“The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.” - Patrick Young Hello gardeners! We had a smattering of interns, a strong turnout of returning MGs, and only a bit of rain. Please note, cancellation will be posted in the Derwood Demo garden yahoo group email list by 6:30 am. Please come dressed for the weather and attend at your discretion. We crazy gardeners will garden one handed, the other hand holding an umbrella. We returned to find that some of our early plantings did not survive the cold and wind, peas are hesitant to sprout, but the weeds are JUST fine. Garden reports: BUG REPORT: Darlene Nicholson Each week I will try to post and identify bugs that are spotted in the garden. This week I found a Click Beetle crawling on some row covers at my home garden. You can read all about them in our, "Common Garden Bugs" booklet. You can be sure it's a Click Beetle if you turn it on its back and it flips itself right back over making a clicking sound. Photo one shows alert Click Beetle sitting for a portrait. After a while he folded up and lay very still hoping I would go away POND REPORT: Darlene Nicholson It's been too cold to really get in there and work on the ponds. Earlier on a warmer day the cover nets were removed and as much pond debris as possible was scooped out. We may have to wait until after the May 1 event to clean them more thoroughly as they are filled with frog and toad eggs. Frog eggs generally are found in glob-like masses, and toad eggs are in straight long strips. Most of the egg strips in this image are toad eggs that have been moved about. If you look carefully you can see some black dots among the white ones. These are actually very small tadpoles that have hatched. 100 Square Foot Garden by Mary Anne Normile We returned to the garden today to find the seedlings we had planted last week pretty much a total loss. The combination of record cold and strong winds was too much for them. We spent most of the morning removing dead and damaged plants and replanting what we could. We planted Red Russian kale and dinosaur kale, green mustard, onions (thanks to Erica), Swiss chard, radishes, lots and lots of lettuce, and pansies for color. Because of the setback, we're sacrificing variety in order to have a good show for the May 1 GIEI open house. Edibles: Erica Smith We got a lot done in the vegetable garden today despite a slow and wet start. Most of it was planting of brassicas (which I will discuss in the 10-minute talk next Tuesday - we decided to postpone since people were still trickling -get it!- in at 10 today). We planted cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards, turnips (from seed), and Chinese cabbage, and covered most of those beds with hoops and floating row cover (which was fun in the wind). Also some onions got stuck in there. We also spread a LOT of compost and some wood chips for paths - wheelbarrow traffic was heavy! Bamboo trellises were reinforced and refurbished. Anyone interested in learning bamboo building techniques, please speak to Jesse next week - he could use some help! We harvested some kale, too - a wintered-over crop. Next week we'll plant root crops in the new raised beds, get the potatoes in, and get the salad table started. And probably haul some more compost. Tomatoes: Dan Ward I'm sure that you are aware that this year is the year of tomato. As such, an area of 30' X 11' has been set aside to showcase tomatoes.We are looking for several people to help with the tomatoes. Experience level is not important, but a willingness to jump in and help is. Since this a "Demonstration" garden we would like to see many different types of tomatoes and growing techniques. Ideally, May 24th is the day to bring in tomato seedlings for transplanting. So bring what you have available that day. If you have a few that can't be held that long we can take a few to demonstrate how to protect them if planted early. Manna: Robin Ritterhoff We made our first Manna delivery today: 10 pounds of gorgeous kale which overwintered. This was a full month earlier than our first delivery last year. Cheers to Pat Mucci for our cool new signs: African Keyhole Garden: Robbin Ritterhoff We finished putting together the African Keyhole garden today, even faster than we had expected. Lily had added a dozen buckets of aged horse manure on top of the layers of branches, brush, straw & cardboard which we had placed in the bottom of our structure. We layered fall leaves on top of the manure then added about 8 -12 inches of compost, sloping down from the center, where we have a chicken wire core into which we are placing kitchen scraps and worms. As we water this core, nutrients from the scraps & worm castings will filter into the center of the keyhole garden, nourishing the roots of what’s planted. Today we managed to plant a few things – lettuce, mustard, onion plants (that we thought were onion sets but are technically onion plants. Sets are the little dried bulbs) and some radish & beet seeds. Bill forgot to top-dress the bales with compost slurry - someone should make sure we get those next week. Children’s Garden by Susan Kirby Aside from trying to keep warm, spring clean-up has been the focus in the Children’s Garden the past two weeks. This week garden clean-up assumed greater importance when we arrived to discover that the gourd tunnel had collapsed sometime during the week. While we took the old tunnel apart, we decided to replace it with a zig-zag trellis (a design used for tomatoes last year). We think the new design will allow the gourds to be well displayed throughout the summer. Our special thanks to Jesse of the structure crew who agreed to build the trellis. Meanwhile, weeding and mulching will continue, and maybe some planting next week, weather permitting. We welcomed Claude, an intern, who patiently weeded the area around the viburnums that are between the Children’s and Butterfly Gardens. We hope he will be back regularly. The before and after pictures.
Closing Comments: Lily and Bill As Erica noted above, we postponed the start of our “10 minute talks” to next Tuesday at 10 am under the tree. The topic will be “Planting Brassicas Properly”. Shade Garden has their first workday this Thursday at 9 am. We expect the water to be turned on by next week and hope that we will finally have good weather next week! Looking forward to seeing all of you next week as we make our garden beautiful for the Grow It Eat It event on May 1.
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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