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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