Volunteers Needed

Volunteers to help with the garden will meet at 6 pm on Saturday the 19th and 26th of May, weather permitting. Please bring sun and eye protection, gloves, and sturdy shoes.
 
Tasks include:

Weeding (lots and lots of weeding)
Preparing compost
Rubbish removal
Sowing seeds

The Thank You Post

Today was the day I've been waiting months for... the compost is finally ready!

BIG THANKS to...

Richard, who rolled the heavy compost barrel all the way out to the garden and helped empty it into the second stone bed.

John, who mixed the compost into planting soil, leveled it all out, and put seeds in the ground.

Helen, who provided some tomato plants that will "grow like a tree." We planted them today as well.

Lisa, Stacy, and Max, Dan... everyone who has assisted with various odds and ends and advice.

Everyone else who brought matter for the compost bin. Without your rotting vegetables, our garden would not be possible!

Growing

Eggplant, Japanese - The teacher's pet of the garden, producing lots of fruit! Next time, I'll plant it in a corner spot, so it doesn't crowd out the other plants.

Tomato, Heirloom Tiger Stripe - Growing, flowering, but producing no fruit. Why? We may need to help the flowers pollinate.

Red and Orange Peppers - The eggplant is shading them out, and I may pull one of the pepper plants so the other one can grow bigger in that spot. Maybe I can transplant it?

Okra - See this post from last week.

Citronella - The wind from Irene actually damaged both of these, so I pulled it and planted beans there.

Leeks - I'm not really sure if these are doing well, since I've never grown or purchased leeks.

Marigold, Orange and Yellow - The yellow died a few weeks ago, and there are now beans planted there. The orange is scraggly, but I let it grow enough to produces some seeds, so we can grow them next year.

Flower (I keep forgetting to check the tag!) Pink - It died back quite a bit, but when I went to pull it up, I saw it was producing new growth. I decided to transplant it to a pot, and then planted peas in that spot.

Mulberry - Still fruiting slightly, although something is damaging the leaves. The fruits get eaten by birds and such before I manage to pick them. They more commonly fruit in the Spring anyway, so I'm not worried about it.

Banana - 3 leaves now!

Cantaloupe - This has grown very large, and produced many many flowers, but no fruit that I can see yet. It might need more fertilization, which means I may use the worm compost that David H. donated.

Pumpkin, Early Sugar - These are still very small, and I worry that I started them too early or too late. I was hoping for pumpkin pie from our garden in October, and that is clearly not going to happen this year.

Peas - The peas that were started from seedling on my back patio did not take transplant well last Sunday. I'll have to plant them from seed directly in the garden, probably tomorrow.

Green Beans - I transplanted two of these, and one was snapped by Irene's winds, and the other is doing well. Two or three more seeds have been planted from seed into the garden, and are already sprouting.

Ruby Beets and Red Cored Carrots - This is the second attempt at each of these. They didn't like being transplanted, and they take a good couple weeks to sprout. Wait and see.

Bearing Fruit

Today's garden cleanup was quite successful. Big thanks to Yolanda and John for helping out. We cleared away most of the pallets and pulled errant grass from the beds. We also planted some carrot, beets, and green beans. Storm clouds cut us short of fixing the fence this time.

The compost barrel (the blue one next to the shed) is full and needs to be allowed to finish up. We will still rotate the barrel every few days to mix air into the compost, but please don't add any more material. There will be a new container for us to put kitchen scraps in the meantime.

The eggplant is bearing its first fruit! It looks quite tasty and ready to harvest for this Sunday's shared luncheon. Stir fry sounds pretty good, don't you think?

Our Garden Grows!

The weather cooperated again today, and I moved two loads of patio stones. I was sore and tired of dodging mosquitos to get the stones, so then I did some other work in the garden. I will get one more load of stones tomorrow, to give us a final 5-stone deep (about a foot) raised bed. I want it deep enough for carrots, and tall enough for people to sit on it and garden.

I went to dig up the compost heap and pile some nutrient-rich awesomeness into the nearly complete bed. Lo and behold, the compost was in use! Some of our stray cantaloupe seeds from the last couple weeks decided to sprout up and take residence. They were clustered in the center of the heap, where all the good stuff is. Well I decided to respect the interdependent web of existence, value the inherent worth and dignity of the melon vines, and envision a future with free cantaloupe every Sunday.

I cleared the covering leaves from the heap and carefully dug up 2 wheelbarrows of pretty good compost from around the plants. Then I transplanted the smaller plants a little further from the center to give them all plenty of room, and put back the covering leaves. I marked a larger area with some bamboo poles and added more leaves to compost for future melon plantings. The entire area is now our Melon Patch! I hope all the gardening will be this effortless.

Besides the cantaloupes, there are a few things that were already growing in the garden.

The mulberry tree.

This sad little banana plant.

Whatever this and this are. (Someone told me, and I forgot)

A whole bed of something that appeared with the rain. Possibly a weed, but maybe an herb? (I decided it was a weed, and pulled most of them)