“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” ― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Welcome gardeners! The 2016 Derwood Demo Garden season begins with panache - wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for being part of this fantastic garden. Today’s recipe included 3 dozen hearty, enthusiastic Master Gardeners; biting winds in bright sunshine; questionable decision-making; and a wary eye. Chill for 2 hours; add 23 interns, a loud/fast talker, a stroll across the woodchips, and way too much information to remember. Note the excitement. Remove from garden for one week to acclimate and repeat. Garden reports: 100 Square Foot Garden: Maryanne Normile The 100 Square Foot Garden was in reasonably good shape despite some winter weeds. We are using the same layout as last year, which is both visually interesting and easier to work in, and are simplifying the planting scheme with a theme of the Small-space Victory Garden. As such, the plantings will be somewhat less ambitious than last year's international vegetable garden, but will be better able to demonstrate to our client gardeners how they use small-space techniques to grow many of their favorite food crops in their small gardens. Today the Frozen Four weeded, re-established the beds, and added an inch or two of fresh compost. We planted seedlings of collards, kale, broccoli, spinach, and yellow and red onions, and seed of spinach, carrots, beets, and peas. We added row cover to protect the brassicas and watered in what we could. We briefed the new interns on the objective of the 100 Square Foot Garden and the techniques used. We explained how we put the garden to bed for the winter and get it ready for planting in the spring. Edibles: Erica Smith Today we pulled many weeds from beds, began tidying bed edges and adding compost, and seeded some lettuce to join already planted radish seeds in what will be the tomato area. All this in winter-like conditions! Let's hope for something more like spring next week when we will accomplish some of the following: rebuild one of our salad tables to make it deeper, fill some raised beds, get a lot of seeds in the ground and plant some seedlings, get the potato bed ready and planted, and continue with weeding and bed preparation. Glad to see so many brave interns turning out for orientation - hope some of you will join us to get many tasks done in the vegetable garden this season. Keyhole garden: Robin Ritterhoff This season we’re piloting an African keyhole garden designed for intensive production in a small space, suitable for hot weather and low rain situations, using materials that are free or low cost. This technique was developed in Southern Africa in the 1990s and has been adopted elsewhere, including by many Texas gardeners. Our bed is about 3’ high, 6’ in diameter, has an outer wall designed to trap moisture enclosing layers of branches and brush, hay, compost, cardboard and will be topped by a thick layer of compost for planting. The form is a sort of kidney shape or keyhole, giving easy access to a central cone, which we will fill with kitchen scraps, leaching nutrients to the plants’ roots throughout the season. Since keyhole gardens are designed to be drought-tolerant, we’re bravely planning not to install drip irrigation. (To learn more about keyhole gardens: http://www.texascooppower.com/texas-stories/nature-outdoors/keyhole-gardening,http://www.gardeningchannel.com/how-to-make-a-keyhole-garden/ ) Hay Bales: Robin Ritterhoff We launched the process of readying our bale garden for planting by pouring a slurry of compost mixed with water on the tops of the bales. This will speed the breakdown of the center of the bales into the compost that they would otherwise take far longer to become. We’ll add more compost slurry over the next few weeks, watching the temperature of the bales as it rises as the straw breaks down and then falls to a level under body temperature, when it becomes safe for seedlings’ delicate roots, and seeds. Container Garden: Robin Ritterhoff Anyone interested in leading our container gardening? It will be a fairly simple setup: maybe three containers with herbs used in a favorite cuisine such as Italian/Mediterranean, Chinese or Thai, Mexican. To be setup mid-April. Really just a matter of moving the containers into place (from the shed), filling them with mostly purchased plants; and then posting a recipe by each. The fourth container would have a tomato. If interested, please email Robin and then discuss with her next week. Closing Comments: Lily and Bill Interns, please contact garden leads for the areas where you would prefer to contribute and then follow up in person next week. Some ideas are in the attached documents. We will start the first of our better-than-bi-weekly “10 minute talks” next Tuesday at 10am under the tree. The topic will be “Brassicas and the Floaty White Stuff We Put On ‘em” Thank you
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AuthorOur weekly reports are a joint effort of all garden leads
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