Despite the weather, we had a good turnout, 38 volunteers! Thanks everyone who came out to help us out! Our garden is looking beautiful and is already producing lots of food for Manna, 76 pounds of beautiful fresh vegetables this week! Huge thanks to Jesse for helping us build and teach others how to build trellises in the garden. Garden Reports: Compost Central: Susan Eisendrath Compost pile #2 was still a warm 69 degrees and #5 was a steady 92 degrees, while the County bin was even a warmer active 102 degrees! There's a nice pile of greens waiting to be incorporated into bin #5 (when it's turned next week). The County bin will need turning too. Eventually, we could also put the material in bin #2 into the last bin, #6 to be covered and used. Shade Garden: Carol Martin and Sue Schick The shade garden enjoyed another beautiful, productive day. The crew that was present worked diligently & accomplished good things. With the consistent rain we have been receiving the garden continues to flourish. We did some transplants, worked on the hillside & along with weeding, started the top dressing of the beds. Therapeutic Horticulture Beds: Bob Loesch and Virginia White-Mahaffey In shocking news, it was cloudy and drizzly at the Demo Garden today. . . . The soggy weather has largely helped the plants in the TH beds, but some--especially the zinnias--very much would benefit from some sun and warmth. Here are the particulars. (Style note: I am now adopting Virginia's practice of using Latin names to describe our plants. I add the common name where I feel such might be necessary, but over time we'll go entirely Latin.) Bed 1: The delphinium (larkspur) is in full, beautiful, blue bloom and ready for use (see photo.) The ageratum and zinnia (cut and come again) seedlings are slowly but steadily maturing, and today we moved the seedlings around to maximize their chances for growth. The artemisia looks beautiful and is also ready for use. We haven't yet purchased any african blue basil, but hope to do so soon. Bed 2: Much of the lavender is now in bloom and can be used, although we urge a little restraint as the flowers are not super abundant. The four cut and come again zinnia plantlets donated by Sandy Chernin are still surviving, but they are not at all robust. The echinacea (coneflowers) and achillea (yarrow) are both budding and should be blooming in a week or two. There is a little vacant space in this bed, so we hope to buy a few more echinacea. Bed 3: The gomphrena plants are still quite small, but appear healthy. The tanacetum (feverfew) is just starting to bloom. The verbena bonariensis (stick verbena), chrysanthemums, agastache (anise hyssop), and rudbeckia are still a ways from flowering but are growing robustly. And, speaking of robust growth, the fennel continues to explode--please come and take some! We also added several more rudbeckia plants, so that they now flank both sides of the fennel. Bed 4: The achillea, celosia, monarda and moluccella (bells of Ireland) continue to grow fairly well, and the gaillardia continues to flower strongly--please come and use it. The poor zinnias, however, are barely hanging on, but they are still alive so we're trying to nurse them back to health. Finally, the folks manning the large tomato beds near Bed 4 offered us some space, so we planted seven more gomphrena plantlets again donated by Sandy. Children's Garden: Sandy Chernin Seeds are popping up all over the Children’s Garden! At the tunnel, plenty of vigorous small plants of purple hyacinth bean vine have emerged! Nearby, in front of the exterior fence, two varieties of sunflower seeds that were planted last week are showing small signs of life (Dwarf Big Smile and Moulin Rouge F1). Around the tower, there is a slow showing of cardinal climber vine, perhaps slowed by the cool weather. (We are hoping that warm weather will ignite some growth here!) And in the children’s garden there is evidence of gourd seedlings planted just last week. Varieties that were planted include: Autumn Wings, Luffa, Ten Commandments, and Tennessee Spinning. Mrs. MacGregor’s garden produced several bags of radishes to contribute to MANNA. Basil seeds were planted in one of the small planting boxes: Spicy Glove and Purple Ruffles. The cotton plants are holding their own but look in need of some summer heat! French marigolds were planted around our one and only tomato plant (Sungold) that has begun to fruit. This lonely plant was outfitted with a proper, taller tomato cage, recycled from the annex garden. Big thanks to Jesse Arbogast for stringing the trellis for our gourds! It is a big job and we really appreciate the help! Thanks, also, to Marianne Wilson for helping with today’s planting and weeding! Lastly, one must note how beautiful the “Animal” plant area looks! Who could imagine that a group of plants chosen merely for their animal names would create such a pleasing combination! Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathy Tsai Today in the garden, it was all about weeding and thinning. Cindy started off thinning the chamomile while I cut back the ever-robust lemon balm. Lily happily took what we cut back to make teas. John weeded extensively, especially along the back fence, and Marty thinned some of the larkspur so that other plants, like the new butterfly weed, the liatris, and the coreopsis could get more light. Marty also cut back the cherry laurel. Other plants were deadheaded, like the heirloom rose, which has been beautiful this year. Most of our annuals, such as the African blue basils and heliotropes, have not yet seen a growth spurt - we need less rain and more sun. Let's hope June will be drier and warmer. Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford Today was a cool and very dreary day in our garden. We weeded, trimmed and planted more annuals (vinca and petunias). All the plants are so lush and just waiting for sunshine and butterflies. Small Fruit: Gail Ifshin and Ram Narula Weeding, pruning, mulching and fencing work consumed our time today. It is a pleasure to watch the flowers and developing fruit on the vines and bushes in the small fruit domain. Weeding behind the densely growing thornless blackberry vine turned up a trove of unwelcome plants, including Virginia creeper and some quite well-established pokeweed. We will begin developing a pruning strategy for each plant, applying guidelines from our research to the real world of our plants as they exist today. For example, the gooseberry and currant bushes fruit most productively on wood that is up to 3 years old. So ideally, we would have a mix of stems that are 1, 2 or 3 years old. But do we? Does it matter? Should we start tracking the age of the canes now to try and better conform to the guidelines and see what happens? Stay tuned! Harvest to Manna: Robin Ritterhoff We donated a remarkable 76 pounds of exceptionally beautiful cabbage, broccoli, pak choi, kale, collards, other greens, radishes, lettuce, onions, etc. This is by far our biggest harvest donation for late May in the four years that we've been keeping track -- guess we have to thank all of this rain. Our year-to-date total donations to Manna: 154 pounds. Our Manna friends are always delighted to see our harvest arrive, and they send their thanks to all of the Derwood gardeners. If you're interested in comparing Manna donations for the last few years, please check here. Vegetable Report: Robin Ritterhoff, Erica Smith and Mary Anne Normile Early drizzle energized a very busy day in the vegetable beds. Great weather for harvesting, planting and weeding! Here’s some of what we did: Harvest – we gathered many bags of greens--kale (several kinds), collards, radishes, Swiss Chard, cabbage, lettuce from the salad tables and elsewhere. Planting: - ‘Gold of Bacau' and 'Marengo Romano' pole beans, 'Mosaic' yardlong beans (We’re grateful to Jesse for stringing another trellis for those). - Planted cosmos 'Sensation Mix' to attract pollinators to various beds. - Planted okra seedlings – these may thrive more than some other vegetables if we have another long, hot, dry spell. - A determinate tomato 'Defiant' (bred for resistance to late blight) in the deep raised bed replaced a languishing "Mountain Magic." - Made a second planting of Bull's Blood' beets in low raised beds. - Transplanted many Mouse Melon volunteers – we and visitors alike love the tiny fruits that they produce. Tending: - Cut the flowering tops of the potato onions ("perennial" onions that get replanted from one of the harvested bulbs). This will allow them to give more energy to root growth. - Weeded Three Sisters corn – we’re waiting till it’s a few inches tall to plant companion beans. - Cut down half of the oats-peas cover crop - cut parts left on the bed as mulch, roots left in the ground to continue adding nitrogen to the soil. (Rest of cover crop to be cut down when time permits.) - Began to hill up soil around leeks in low raised beds to blanch stems. - Weeded, treated raised bed plants with fish emulsion fertilizer, covered Swiss chard with row cover to obstruct whatever as-yet-unidentified varmint is making holes in its leaves. Special Projects: The Carols Keyhole Gardens We were greeted by very large radish leaves, and with some disappointment, Carol O thought that perhaps the plants had bolted before producing radishes. Happily, that was not the case. Upon closer inspection, six Pusa Gulabi Radishes were ready to pick. One was about 5 inches long! More are on the way. All of the Butterfly Spinach was harvested along with some Monte Carlo Lettuce, tat soi, dill, kale, and Super Sugar Snap Peas. The last tomato trellis was constructed and the tomatoes fertilized. A container of kitchen scraps and kibble were added to the compost tower along with brown leaves, and all was stirred up and watered in. A row cover was placed over the eggplant in hopes of keeping flea beetles at bay. The final tomato trellis was built. The marigolds are thriving, but the pansies are fading. There will definitely be room next Tuesday to add new kinds of plants/seeds. Pallets and Bales and Gutters Oh My! Marigolds and nasturtiums thrive also in the Pallets and Straw Bales. The large Pansies in the full pocket side of the Pallets are still going strong but the Violas in the short pocket front have seen their last for this year. We planted some Windowbox Basil in the bottom of the front Pallet to replace the BokChoi we harvested and sent to Manna. Lettuces, Parsley, and Mustard also were harvested from both pallets and bales, a full bag of each. We also planted a Windowbox Basil on in the long pocket side but found it difficult to secure the plant in the vertical pallet. We look forward to see if it takes when we come next week. Some pallet instructions advise to plant while the pallet is still flat, wait a week before raising, which we did with the initial plantings, now we see why. We planted a Blueberry Cherry Tomato in the bale, perhaps our last tomato to plant of the six varieties we have planted. The Sunset Runner beans planted last week are peeping up through the straw, we look forward to the reputed beauty of their flowers before the lovely speckled beans develop. Edith continued her expert tomato trellis building for the bales, and extending it to reach over the uncrated bales which took a bit more support to make them secure since the crate was not there to lash to. However we were pleased with the results, going for a bit of minimalist approach with possibilities to add extra vertical and cross support if needed. The Gutter Garden is going strong with greens abounding. With the goal to be good neighbors without a fence, we "reshaped" the sweet potato bed with k-bar support so that both neighbors could walk between the bales and beds. We are saving our last bale space for some cucumbers to be planted next week and hope the eggplant survives the flea beetles until next week when we will dress her up with the wedding tulle. The experiments on the pallet watering was extended this week by trying the method of filling the cones with sand for the water to move through. We hope to have a definitive method before the rain stops and the heat sets in...but with so many variables, we are not sure we will get the definitive answer. We enjoyed sharing our trials and lessons of our build out with the group at 10 @ 10. We have been reminded of the Boy Scout mantra learned as a den leader back in the days, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). We hope all will stop by with any comments or questions as we work to our very trending goals of "extreme" plant diversity and gardening without a "grounded" garden. One of the speakers at the annual training day noted that the next largest birth cohort in America after the Baby Boomers are the Millennials who tend to live in more urban spaces. Hopefully the special projects will speak to them. Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson Two bugs that I noted at DDG this week were the Broad Headed Sharpshooter, a kind of leafhopper, and the European Earwig (in our bug book). Earwigs feed at night on plants (not so good) and on insect larvae and aphids (good). During the day they are known to hide inside veggie plants and anywhere else imaginable. We don't usually see them in large numbers so their beneficial and not so good qualities kind of cancel each other out, and we generally ignore them. Beware, don't ignore the pincer-like appendages! The leafhopper noted above, Broad Headed Sharpshooter, (coolest name ever). Leafhoppers can be pests primarily because they are vectors of plant diseases. We don't seem to have a large population of them in our location at this time so they are not a major concern, but we'll keep an eye on them. They can be hard to catch as they tend to "hop" a fairly good distance for their size when they see a hand coming at them. 100 Square Foot Garden: Linda Taveira-dasilva After the holiday Mother Nature was in a funky going back to work week mood. Cold and misty, with numb hands and fingers we harvested 10 tons of greens (or so it seemed). A variety of lettuces, kale, collards, new broccoli heads and their leaves found their way into plastic bags as well as the first turnips of the season. Some onions were pulled as greens in order to make way for the summer crops. Herbs contributed to the bounty. Special recognition to the newly forming beets and to the pole beans that are valiantly trying to poke their heads up. The rest of the garden is moving along. Newly planted tomatoes will have to be moved next week after a head slapping moment occurred when I realized (two days later) I veered off plan and put them where their support structure is not. Forgive me tomatoes. Conservation Garden Report: Maria Wortman The rain we’ve been having has been a great boost to the plants in our garden. They are all thriving beautifully. Weeds are being encouraged to grow as well as the desirable plants, which resulted in our spending quite a bit of time removing them. The area beneath the winterberries seems to be a virtual nursery for baby oriental bittersweets. If you are not familiar with this monster, you should be. If allowed to, it will wind itself around shrubs and tree trunks and branches, eventually forming a woody trunk several inches in diameter and smothering and even bringing down large trees. We dispatched dozens of oriental bittersweet seedlings. We are also in the process of removing most of the gigantic, mutant violets which have taken over underneath the shrubs. We will replace them with more desirable groundcovers. There are several fern varieties on display. The Christmas Fern is the most familiar to many people because of its distinctive mitten-shaped frond. It is native to the eastern U.S. and is evergreen, thus adding winter interest to the garden. One might think that its fronds are diseased in some way, but actually the brown masses covering some of the fronds are reproductive spores. The native Virginia Sweetspire blooming now contrasts beautifully with the maroon-colored foliage of the Ninebark behind it. Highlighting another corner of the garden are the dramatic white plumes of another U.S. native, the Aruncus dioicus or Goatsbeard. A huge thank-you to LeeAnne Gelletly for all the plant labels! Tomato Beds: Dan Ward and Joslyn Read This week was spent planting the remainder of the "annex" tomato beds and the original assigned bed. Next week we'll put together a total numbr of tomatoes planted. The 3 that were planted early to see what happens are still alive, but not much more. Perhaps with the warmer weather they might pick up again. The spring crops are in various states of growing and ripening. The scallions and beets are pretty sparse, likely caused by old seeds. The sugar snap peas are in bloom so we should expect to pick peas within the next week or two. Closing Comments: Lily and Susan (and Bill in absentia) It is amazing how much has been accomplished in such a short time! A huge thanks to the Carols for our 10 at 10 talk. Next week we will have Joe Ginther talk about irrigation system. Please be ready to learn hands on after the lecture and help him out with setting up our irrigation system. Thanks to all of you who come so faithfully each week. Enjoy the weather, and we look forward to seeing you next Tuesday!
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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