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 . . . .
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