishop Hartley every week because they can get out of gym class by learning to grow food at SVDP’s pantry garden.  She is completely overwhelmed.  Our bumper tomato crop came in handy.  But, I think that we probably only have a couple more weeks of tomatoes coming.  

I really wanted to get the alley cleaned up from the plumbing project because it was a mess and we needed to get the curb back in place to keep all of the mud from washing into the street during this week’s tropical storm Gordon.  We haven’t had CS volunteers in a couple of weeks and I hated to cancel again. So heroic Amy stepped into the breech for two hours and Brenda from the court agreed to pick up the volunteers early ( so Amy could go to her next volunteer gig with domestic violence victims).  It was NOT supposed to rain until late Saturday afternoon, but it started raining by 4 a.m.  They were supposed to mow our lot and the orchard, but could not because of the never ending rain.   I gave Amy the option of pulling the plug in light of the weather (especially if the volunteers were not dressed appropriately in rain gear), but she was game and so were they.   They shoveled mud from the alley back onto our lot, re-laid the curb stones and then took the cement blocks from our two destroyed compost bins and restacked them neatly.    We realized that we were going to lose a compost bin to the plumbing project, but the placement of the water meter (after the City installed a new tap where the meter was supposed to have gone) means that we lost two whole compost bins.  I’m not exactly sure where or how we will reconstruct them because we will still need a staging area for our wood chips every Spring along the alley. . . . . .   Our volunteers also picked up litter in the neighborhood during the steady and sometimes driving rain while Amy weeded along the alley. 

We are now turning to that part of the year when we will start cleaning out the Garden.  I think that we may also be planting some apple trees this Fall, to give them a jump on possibly fruiting next year or the year after.    We will have lots of corn stalks to bag or give away to anyone who wants to decorate for Fall . . . . . . . . 

I have had a bumper crop of zinnias this year.  Usually, I suffer powdery mildew, but not this year.  I have four vases of them throughout my house.  They last about a week and I replace flowers twice a week.  I didn’t take any on Friday, though, and I am regretting it because they are starting to dry out . . . .