Photo: Erica Smith I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wildgrass is majestic and full of music. It’s a fire that solitude presses against my lips. Violette Leduc So thankful for our garden volunteers. Our garden is beautiful because of all the care you have given it. Some great t-shirts sported this week. Thanks all for being there on this hot morning. Garden Reports: Shade Garden: Carol Martin Thursday, July 14 We had a really warm, muggy morning in the shade garden today, but were able to do some pruning, transplanting & planting of some donated plants. Of course, watering was a major order of the day due to lack of rain, high temps & thin soil layer. Deer are still working in our garden, but have not totally eaten everything including hostas, but the season is young. Our only defense is spray & we need to keep on that. We are sorely in need of wood chips as our paths are down to old newspaper in places. We continue to work on the hillside & the view from the parking lot is much improved. The crew was hot & sweaty by 11:00am, so we called it a day. Thanks to all who showed up today. Herb Garden: Kathy Tsai Once again, we had the three "H's" -- hazy, hot and humid - in the garden. Actually, it wasn't too hazy, but sure was hot and humid. At this time of year, there is not much to be done, except maintenance-type chores. That includes, of course, keeping up with the weeds. Daniel was on hand to help today and was able to cut down on the amount of weeds that grow under the wrought-iron garden bench at the back of the garden. A lot of pruning was done to the chaste tree (I'm told that is one of Marty's favorite hiding spots), and several plants were propped up in one way or another, including the African blue basil, the David garden phlox, and several of the dahlias. Things just grow so well, that they sometimes want to outgrow their space and flop over. We removed the nasturtiums in one container which had been decimated by aphids and moved a red basil into the empty spot, hoping it would benefit from more sun. We were very pleased to see that the heirloom rose that had been donated to us several months ago had bloomed and is looking healthy with abundant foliage. Hopefully the Japanese beetles will not find it, as they have the Knockout roses. Children's Garden: Susan Kirby The warm weather and rain (hurray!) have encouraged growth of the cardinal vine teepee and the vegetables in the small boxes. As the pictures show, the teepee should be covered by GIEI. The vegetable garden is also doing well, although it receives regular visits from small animals who like to nibble. It was another day of weeding and limited vegetable harvesting. Butterflies are regular visitors, both to our flowers, and the Butterfly Garden flowers right next door. All in all, it is a wonderful time to be outside. Photo: Susan Kirby Children’s Therapeutic Horticulture: Sandy Occhipinti Tomatoes are SLOWLY beginning to ripen; only two Sungolds and few nearly ripe Costoluto tomatoes were harvested but chipmunks (?) or mice continue to sample the low hanging fruit. To our amazement, all the transplanted zucchini survived last week's heat. Squash bug eggs were observed on the tops and undersides of the pumpkin leaves. Swiss chard, peppers, and basil continue to thrive. Three small patty pan squash, lots of bush beans and the first handful of yellow pole beans were also picked. The students especially enjoyed the challenge of pulling carrots out of the ground! Butterfly Garden: Julie Mangin and Peggy Stanford Another warm day in our Butterfly neighbor hood. Today the team spent time deadheading our Monarda hoping to force re-blooming. We also spent a lot of time chasing a Monarch to get that first photo. It was a fun day for photography in the garden. We saw many species of butterflies: tiger swallowtail, monarch, Peck's skipper, buckeye, and variegated fritillary. We saw a hummingbird clearwing moth, too. And of course, we can't stop photographing our lovely frogs. Edibles: Erica Smith Some of our plants are loving this heat (look at the sweet potatoes GO!) even if we aren't. Today a few stalwart and kinda sweaty souls harvested lots of beans, a single squash, peppers, basil, shallots, onions, carrots, beets, and kale (still!). Also the first tomatoes, though I'm sure Dan and Claude will tell you about those. Mouse melons have started, but we'll wait till next week to begin picking - same with the small Tromboncino squash which will be large by Tuesday. The rest of the morning was spent weeding, mulching (we hope to do more of this when we have the materials), watering, and deadheading things like holy basil (who knew it spread so fast by self-seeding!) and cover crop buckwheat. I'm still urging the slow cucurbits along, but it looks like we may have lost the cucumbers growing on the new trellises to what looks like vine borers (although the keyhole gardeners, experiencing the same problem, did not find any larvae). I've sowed seeds for more cucumbers as well as pole beans, but don't have much hopes for lavish production. One of next week's tasks is to check all the plants for labels, and put the labels into places where they can be seen by visitors - some of them are covered by leaves now! We have new labels this week for our volunteer tomatoes - labeled as such, since we don't know the varieties. 100 Square Foot Garden: Linda Taveira-da Silva Today the garden had an untidy and weedy appearance. Thor, the thunder-god, had rained his thunderbolts down the evening before, giving the garden a welcome quench of it's thirst and thus encouraging the weeds. There was much competition among the plants for growth and space. The cosmos were trimmed back to halt the race for space with the pole beans and the beets were finally given some daylight (and a chance). The kale and collards were bursting at the seams under the row cover, dealing with weeds and cabbage loppers. Committing murder and trimming the leaves were executed in that order. Carrots and beets were again thinned for more elbow room. The basil plants, oregano, and chives were all cut back. The peppers are almost ready for harvest, the bush beans were wearing floral and the salad cucumber had another teenager to give away. (Wishful thinking.) Our zucchini plant is growing and the yellow neck squash is marvelous with 4 " squashies" and more blossoms. Mary Ann, ever hopeful, planted more bush beans. We won't say how many times she has done this (second package). We had a surprise visit from the Garden Godmother (Edith) who brought us beautiful, rich crumbled leaves to cover and protect the feet of our veggies. It was much appreciated Garden Godmother. As we wound up our hard work on this hot, sweaty day, we couldn't help but cast a wary eye across the way to the garden (Paul's?) that is hosting a harlequin bug convention. We wish they would move to either Cleveland or Philadelphia! Note: Garden management made the decision to bag those plants covered in bugs and remove them from the premises. MANNA: Robin Ritterhoff 50 pounds of beans, cucumbers, chard, one squash and lots of herbs – year to date total 490 pounds. And when I delivered our harvest, a volunteer rushed in, asking how to serve a client who couldn’t eat meat – he was thrilled with the bags of chard and beans I handed him! KEYHOLE: Robin Ritterhoff The bed is looking lush on the side with the dwarf tomatoes & peppers, and the sweet potato vines and marigolds are really going to town. But the side with the cucumbers is looking a bit empty, with only one of the four dwarf plants still growing. And that one seems to be harboring a nest of many tiny squash bug nymphs, which seem to be thriving on the watermelon rinds in the compost tower. We were crushed that bug queen Darlene was not excited about our squash bug nymph find, but consoled ourselves by consigning dozens to a bucket of soapy water. And we now wonder whether we should keep cucurbit remains out of our compost tower. We’re considering what to plant for cooler weather. We’re disappointed that only one of the 20 bush beans we planted twice in June has survived. Maybe more chard? BALES: Robin Ritterhoff Everything in our bales is doing well, particularly the tomatoes, which are sky-high and full of green fruit -- none ripe yet. We sure hope to have plenty for the Aug 6 Grow It Eat It Open House tomato tasting! Containers: Carol Olsen The container gardens are mostly doing well. The sweet marjoram might be suffering from reduced air circulation and or shading from taller plants as there were dark brown spots (looked like dirt) mostly on the top of the plant. It was given a haircut and the pot moved so that the marjoram is facing out and hopefully will get more air and sun. A few tomatoes were staked, and we harvested 7 or 8 along with some Mexican tarragon, basil and chard. Tomato Bed - Dan Ward and Joslyn Read This week showed continued strong growth of the tomatoes. Some Early blight and Septoria were present, but not to any great extent. The offending leaves were removed, along with their vines. The much needed rain has been a welcome relief from watering. There are still a few tomato plants showing signs of leaf wilt, but that has not stopped their tomato production. We did some weeding but the wood chips have helped keep them down. And, of course, we were finally able to pick some of the fruit., Juliet and Sun Gold. Both were added to the Garden's donation to Manna Ponds: Dalrene Nicholson We noted about 3 young frogs in the Butterfly Garden pond. This guy was scoping out some Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars that we picked off some milkweed. Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson This mess of orange, black and white attacking the milkweed plant are Milkweed Tussock Moth Caterpillars. They will munch through that leaf quicker than you can say their name While looking for bugs to take to our presentation to Sue K's Growing Gardeners group, we came across a very large Bess Beetle, or Patent Leather Beetle, under a stump.She was tending a couple of her very large larvae, which take a year to mature! They are considered beneficials. Check out this interesting article about them from the University of Florida. http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/beetles/horned_passalus.htm The last find for the day was this array of stink bug eggs with some very young stink bug instars. Unfortunately all of the early instars scattered as I got the camera. However as I enlarged the image I noticed the interesting tiny t-shaped structures in the vacant eggs. I couldn't find any more information on them and I was short on time this week. I'm always amazed by how precise Nature is, even in the tiniest things Closing Comments: Lily and Bill
We welcomed 8 of Sue K “Growing Forward” kids plus 3 adults. They seemed to enjoy the tour Darlene and Maria gave them. They were excited to see the frogs, bugs and fish in the ponds. We also had two other garden tours near the end of the day including the second with a mother and her 3 children who enjoyed the perfume scents in the fragrance garden along with the surprisingly intense mint and lovage, not to mention tasting the mucilaginous malabar spinach and some yummy blackberries. Next weeks 10 at 10 will be Robin and Mary Anne briefing us on our big event on August 6th- GIEI. Wood chips have been requested once again and a promise that we will get some before our grow it eat it event. We got part of our soil test back. The results are included in this message. Discussion to follow at some point after the Grow It Eat it event.
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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