May Flew By at the SACG

The Garden Manager is wearing out and is trying to have more fun and not work so much this year.  When last I reported on the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden in April, our cherry trees were in full bloom and we were expanding the fence braces along the northern edge of the fence before the raspberry brambles took over.


Someone finally hauled away the wooden pallets that had been mysteriously placed behind our Free Little Library.  Whew!


OSU arranged for our soil to be tested.  Our pH was still a bit high, at 7.3.  All of that compost has a tendency to raise our pH.   I added some aluminum sulfate to my plot and to the food pantry potatoes.  I also added some to our blueberries and WOW they really exploded this year.  Our best crop EVER.  I had been topping them off every year with peat moss, but apparently that was not acidic enough for them.  Live and learn.


So far, we have only had one gardener drop out – because she moved away.  We had two new gardeners join us in May, but we never see them.  One keeps her plot completely weed free, although not much else seems to be growing.  The other has some tomatoes and squash and is otherwise overrun with weeds.  Sigh.

Our super former Board member, Ken  Turner, took home one of our broken benches early this Spring to fix it and returned it sturdier than it had ever been with all new wood.  The benches were initially created for Ameriflora (and were stamped with Ameriflora 1992 on the metal frame.   Franklin Park Conservatory donated them to us in 2009 shortly after we broke ground.  We have tried to maintain them by sanding and staining every year or so (usually by OSU Pay-It-Forward volunteers in August), but they could not be saved.  We have another bench which could use similar treatment, but Ken has run for the hills when I mentioned it . . . . . ha ha.  Can’t say I blame him.  I  bet it was a lot of work.

First Congregational Church held a special offering on Earth Day Sunday for the SACG, Highland Youth, Fourth Street Farms and a garden on the South Side.  The treasurer from Highland Youth and I attended the service and stayed afterwards to answer questions and attempt to recruit volunteers, etc.   This unexpected support was much appreciated because we have recently learned that we have to pay a monthly fee to the City of Columbus just for having access to running water even if we never use it.  Sigh.


May, as usual, was very busy with planting lots of seeds and seedlings between rain drops.  Sabrina broke my heart by giving up her plot for the season.  Our new gardener, John, however, has really stepped up to the fill the considerable void that she left.  He has done a lot of weeding for me.   And Charlie, who comes on most Wednesday evenings, also helps out a lot with installing trellises and posts, etc.  One Saturday, Cathy came with chocolate dipped strawberries for us.  Yumm!  


The gardeners this year  wanted to start their own seeds for have the most part, so I will be composting tons of extra tomatoes seedlings this year.  There is no point of giving them away because Straders has donated hundreds of flats of tomato seedlings to GCGC.  

I am so excited that we are going to have grapes for the first time this year.  I know that I should be pruning our vines, but I do not know how.  We damaged the white grape vine when we repaired the trellis gate in April, but I'm sure that it will return to vigor by this time next year.

Our daisies did not disappoint this year and our strawberries came back before Memorial Day so that I could introduce them to a new crop of neighborhood children that moved in between growing seasons.