Friday Night Buckeye Football Helps Community Gardens

October has turned out to be a freakishly productive month at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  Our produce donations have been off the charts, particularly because one of our gardeners has been donating most of his giant tomatoes.  We have also had more volunteers help than we have had at this time of year in the past.  Yesterday, we had 15 OSU students helping to clean out the Garden for the season.  We have also had some vandalism, which severely damaged our front gate.


At the beginning of the month, I took both of our Community Service volunteers to the Bexley Community Garden to help for a couple of hours put that Garden to bed for the season.  Then, we took some of their end-of-season produce (mostly green tomatoes and some okra) to a free produce giveaway at nearby Fairwood Elementary School that was organized by the Genesis of Good Samaritans.  There was a long line of people when we arrived, including many senior citizens.  Then, it was back to the SACG where we watered our food pantry and neighbor beds, harvested around 50 pounds of tomatoes and peppers, raked, mowed, etc. for a couple more hours.  It was a very, very long day of gardening, even before I returned to my own home garden.

By the time I arrived at Faith Mission’s homeless shelter to drop off the fresh produce, no one could be found to answer the kitchen door.  So, I called the Pantry Manager at the All People’s Fresh Market on Parson’s to see if she could re-open the Market for what was in my trunk.  However, she was on medical leave and could not find her replacement.  Sigh.  So, I called Faith Mission’s help line and found a social worker to let me in.  The delay kinda ruined my benevolent mood.


The next week, I had two CS volunteers who helped rake, mow, water, harvest and pick up litter.   That week, we harvested over 75 pounds of produce.  The next day, someone visited the Garden vandalized our sign, knocked over the neighbor bed tomato trellis and pulled two pickets off the front gate, breaking one of them into three pieces.  Grr.   One more thing for me to fix in all my spare time.

We finally had a frost, but it must have been light because it only killed our sweet potato vines, which turned black, and the melon vines.   So far, that is the only cold damage that we have suffered.  

Yesterday, we were blessed that the Ohio State University Pay It Forward Program wanted to return to help us clean up the Garden for the season after all of the help they gave us for their Community Commitment day in August.  Luckily, I had picked a Saturday when OSU was not playing football, so we had a great turnout.    It was nice to show them the lettuce that their group had earlier planted in August.  

Team One was tasked with cleaning out the corn co-op plot.  This involved chopping the corn and bean stalks down to no higher than 6 inches and then cutting back the out-of-control black raspberry brambles in the west fence and bagging everything.  I had to discuss the concept of lawn waste bags because it has become apparent that only suburbanites use them.

Team Two was tasked with harvesting cherry tomatoes, removing the volunteer-cherry-tomato-plant-that-almost-devoured -Columbus and had taken over the northwest corner of the Garden, harvesting sweet potatoes, bagging the tomato vines and then harvesting peppers.  I had to teach them how to harvest the sweet potatoes, so as not to destroy them, but you know what they say about best laid plans.  


As it was, the groundhog had so completely devoured the vines this season that there was only one large sweet potato to be found.  The rest might make good use for fries, but they were barely larger than my thumb.  Sigh.  We had almost 40 pounds of sweet potatoes last year, and only 5 this year.   What a difference a groundhog makes, n’est pas?  One of their team worked for years at a nursery and was all too familiar with the problems of a groundhog.  She had no wisdom for me, but suggested blood meal deters rabbits.  


Team Three was tasked with cleaning out the food pantry tomato bed, bagging the tomato vines, nesting and storing the tomato cages, and harvesting the sweet potatoes in that plot (which were even less impressive than the other bed).   We had to get some help from Team Four to remove the tomato trellises.

Team Four raked the front lawn, mowed, pruned the brambles around the shed to make room for the tomato stakes, cages and trellises, mulched the fruit trees, cleaned out the summer neighbor bed (i.e. peppers and tomatoes), cleaned out the melon plot, harvested peppers and watered the food pantry plots.

Team Four also helped me to turn off the water hydrants.  Amy and I could not figure out how to turn the water off at the meter, so I had to get a different tool and turn it off inside the Garden and this requires more upper body strength than I have.  I hadn’t planned on doing this for another couple of weeks, but Rain One called in a panic -- just after Friday’s freeze warning was announced - that they could not get into the Garden to blow out our water lines and turn off the water for the winter.  I had changed the gate combination since last year.   I had not expected this and, as I explained, we are thinking of having the water meter removed for the winter because we discovered in June that the City charges us for having the meter every month even when the water is turned off.  It might be less expensive just to have the meter removed in October and replaced next May, if there is even a SACG next May.   But, I hadn’t realized that we were looking at a freeze warning which could cause the water lines to burst when I told them not to worry about us this year.

Simon and his two set of twin daughters came to clean out his plot of their summer crops and to otherwise distract the OSU students and my CS volunteers.  


I cleaned out my 16 tomato plants, cages and trellises and harvested more of Charlie’s tomatoes and ran around answering questions.  Amy came and cleaned up two sections of the strawberry patch and pruned the remaining asters that I had started on last week.  After everyone left, I gathered up all of the tools which the OSU students left lying around the Garden and took our 41 pounds of fresh produce to Faith Mission downtown.

Next week, some of the Capital University students are   

returning after they got rained out on their volunteer day in September.