Derwood Demonstration Garden Annual Report 2016 Submitted by Lily Bruch and Bill Newman
The Demonstration Garden as a whole is comprised of several types of gardens including: Butterfly/Pollinator Garden, Herb and Fragrance Garden, Children's Garden, Shade Garden, Conservation Garden, two turf plots, and two ponds. The Therapeutic Horticulture includes garden plots for growing cut-flowers to be used in therapeutic efforts as well as a garden plot for Youth with Autism. Edibles Gardening includes small fruits(paw paw, fig, currants, aronia/chokeberry, gooseberry are recent additions), 100-Square-Foot Garden, African Keyhole Garden, Kitchen Garden containing perennial herbs, potato gardening, straw bale gardening, container gardening, an asparagus bed, beneficial bird-housing and salad tables. Most Edibles Gardening supports GrowItEatIt efforts.
The goal of the Demonstration Garden is to educate the residents of Montgomery County and Master Gardeners about what plants will grow well under prevailing conditions of soil and climate while illustrating Integrated Pest Management techniques. Our guidelines are in accordance with The University of Maryland Extension philosophies. Additionally, we aim to be inclusive, develop leadership, and foster gardening passion and fun.
In an attempt to improve orientation for 2016 MG Interns, the Demo garden season opened one week earlier. Over a dozen interns attended a very chilly orientation day before dispersing to warmer environs. Compost Central, Conservation Gardening, and Container Gardener retained interns. Post-season discussions suggest that some interns expressed interest in returning next season and may serve in leadership capacities. DDG continues to work with Manna and delivered 1532 pounds of garden-grown goodness for 2016. This quantity is not as high as 2015(1720 pounds and 1801 pounds 2014) due a substantial drop-off in sweet potato production from the vole-damage, and a dry summer. Like last year, Manna's Annual Report lists Montgomery County Master Gardeners as one of the donors that provides over 1000 lbs of food per year. Manna staff report that our fresh vegetables are particularly highly valued by the organization and the people it serves. We believes this total could be more diversified and increased if more gardening space was available in the under-utilized beds of the Tenant's Garden.
With Steve Dubik’s assistance, we tested the soil with the new soil probe he ordered for the demonstration garden. Each main area was tested as well as a control outside the garden ( done in the field).
DDG team members consider the weekly reports as one of the many benefits of gardening at DDG, so we continue to commit resources to producing these meaningful, educational, entertaining, and encouraging outputs. In previous seasons, Darlene Nicholson and Maria Wortman wrote, edited, reported, compiled, assembled, researched fantastic photography and information for those reports. Garden Leads for each area now gather, assemble and produce meaningful reporting and pictures to be assembled into our fantastic weeklies. We have been fortunate to receive positive feedback beyond the confines of Montgomery County and will sustain these next year. We continued to enhance our education offerings with our pre-season seed-starting seminar, winter fruit-pruning hands-on workshop in anticipation of 2017’s “Year of Small Fruit” as well as our ongoing ‘Ten Minute Talks’. These 10 minute talks were popular and well attended and addressed a variety of topics such as cover crops, understanding soil sample reports, butterfly/pollinator gardening, ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ bugs matching game (thanks Darlene for a such creative education!), growing herbs, home garden irrigation options, disputing composting myths, mulching benefits, hoophouse-gardening, bamboo gathering, potato gardening, garden-tool maintenance/sharpening(thanks Joe!), as well as common tomato pests/planting/trellising/suckering in support of GIEI’s “Year of the Tomato”. Whew! All that mixed into weather-addled, hands-in-the-soil gardening together as a team. What a year!
Much of our co-leadership efforts were focused on MG education, interns, retention, leadership development and recruitment as well as enhancing passion and commitment for the Derwood Demonstration Garden. Our results were mixed.
Year-end garden reporting:
Compost Central Thanks to the recruiting efforts of Susan Eisendrath and the garden managers, a strong composting crew materialized this season, and regular composting took place at the garden from the beginning of the spring season right down to the close of the garden in the fall. If we tried to list all the folks who helped with the project, we would inevitably leave someone out, so suffice it to say that we had a regular and dedicated crew of volunteers and strong morale.
We had two major goals for our composting work this season: 1) the traditional goal of producing as much compost as possible for use within the garden; and 2) to experiment with various methodologies for producing compost and then compare the results through laboratory testing. With the latter goal, our primary interest was to look at compost produced by using simply leaves and garden waste (our traditional approach) versus compost made with the use of collected food scraps mixed with leaves. In addition, we wanted to look at the length of time it took to produce finished compost with each of these methods, and finally, we also added the variable of container size. We were particularly interested in comparing the results of compost produced in the large Derwood wooden bins with that produced in the county-distributed Geobins and smaller structures more typical of what a backyard gardener might use. We utilized three sizes of containers for the project: the large wooden bins that are a permanent fixture of the garden; two Geobins that the County makes available to home composters; and one smaller, closed hard plastic bin that is typical of those sold through typical garden companies. We set up an experiment whereby we attempted to make the inputs into each of the comparative projects equal in volume and also equal in how they were aerated each week (turned, basically, except for the closed plastic bin which was merely stirred within the container). Much effort was put into collecting the food scrap inputs from the TPSS Co-op each week along with collections of coffee grounds weekly from Kefa Café in Silver Spring. We also attempted to keep careful week-by-week records of our activities.
We are still in the process of fully analyzing the results of the comparative methods. What we know from a preliminary evaluation is that all the methods of composting we used produced high quality compost that was comparable or superior to products available commercially or through the County. Preliminarily, we suspect that compost made with food scraps heats up faster and completes its process more expeditiously. The final results, though, suggest that all utilized methods produce quality compost if regularly charged and aerated. We are in the process of preparing a final analysis complete with the lab results we accumulated. We are hopeful that all these results can be publicized and shared within the Master Gardening network and its various training programs.
The cumulative efforts of the various composting trials resulted in a large quantity of compost being made available for the garden – possibly the largest ever in a single garden season. All in all, it was a very productive season in Compost Central.
Shade Garden:
We enjoy the Shade Garden more each season & each year. Watching it grow, change & mature. And, especially the camaraderie of the "Shady Crew". We value those who have been with us for the past seasons & are always happy to integrate the excited new interns. They always bring new energy & ideas to the garden.
Of course, this was a most erratic weather season with long, cool, damp spring, relatively mild, but dry summer continuing through September. We made the most of it, worked through the heat & were only rained out one workday. During the dry spells, we had to call upon team members for watering & had no problem finding volunteers to spend this extra time to support our garden. We had minor deer impact through the summer. Sprayed several times & caged some of the plants that they seem to prefer. Also, trying co-planting to discourage their browsing.
We have a list of seven items on our agenda for next year including continuing work on naturalizing the hillside where we have been removing invasives & re-planting w/ native species, doing some repair to the Shade Garden side (back) of the sheds & purchasing additional, new plant materials that are not currently in our collection. I have requested that members of the "Shady Crew" submit suggestions for these & we will see how far our budget will go. And, one big task we are tackling is all new plant ID signs. The inventory is in pretty good shape so we will submit the list to have labels made. It has also been proposed that we provide more information on the shade-tolerant plants in some form that would be available for visitors to use in the garden & take with them. Yes, Sue & I enjoy the plants, the garden, the hard work & our co-workers which makes it easy to commit for the 2017 garden season.
Children’s Garden
The Children’s Garden saw personnel changes in 2016. After Maria Wortman moved to the Conservation Garden, Sally Reynolds and Susan Kirby became co-leads for the CG. Sally moved with her husband to West Virginia in mid-summer, and Susan was joined by MG 2015 Annie Odette.
Things that worked in 2016
The gourd tunnel collapsed during the heavy snows of January, and it was replaced in the early spring by a trellis. Gourds were directly seeded (after the cool, wet weather of May improved), and by the end of the growing season we had a bumper group of distinctively shaped gourds in time for the Harvest Festival. Early carrots, radishes and lettuces sowed in the boxes in Mr. McGregor’s garden performed well. The perennials were particularly lush after the rains of May, and they continued to do well after some hard pruning in mid-summer. The cardinal vine teepee did very well, and it attracted hummingbirds when the small red flowers began to bloom. Almost all of the illustrated plant markers were redone, which did much to enhance the visitor experience, especially for the younger crowd
Things that did not work so well in 2016
While the hyacinth bean vines vigorously covered the tunnel, they failed to bloom. We apparently had a different variety of the bean. The sunflowers that were seeded along the fence by the field did not do well, probably from a combination of competition from the weeds and not enough water. The boxes in Mr. McGregor’s garden were not successful in hot weather. They dried out too quickly and were too small to grow the summer vegetable crops that need more room. We pulled out two of the five boxes and will use the remaining boxes for the smaller cool weather vegetables. It is also clear from the performance of some of the perennials that it may be time to transplant them to more appropriate locations in the Demo Garden. We have talked to the Conservation Garden staff about relocating the White and Pink Turtleheads to a shadier location. And, lest we forget, our Popcorn plant was stolen late in the summer!
100 square foot garden:
We will continue to keep our current design as it is functional and eye-pleasing. We had great success with all of our greens. The spring collards, kale and broccoli were covered with green tulle which kept the bugs at bay, the plants were visible and looked very pretty in the garden. However over time the tulle developed small holes due to weathering, as, while economical, is not really suited to the purpose. We had a nice tomatillo crop, beautiful lettuce, very nice carrots, beautiful basil and abundant herbs. Our onions developed nicely after a rocky start, and we had a good, if late, crop of pole beans. We started off with a very cold and windy day which made us just want to hurry up and plant things and leave. It was a mistake to try Mother Nature’s patience, and we lost most of the seedlings to that week’s harsh conditions. We did not stick to our original planting scheme and consequently made it more difficult to row cover plants that were not grouped together. It is a perennial challenge in the small space of the 100 Square Foot Garden to keep brassicas, for example, together for planting under row cover, while keeping taller plants from shading lower-growing plants and keeping a succession of crops planted. Because of the cold weather we also lost many of our initial plants and had to start over. Then having a very wet May and then a very hot summer made watering a tricky issue. The irrigation system in our garden does not seem to function well so scheduling watering for plants and seed germination, especially during the hottest days of summer, was also another challenge we had to deal with. Our spinach never got off the ground and the productivity of our peas and bush beans was poor. We also did not have good production from our tomatoes, cucumbers and squashes. An experimental dwarf tomato variety (‘Dwarf Sweet Scarlet’) was a disappointment, as it never set fruit, which may have been partly due to a late start. The peppers were late. However the tomatillo plant was super and as I mentioned, when the greens got started they did very well under the covers until the late-season Harlequin bugs got them. We also had a vole/mole? that did some plant damage as well.
We plan to make a planting scheme and stick to it. We want to be able to group the plants that need row covers together to make it more efficient in covering. Also I think we realized that although the tulle looked very pretty it just didn’t hold up for the entire season. The garden leads authorized the purchase of a single piece of Micromesh, which will hold up better while allowing greater visibility and sunlight/rain penetration than AgriBon. Since we had poor productivity with many of our heavy-feeding summer crops we plan to try some organic feeding in addition to the nitrogen-fixing cover crop (crimson clover) that we planted in the fall. We also planted the wrong variety of cosmos that grew too big and shaded some of the plants so we will be looking for a pollinator-attracting plant that knows it’s own space.
I plan to be involved as much as I can in the garden but will have a big family commitment this summer. Mary Anne will take on new responsibilities in the overall edibles garden. Linda Taveira-dasilva
Garden Vegetable Beds 2016 Author: Erica Smith, with contributions from Joslyn Read, Dan Ward, and Barbara Knapp
Despite some successes, on the whole 2016 was a disappointing year in the vegetable garden. Some crops which had been successful in previous years failed completely, and others did less well than usual. Our contribution to Manna Food Center (1512 pounds) was lower than in the past. Various factors contributed:
● Weather, including a wet cool spring (which delayed summer planting) and a very hot summer which turned extremely dry (affecting fall planting) ● Poor soil in some areas ● Insufficient coverage of soil with mulch and/or vegetation ● Pests, both insect and rodent ● Uneven irrigation through drip lines
We will strive to improve next year!
Salad crops One of the two salad tables was rebuilt to be deeper (but is leaning badly; this will be fixed). Lettuce grew well all season both in salad tables, in the tomato bed before transplant time, and later in raised beds. Other salad table crops had mixed success. Using lettuce transplants was more successful than growing from seed; will continue to do this. Poor germination was more prevalent in areas with sparser irrigation.
Brassica family plants Spring greens did very well, thanks to the long cool spring and lots of rain. Cauliflower and some broccolis headed up, but Romanesco broccoli is off our list due to very long growing season with lack of heading. Cabbage, kale, and collards did well. Lark’s Tongue kale, planted in spring, produced through till fall and is still growing. Fall greens survived thanks to irrigation and supplemental watering, but did have pest problems despite row covers; either harlequin bugs and cabbage worms got underneath or through holes, or else were present on transplants.
Root crops Radishes, beets, and carrots planted in raised beds did very well in spring. Onions were planted among brassicas and did well but were delayed in production (too much shade?). Garlic (planted fall 2015) produced well and a bit earlier than usual. An interplanting experiment with mixed small greens among the garlic mostly failed due to weed growth; it would be better if only one crop was interplanted (and therefore easy to tell from weeds). Root crops in deeper salad table did not do well. Fall root crops failed except for a few radishes in tomato bed.
Cucurbits Cucumbers and melons were a complete disappointment this year. The early plants succumbed to bugs, borers and/or disease; the second sowing of cucumbers came up gangbusters but then all seedlings disappeared (animals? Lack of water?). Tromboncino squash planted in the same bed (nearest to hose) did fine but less spectacularly than in previous years. Conclusion (also based on previous experience) is that this bed has serious soil issues. If we can’t alleviate them, we should convert this area to raised bed production.
The best cucurbit production was among mouse melons (as always) and avocado squash.
Nightshades This was Grow It Eat It’s Year of the Tomato. Tomato planting was later than average due to cool weather; we put a lot of plants in the ground on one day in a superbly organized fashion! Some of our 30+ plants did very well but many others produced poorly or succumbed to disease. Our grafted tomato produced lush foliage but fruit from the parent plant, likely because the wrong top was grafted to the root stock. We could try more grafted tomatoes next year to learn more about raising them. Tomatoes were taken out on the early side because the hot weather and disease beat them down to thin shadows of themselves. Some possible improvements for next year: stagger plantings to see if June-planted tomatoes resist disease better; mulch better with leaves (if available) or straw and/or use cover crops under plants, in hopes of lessening fungal diseases from splash-up; try shade cloth over plants in hot summer; improve reliability of watering system for the tomatoes. Also, we plan to try planting a few tomatoes earlier with protection against the cool temperatures. We enjoyed a tomato tasting late in the season and identified some varieties we’d like to see more of. The winners were: Best Tasting Red/Pink Tomato: 1st - Pink Bumblebee, 2nd - Dester, 3rd - Black Ruffles. Best Tasting Yellow/Gold Tomato: 1st - Summer Sunrise (runaway winner!), 2nd: Sungold (cherry type), 3rd - Amy's Apricot (cherry type).
Peppers were fairly disappointing (though a few varieties did well, including Cajun Bell and Pippin’s Golden Honey). They also could have used better mulch and perhaps some fertilizer.
Potatoes were beset with pests from early on, including wireworms and three-lined potato beetle (though fewer Colorado potato beetles than usual). Harvest was very low, especially from the row furthest east, where there may have been a problem with the soil. The potatoes didn’t come up, and when we investigated, the original seed potatoes were totally rotten. As the wireworms were still a problem, it might help next year to really spade up the soil as much as possible, while mixing in a good amount of new compost, perhaps even rototilling. This way we might see and destroy wireworms ahead of time during the mixing process.
Sweet potatoes Slips ordered through mail mostly died. Those grown at home from tubers did better, so we’ll go with this method next year. Despite protection with the usual vole fence, voles devastated the crop. We got a small harvest from mostly-unwatered containers, and of course the greens. Ideas suggested for improvement: 1) using a slightly bigger space, and getting a taller fence of hardware cloth. Try planting only 3 sweet potatoes, and check regularly for evidence of voles. Rig up some way to persuade the vines to grow up higher so the voles can’t use them as a bridge. 2) Using water/air permeable grow bags as an experiment to repel the vermin.
Other We had a decent okra harvest from plants in raised beds.
Roselle hibiscus was beautiful (and a few people harvested fruits or leaves). Both old variety Thai Red and new Jamaican Cocktail produced in timely fashion. May have successfully saved seeds!
Basil eventually got downy mildew, but much later than last year. Holy basil, planted in 2015, ran amuck—need to ration it severely next year, though it is a lovely plant.
We grew a few cover crops: buckwheat in the summer (in a transition between greens and squash), and in the fall forage radish (started too late, has not developed sufficiently to biodrill soil but is blocking weed growth), crimson clover (providing good soil cover) and Austrian winter peas (apparently low germination). Next year we should aim to keep the soil covered throughout the season, and cover crops both on their own and in beds with other crops will help with this. Some study has given us a better handle on proper timing and choice—so let’s make this happen!
General notes Watering became a big issue during the summer due to high heat and lack of rain. The drip irrigation system keeps crops alive but sometimes additional watering is needed to make them thrive. We made a good start on this with one volunteer’s online sign-up system, but this will need to be more efficient and directed next year. We may also be able to make the drip system more effective.
Lack of shredded leaves for mulch made a difference to growth of some crops that could have used better soil coverage. Hopefully the leaves will be more available next year, but if not we’ll need another source of “soft” mulch. Cover crops will also help with this issue.
Conservation Garden: Maria Wortman
It has been such a pleasure to work with three enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers this year: Betsy Taylor, Linda Reiger, and intern Irene Eckstrand. Their contributions in work and in plant materials have been invaluable. At the beginning of the season, we spent a lot of time eliminating invasive plants such as oriental bittersweet, rosa multiflora and lemon balm seedlings, mostly from underneath the winterberry shrubs, and then covering the areas with composted leaves. We’ve been pleased to observe that this strategy seems to have suppressed new weed growth. We also removed the invasive Iris pseudacorus, or Yellow Flag Iris, from around the pond. Our ongoing strategy is installing more ground cover plants, which will add to the beauty of the garden while discouraging unwanted plant growth. Some of the native ground covers we have added are Waldsteinia fragarioides (barren strawberry), Asarum canadense (wild ginger), Onoclea sensibilis (sensitive fern), Antennaria howellii (Howell’s Pussytoes), Prunella vulgaris (Common Selfheal), Chrysogonum virginianum (green and gold or goldenstar), and Thelypteris noveboracensis (New York Fern). In addition to these natives, we’ve installed various sedums, epimediums and sedges. We planted a row of variegated sedges along the back fence line with the expectation that when they have filled in we will have eliminated the time-consuming task of weeding the fence. We have enjoyed the various blooming shrubs and perennial plants such as the Spring trilliums, red Spigelia marylandica, white, cream and pink hydrangeas, ninebark, Plumleaf azalea, and winterberries. There has been an effort to label each plant installed. One of our goals for next year is to make sure that each plant has an I.D. label. It has been a great help to have LeeAnne Gelletly in the garden most days to help us with creating the I.D. labels. For next season, we hope to continue adding even more native plants and groundcovers. We hope we remember to cut down the Autumn Joy sedum by half in the summer to encourage it to become bushier instead of splaying itself out. The Hardy Monch Aster does provide some much-needed color to the mostly shaded garden, but with more and more shade developing, it needs to be moved to a sunnier spot because it isn’t doing well where it is. Speaking of shade, each year the Conservation Garden has gotten shadier. One of our goals, if possible, is to prune the native cherry and the maple tree to try to bring in more sunlight.
Small Fruits Patti Oseroff I’m very pleased with the growth on the PawPaw trees this year. I should have measured, but I think they grew 2-3 feet. I think we are finally on top of the weed situation around the pawpaws. We planted red and white clover as a cover crop around them. Our first year plants did well, The fig tree grew to about 6-7 feet tall and produced some fruit. One of the Aronia produced fruit as well. We had 2 rhubarb and our female siberian kiwi wilt and die. I suspect it was the irrigation? Perhaps the ground was consistently too moist? No pest problems to speak of. Weeds were a constant headache. I think we have room for one more blueberry.
Conclusion It seemed like we had many more impromptu garden tours with quite a diversified array of visitors. And we finally updated and enhanced the very informative and interactive website of the Demo Garden, “mcmgdemogarden.com”. This site contains historic garden maps and plant lists of all the gardens, as well as yearly reports. We hope to recruit additions to the Labeling team to help keep this more current going forward. In order to improve and learn, we continue Darlene’s and Maria’s initiative to survey both continuing MGs and interns as to what worked, what didn’t, what should change, and whether they’ll continue next season. This endeavor is helpful and enlightening. Lily looks forward to her 3rd and final year as DDG co-lead and is glad to welcome Susan Kirby as DDG co-leader to enhance the transition plan, manage DDG, and add creativity. Other accomplishments include: ● Supported 2 large GIEI events and the Harvest Festival. ● Provided cut-flowers for Therapeutic Horticulture programs. ● Emptied, inventoried, and re-organized/re-stocked the both garden sheds. ● Won Award of Excellence in the Keep Montgomery County Beautiful contest for the seventh year in a row and are now eligible for the 'Golden Trowel' award. ● Many volunteers, many hours. ● Continued as an official Plant Clinic for Tuesday mornings – many cuttings/plant-samples were reviewed and analyzed.
Possible goals for next year: ● Repair both the shed, paint/seal to protect. ● Expand garden to improve demonstration of important gardening programs such as “Grow-a-Row, Give-a-Row”, more native small fruits, frequently-requested pumpkins and melons, and planned/requested research/experiments such as ● enhanced cover-cropping ● does compost improve yields ● tilling vs no-till gardening ● Repairs to back and side gates ● Pruning tree limbs in Conservation garden ● Installing bench in Butterfly Garden ● Build more of our own bamboo-structures. ● Improving stability of salad table ● Improving recruitment and retention ● Identify candidates for co-leader replacement. ● Conducting a seed-starting class for DDG MGs so that we can start more of our plants ● Graft and grow tomatoes; compare performance ● Support the early season GIEI event ● Support the Harvest Festival ● Conduct a ‘propagate from cuttings’ class for DDG Ms so that we can expand the growing of small fruits in support of GIEI’s “Year of the Small Fruit” ● Continue to visit other Demonstration Gardens
Thank you to all who worked in the Derwood Demonstration Garden this season. And thank you to the garden leaders who submitted year-end assessment information to be used in compiling this report: Erica Smith, Bobbi Maxwell, Linda Davis, JoAnn Mueller, Carole Martin , Sue Schick, Lily Bruch, Maria Wortman, Darlene Nicholson, Peggy Stanford, Susan Eisendrath, Larry Himmelfarb, Robin Ritterhof, Patti Oseroff, Bonita Condon, Judy Bradley, Denny May, Marty Isaacson, Kathleen Tsai, Ida Wallenmeyer, Ellen Meyerson