To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. ~Mahatma Gandhi Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans. ~Marcelene Cox Nothing like gardening to teach you gratitude as well as fortitude. We have lost a lot of our crop to different causes... bugs, weather, critters, and we still toil on- appreciative of any small success- and joyful of our little community and beautiful setting. Garden Reports: Shade Garden: Carol Martin Thursday August 25 Again only a few of the "Shade Crew" were in attendance on Thursday, but we did accomplish quite a bit. The Crew has to give a Shout Out to Steve Coster effectively wielding his mattock on the roots of multi-flora rose and greenbrier on the hillside. Tough work & we appreciate it. With a good supply of newspaper, we proceeded w/ path chipping & ended the day w/ a good watering as we wait for autumn rains. Conservation Garden We welcomed Maria back from her trip to Greece! Garden was watered and weeded. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff Herb Garden: Kathy Tsai Relaxed activity today, mainly watering and then the usual weeding and trimming. The garden phlox were cut back and deadheaded, and the Sweet Annie was removed before it went to seed. The nasturtiums were found to be hosting harlequin bugs so was cut back and the bugs given to the frogs and fish in the pond. The nasturtiums will be moving to compost central soon enough but will stay for now. The dahlias were also deadheaded and re-staked to accommodate their height. Last but not least, the back fence was once again given a good weeding. Next week, 75% of the herb and fragrance team will be off doing non-gardening things so there will be no report. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff- Purple perilla Children's Garden: Susan Kirby After some discussion and consideration, Mr. McGregor's vegetable garden is getting a bit of a new look. The small boxes proved to be a challenge for vegetable growing as they dry out quickly. So, yesterday I pulled out three of the six boxes. We will have beds for vegetables, and the remaining boxes will be used for small root crops such as radishes, carrots, and beets. The compost that was in the boxes is a welcome addition to the area. We are lucky enough to be between the Butterfly Garden and the Monarch Hotel of the Therapeutic Horticulture Garden. There were at least four Monarchs hanging out in our end of the garden, providing a lovely diversion from trimming and watering. Please note our wonderful twisted gourd. If anyone needs gourds for anything, please let us know. Photo: Susan Kirby Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford and Julie Mangin Today in the Butterfly Garden was sunny and warm. We continued our trimming and deadheading routine. We also discussed options for replacing our wooden bench with one that is safer and more durable. We saw several monarchs flying around the garden, and two of us witnessed a female ovipositing (laying an egg) on a milkweed leaf. We'll check there next week to see if there are any little caterpillars. We also found one large caterpillar on some milkweed in another part of the garden. The only question we have is where have they been all summer? Photo: Julie Mangin Therapeutic Horticultural beds: Robert Loesche Things are pretty much exactly the same in the TH beds as they have been for the last several weeks. The Zinnia beds are serving as Hotel Monarch, attracting lots of monarchs and other beautiful butterflies. Lots of other pollinators in attendance as well. Beyond the Zinnia, the Celosia, Gomphrena, Marigold, Anise Hyssop, Fennel, Salvia, and Garlic Chives are in full bloom and available for cutting. Children’s Therapeutic Beds: Ellen Meyerson The 4-H Garden is winding down in many areas. We pulled the bush string beans and we planted many fall crops. We planted spinach, beets, snap peas and carrots. The children harvested some peppers, the rest of the string beans and some Sungold tomatoes. We had two zucchini squash and one patty pan. The zucchini have not produced much. Even if the plants are healthy they've produced very few fruit. Zinnias have been one of our best producers. As usual the children enjoyed watering. Compost Central : Susan Eisendrath Today Marlow was there very early turning and adding to the compost that was started last week in the County container. Kristy came and started turning material in bin #2 into #3 and then we decided to wait to continue to turn it until we had more greens to add and Kristy and I removed the weed/grass with seed heads and put them into the pile that is turning green to brown. We decided that since the bulk of garden material will be remaining in the garden until after the Harvest fest and then there will be 2 weeks of the later part of October when the greens and brown material will be available...we will continue to pile the greens on top of the pile that is brown or browning for our carbon and add it to the greens as they come in and during the final clean up 2 weeks. The pile of leaves is small and quite decomposed and Bill said he hopes to get a delivery of leaves when they start collecting them in the county, so it's good we are building a "carbon" pile. Next week Marlow is bringing his weed wacker and he's going to do a clean up of weeds and grass around the compost pile area and he will also move all the "finished" compost in bin #1 and bin #4? to bin #6 so we'll have finished compost in one pile for the fall bed prep (MG's and Interns will have to sift if they want sifted compost). We also need to make more permanent educational signs and signs for the compost area (e.g., "Please Put GREENS Here!") so that gardeners put the greens where we need them piled up. etc. Finally, I know that Larry and Denny and I still need to do more analysis on the data and tests that we've collected and so we'll coordinate to do that and come up with some kind of summary to share with others. Thanks to all of you who work so hard to make compost happen!!! 100 Square Foot Garden: Linda Taveira-Dasilva The silence among the land (the sq. ft. garden) was ominous. Our collards, our wonderful greens, those stalwart uncles of the garden, who withstood all that Mother Nature threw at them through out the summer, always reliably producing such wonderful bounty each week, were reduced to withered brown palm trees! Shock! Shame! Harlequin bugs, given aid by some unknown perpetrator, had penetrated the row covers. They were merciless. They were pitifulness. They sucked all our greens dry, going from row cover to row cover. The destruction was complete! Photo: Linda Taveria-Dasilva WAR WAS DECLARED! After a heartfelt good-bye to our beloved plants (removed from the ground) WATERBOARDING was vigorously performed (No apologies and no hostages). All row covers were removed washed and dried. New collards, mustard, kohlrabi and kale replaced all the recently deceased. The refreshed row covers were more carefully reinstalled. Our newly planted radishes and lettuce (which had to witness all this carnage) seemed to be fairing well as also the jalapeno peppers, chard and tomatillo plant. We sacked one of our never-did well tomato plants and pulled that old bachelor zucchini plant who couldn't seem to attract any female flowers. The cucumbers also pooped out. We are giving the pole beans another week to do SOMETHING and hope the bush beans produce more than a few handful of beans. Only the herbs, especially the basil and beautiful flowering chives continue to console and comfort us. Containers: Claude Allen The containers continue to show off in the Demo Garden. The flowers are at full bloom, the peppers are ripening well, and the Asian container is full of coriander, lemon grass, and curry. We harvested a few tomatoes and some chives today. We probably won't need to change much in the containers before frost comes to the garden. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff Edibles: Erica Smith We planted more fall greens (such as broccoli, mustard, Chinese cabbage, Chinese broccoli) and got them under row cover and properly labeled. I planted beets in the raised bed when I was watering last week, but they haven't come up yet - neither have the peas. Harvesting included tomatoes, peppers, squash, kale, New Zealand spinach, and basil. Harlequin bugs are still hanging around, including on the nasturtiums in the salad table. Soapy water bath! MANNA: Robin Ritterhoff We delivered 80 pounds today for a YTD total of 1032 pounds donated to Manna. KEYHOLE: Robin Ritterhoff Tomatoes, sweet potatoes & basil are doing well, but all of our beautiful marigolds have been completely skeletonized. What critter eats marigolds, whose aroma we thought deflected pests?? We’re blaming the four footed varmint who was rustling under the sweet potato leaves this morning. We held off on planting chard & brassica seedlings in view of the above-mentioned varmint, and since the above-normal heat is forecast to continue. Photo: Robin Ritterhoff BALES: Robin Ritterhoff We can’t help but be discouraged! The formerly beautiful tomatoes are being chewed on the vine. We are blaming the resident mice since they have finished off nearly all of the many other plants we had growing in the bales. At the very end of our work session, some hearts were lifted by the visit of three men who expressed such pleasure in our beautiful garden. One of our visitors had grown sweet potatoes & cassava growing up in Liberia. Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson It is the time of the year to be seeing the Tobacco or Tomato Hornworms on tomato plants and we have spotted a few on our plants at Derwood. Luckily the ones we see have tiny, white cocoons attached to them. These are inhabited by VERY tiny braconid wasps. While inside the cocoons, the larvae of the braconid wasps use the hornworm as a source of food and when mature, the little cocoons pop their tops and the braconid wasps emerge as adults. Robin alerted me to the one in the straw bale garden, pictured below. We came at exactly the right time to check out the braconids leaving the host source. See them on the cocoons and nearby tomato stems. The second image is a close up of one. The red conical shape at the top of the second image is the "horn" of the Tobacco Hornworm. One life cycle ends and another begins. Nature is fascinating! Pond Report Enjoyed feeding the bugs to the frogs this week. Photo by Julie Mangin Closing Comments: Lily and Bill A boost in spirit to our weary crew when we had a few visitors to the garden at the end of the work day. A grandmother and grandson team enjoyed the ponds and frogs immensely. They will be back again to crawl thru the tunnels and sit in the teeppee in the children’s garden when the weather is not so hot. A few other visitors thoroughly enjoyed our beautiful garden as well. In case you did not see Erica Smith’s blog in the Grow It Eat It section, it is always a good reminder as almost all of us has tried to garden more than we can handle. Here’s a link to her blog. Vegetable gardens for busy people Here’s a picture of what can happen! Thank you Erica for sharing your knowledge! Please don’t forget to let me know if you plan to go to Water’s Orchard on Tuesday, September 13 at 9:30
There is room for 35 of us.. Waters Orchard 22529 Wildcat Rd. Germantown, MD 20876
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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