A special thanks to all 37 dedicated MG's who showed up to work on a miserably hot day! We enjoyed tasty treat from Robin and were lucky to have Jenna from MANNA come talk to us! The garden would not be what it is without your hard work and dedication. Thanks to all who have come to water during the week! Garden Reports: Shade Garden: Carol Martin and Sue Schick Thursday weather was another treat with low humidity & light overcast. The day started with a visit by Lily, Bill & Susan the co-leaders of the entire Demo Garden. The Shade Garden made a beautiful display of pink, blue & white as you were coming up the stairs. We continue to work on hillside with weeding & filling in with transplants. Also, needed to water not only the transplants, but the entire garden. It is so dry, so early. The bench has been glued/cemented again & we will try to see if it will hold this time so that it can take its place on our patio. Not a big crew today, but we accomplished a lot & enjoyed the garden. Compost Central: Kristy Hardy Hi team, today we had a friendly black snake about 3 -4 ft in compost bin 4. Corrine was turning that pile so I got to see him from a distance. He slithered into bin 2. I had 2 wonderful volunteers today, Corrine and Ellisa. Corrine turned 4 to 5 adding greens that were discarded today. Bin 4 started at a temperature of 130. Elissa turned the county bin which started at a temperature of a little over 100. She used greens from the garden and a little from one of the cooked teas bins. They worked fast and enthusiastically. Therapeutic Horticultural Beds: Virginia White- Mahaffey The TH beds demanded lots of watering but limited weeding and pruning this week. I also planted two African blue basil plants donated by Sandy. The delphinium remain fully primed for project use but blooming will start to wane soon. The achillea are blooming generously in all hues now. The gaillardia is still blooming and the spent blooms could serve nicely in certain projects. The fennel has been cut by presenters but plenty more remains. The lavender and the tanacetum stand ready for cutting; the artemisia foliage is a couple feet tall. The echinacea has produced blooms but not at peak numbers. Everything else remains a fair distance from use. 100 SQUARE FOOT GARDEN REPORT: Linda Taveira-dasilva It was a stinker! Hot and humid. Plants had that gimme a cold beer pleeze look. One of the first things to do was hog the water hose. The summer prima donnas, the tomato, pepper, basil, and squash plants were watered lovingly, by hand, to give them a long drink right next to their roots. The rest of the garden (second class veggies) got their drink from the hose the usual way. Despite the recent heat the lettuce was holding up well, the spinach less well and the greens continued to reasonably produce. We also harvested some of the first beets. Our baby cucumber plants (also watered with TLC) are busy growing incognito (under the net). The herbs produce something every week, and Hope's fennel plants look great. Our pole beans also look very promising. We are hoping to get them up the poles soon before any varmints show up. It wasn't a day to linger. We turned tail and left. Conservation Garden: Maria Wortman The time of the hydrangeas has come! The Conservation Garden has many different varieties. Among them are the Oakleaf Hydrangea, the pink-blossomed ‘Invincibelle Spirit’, and the climbing Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris. The ‘Invincibelle Spirit’ is a pink form of the native smooth hydrangea ‘Annabelle’. It’s so pretty and easy to grow. The oakleaf blooms well in the shade and is also quite hardy. The climbing hydrangea is just starting to bloom this year, and is blooming sparsely. We’re hoping for more blooms next year. Perhaps it likes a bit more sun than it is getting under the shade of the maple trees. Spigelia marilandica is a knockout native plant which adds welcome color to the garden. Its tubular red blossoms seem to explode into yellow stars. Thanks to Yingyan for helping to cut back the ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum by half in hopes that this will encourage it to branch out into a bushier shape rather than splaying out as is its usual habit. The Hardy Monch Aster in the shade was also cut back for the same reason. Earlier this year, we transplanted a clump of it to a sunnier spot where we think it will be much happier. A big thanks to Jessie for beginning the job of replacing the low bamboo fence, and on such a hot day! Thanks Lily for bringing the bamboo. Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford A very hot and sticky day in our garden today. We trimmed and watered the garden. The garden is beautiful this year....ready to pop into bloom. We observed a Great Spangled Fritillary and companion who feasted on the Common Milkweed. Children's Garden: Sandy Chernin Has anyone mentioned it was hot today? As a result, work in the Children’s Garden was short and sweet! Tasks accomplished were harvesting a small amount of white and red radishes, planting several varieties of basil plants(`Minette’ and `Purple Ruffles’), relocating standard sweet basil plants out of a planter box into the main garden area, weeding and deadheading as needed, and WATERING!. The “Animal Names” garden continues to look good and the red bee balm (monarda) is now in bloom. All seedlings are progressing nicely (gourds, sunflowers, purple hyacinth bean vine) but the cardinal vine seedlings seem to be at a total standstill. Susan Kirby reports that she remembers these plants took forever to get started last year. So I am hoping to see a huge growth spurt next week, promoted by summer heat and drenching thunderstorms! BUG REPORT: Darlene Nicholson One very helpful action when using IPM in your gardens is to be able to identify the beneficial bugs. Today, I am putting some images of beneficials found at the Derwood Gardens. We hope you take a minute or two and check them out. Some of these are in the garden bug books, where you will find more information about them. You never know when there'll be a TEST! Just kidding...or am I? The aphids shown below are of course, are NOT beneficials. VEGETABLE GARDEN REPORT: Erica Smith, Mary Ann Normile, Robin Ritterhoff All volunteers were much appreciated on this brutally hot day in the sunny vegetable garden! We managed to get a lot done between visits to the big water jug under the shady tree... oh no, do I have to go back out again?? Harvesting: Lettuce (lots!), Swiss chard, beets, basil, parsley, peas, and lots and lots of greens including kale, collards, kohlrabi, cabbage, and broccoli (mostly leaves, which are edible). Planting: Cleared the broccoli and cabbage bed and planted bush beans: Red Swan, Gold Rush, Jade II, and Masai, plus Pretzel Bean, which is a fascinating type of cowpea. Planted melons (Crane and Jenny Lind) in places where cucumbers and squash failed to come up. Our track record with melons is not great, but perhaps the delay into June in planting will help. The other cucumbers and squash on the trellises are coming along nicely. A new cover crop area of summer alfalfa was seeded in the annex garden. Tending: Mostly watering - progress is being made on installing irrigation system. In raised beds, row covers are doing a good job of keeping flea beetles away from newly planted eggplant, limiting slug damage to Swiss chard, and keeping cabbage butterflies away from red cabbage, some of which are beginning to head. Checked the Three Sisters corn mounds, and last week's beans are coming up. Some weeding accomplished - but more is needed! One of the sweet potato slips planted last week has succumbed, but that's okay, since Barbara really only wanted two plants there anyway. A few potato beetles removed from potato plants, but a pleasingly small number of them! Watering needs: The volunteer signup sheet for watering the vegetable garden is located at www.volunteersignup.org/D4QDR. Recently seeded areas that need special attention include Bed N (beans), the Three Sisters mounds in the annex garden, and the bases of all trellises (various beans and cucurbits). Please coordinate with others who sign up on time of arrival or division of work. Thanks! SPECIAL PROJECTS: Carol Conrad It was quiet in the special projects this week. Mostly maintenance and watering the tasks at hand. The key hole garden continued to look great this week, even with Mother Carol O on vacation. A few snap peas and some lovely red lettuces were harvested for Manna. Robin, Carol C and one other donation of kitchen scraps were added to the keyhole in several layers with dry leaves and water. Both beds were watered well with intermittent "self" watering a welcome respite from the heavy heat today. The pallets were watered during the weekend and only the top parsley and the radishes looked sad. We went to clean out the radishes and found that they did indeed produce at least 7 small but lovely radishes, a better result than we had anticipated given their dried up condition last week.. The core of the parsley seemed fine. Ellina snipped the brown and we shall see if it bounces back The parsley in the long pallet was really strong and the nasturtiums continue to thrive and produce more lovely blooms. The strawberries did not bear but are sending out runners. The cucumbers were hanging on but didn't look convinced yet to grow much. All the basils are doing fine throughout the pallet. We continue to harvest a medium bag of bok choi leaves from the top of the pallet after sending several resident harlequin bugs down to entice the frogs. This is the second week we have clipped equal amounts of leaves to share. We were the recipients of new labels for the bales. Except for the mustards (which reached their end last week and did not recover like the bok choi) everything is growing nicely. The tomatoes look especially happy. We did lose the experimental side planted zucchini. There was no sign of them so it is unclear whether they died, were snatched by a critter or just fell out. We continue to harvest lovely lettuce for Manna and look forward to the "heavier" produce in the future. We did paint over the random numbers and such on the crates with blackboard paint and look forward to using sidewalk chalk to embellish the "blank slates" in the future. The bottle experiment continues and it looks like the non-cone nesting-bottles are going to work. We will add to those next week. The gutter garden and sunflowers continue to mature. Tomato Beds: Dan Ward This was an exciting week for us. All the newly planted tomatoes are off to a great start. We managed to run the supply of bamboo poles to nearly out, and still need almost 40 more. Lily is seeing if her source is willing to part with more. We are appreciative of any we get. We also did general weeding and clean up of the area. Leaf mulch was added to the beds to help curtail the evaporation from the very hot weather we are experiencing this week. Small Fruits: Loads of gooseberries and black currants ready for picking. Small fruits team has worked hard to achieve success! MANNA- Robin Ritterhoff We delivered 62 pounds of fresh harvested vegetables and herbs to Manna, bringing our YTD total to 298 pounds. To make it easier for Manna clients to enjoy our harvest, we inserted paper labels in every bag identifying the crop, following guidance from Manna (see below). We'll be working on a system to pre-print labels --- stay tuned. Special Visitor for Ten@10 - Manna's Director of Programs and Policy Jenna Umbriac thanked us for our weekly harvest donations and spoke with us about Manna's mission: increasing access to nutritious food for hungry and food-insecure people throughout Montgomery County. She told us about Manna's base: people falling within the official self-sufficiency income standards for Montgomery County, an exceptionally expensive place to live. Forty percent of the people Manna serves are kids; a number of Manna's clients are seniors. Jenna emphasized how much Manna clients value fresh organic food -- this comes out in every annual survey that Manna undertakes of its clients. Hence Manna particularly values our very local harvested-that-day donations. Manna staff really appreciate the way we deliver our harvest in family-sized portions (average family size: 3) in clear plastic bags. Labeling: Jenna responded enthusiastically when we asked whether labeling the vegetables in each bag would be helpful. With the wide array of ethnic and regional backgrounds among Manna clients, what might be common fare for some people can be unknown to others -- sweet potato greens loved be some Africans might be a total mystery to Latinos. Closing Comments: Lily, Susan and Bill
A huge thanks to everyone who showed up in such a hot day! Appreciate all your work. Next week 10 at 10, we will have Dan talk about tomatoes. We have also scheduled Steve Dubik to come talk to us on 7-27 at 10 at 10 about the expansion of the garden and thoughts on this issue. We appreciate the time he's put on this and look forward to his insights. Very important information!! Next week is T-Shirt day! Please wear your special T-shirt to the garden! See you all next week!!
1 Comment
Audrey Hankinson
6/15/2017 11:35:28 pm
I love reading the garden reports, especially when I can't be at the garden. Please note my email address. Thanks to Ginny, who forwards the report to me because I have not been receiving them. I continue to invite the seniors from my church to visit the garden; and I try to model my home garden and the garden at my church to come close to what the Derwood Garden looks like.
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