Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished Lao Tse With the start of school just around the corner, education must be on everyone's mind: we had 3 groups of mother/children visitors tour the Demo garden this morning. 2 mothers said they home-schooled. One said she was in a home-school co-op and responsible for Nature education and asked whether she could bring the children to the Demo garden. Yes you can! She and Susan exchanged contact information and will schedule some educational activities and reach out to other interested educators. That's a good reminder of how our Demo garden is a great educational resource? Ask yourselves: Who do you know who might benefit? Bring 'em for a tour! Garden Reports: Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathy Tsai The herb and fragrance team members spent another rather leisurely day in the garden. We continued our efforts at weeding, particularly along the rear fence. Weeds are mostly under control now, so we will continue with maintenance of them. However, we all know how well they thrive in our hot, muggy summers. It will be a weekly endeavor. We also cut back several plants, among them the chaste tree, where older limbs were removed, and the comfrey, lemon balm, and Miss Kim lilac. We don't often get the opportunity, but were happy to harvest from some of our plants to add to the Manna donation. Today we contributed several types of basil, apple mint, and Vietnamese coriander. We hope to have more to add before our season ends. Butterfly Garden: Bobbie Maxwell We found less bugs then we had last week, thank goodness. The big job was pruning the heliopsis by the fence, also staking plants that had fallen. The canna lily had fallen and some others.. Ginny pruned bushes between the walkways, so we could walk by. We saw a black swallow tail that had torn wings, kind of sad. Also Darlene had seen a monarch earlier that day. I saw one as it flew from the Butterfly garden to the Dahlia garden. All in all, everything looks good. We do have plenty of milkweed plants, did have to remove a few. Children's Therapeutic Horticulture: Ellen Meyerson Four students from CSAAC came with their aids this week. The pole and bush beans were harvested. We have had a very good crop this summer. We also harvested lettuce, three types of basil, and sungold tomatoes. Many of the tomatoes get eaten as they are picked. The students minded the heat and we're pleased when it came time to water. We planted spinach, lettuce, radishes. We harvested beets and onions for the County Fair. We will harvest more beets and carrots next week for the Fair. Therapeutic Horticulture Beds: Bob Loesche and Virginia White- Mahaffey Things in the TH beds remain largely the same as last week. Bed 1: As Sandy Chernin can attest, the artemisia continue to be fantastic. The cut and come again zinnia are slightly less prolific than before, but plenty of blooms are available. And our celosia are coming into bloom. Bed 2: The queen red lime zinnia have started to bloom, though I wouldn't characterize the flowers as either "red" or "lime"; more "redi-sh" and "lime-ish". The echinacea still remain available for cutting. The achillea are largely gone, but a few second-generation blossoms have appeared and might be good accent pieces. Bed 3: The gomphrena and verbena are going bonkers--lots and lots of blooms available. The white mums are just starting to flower. The fennel is going double bonkers (if such a term exists), with extravagant, huge, feathery yellow flower heads (see photo). The rudbeckia and pinwheel zinnia continue to flower strongly on the south (fence) side of the fennel. Bed 4: The molucella are largely gone and I deadheaded many brown cuttings, but a few hearty stems remain. Be careful, though, I found the mature stems have small thorns. The gailliarda continue to be the endurance champs in this bed. The monarda are showing a few blooms. The celosia have gotten quite tall with a good number of red flowers. The Goldquelle rudbeckia have also gotten quite tall and are showing lots of buds--gorgeous dahlia-like blossoms should be on display in a few days. The achillea here still have good white color. Bed 4 1/2: The gomphrena here are blooming to the point they are getting leggy. With their small pink flowers on long stems, these appear more related to the verbena than the red "bachelor button" gomphrena in Bed 3. In any event, the time to use them is now. Children's Garden: Sandy Chernin Another pleasant morning in the garden, with plants refreshed from the recent rain. Today the main focus was Mrs. MacGregor’s garden. Harvest included three varieties of basil (Genovese, Minette, Purple Ruffles), sun gold tomatoes, and a single green pepper! The cotton and peanut plants continue to look healthy and are flowering. The gourd vines are growing like gangbusters! They were forcefully redirected off the near bye cotton and tomato plants. With the help of Bill (as I couldn’t see up high), many squash bugs met their demise. It was difficult to detect any gourds forming yet but there were lots of bees at the flowers and we are keeping our fingers crossed! To make room for some fall planting, a large marigold was pulled from one of the planter boxes. In its stead, Audrey Hankinson planted beet seeds (Detroit Dark Red). She also planted seeds for radishes (Cherry Belle) at the opposite edge of the garden. We are trying to make the most of every inch! Thanks Audrey! Elsewhere in the garden, the cardinal vine teepee is starting to flower. The purple hyacinth vine has almost completely covered the tunnel, but no flowers yet. The Lion’s Mane plants are booming, and the popcorn cassia plant, almost hidden by the tunnel and the common milkweed, is developing blooms! If you have never seen this plant before, come visit and smell (you must rub or crush a leaf)! You will find yourself temporarily transported to a movie theater! VEGETABLE GARDEN-Erica Smith, Mary Anne Normile, Robin Ritterhoff What a great day for vegetable gardening at Derwood. Last weekend’s very welcome heavy rains stimulated lots of growth (both among plants we want and those we don’t). Unlike past weeks, when any water we applied would be sucked right up by the thirsty earth, today puddles actually formed on the paths as we watered the raised beds. Harvesting: squash, cucumbers, beans, jalapeno peppers, a few okra, lettuce, carrots, golden beets, eggplant, basil, leeks, lettuce, beets, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes. Holding off on the corn for another week. Planting: sowed seeds of Danvers Half-long carrots. Tending: We’re in prime bug season, so bug patrol was particularly rewarding today. Removed many squash bugs, including wrapping our hands with duct tape, sticky side out, to pull off eggs from the underside of squash leaves. Watered raised beds. Flea beetles have discovered the raised bed eggplants, which are still flowering and fruiting despite the damage. Anne Kelly deadhead anise hyssop by the mouse melon trellis, encountering many interesting insects. Her discoveries inspired Darlene to educate several of us about the cute little two stab stinkbug, and how to tell it apart from the two spot stinkbug. Into the bug bucket went every stinkbug we encountered, plus many other bugs that want to eat our harvest. We noticed that there were very few flowers on new planting of beans--maybe with cooler nights, beans will start flowering again. We made a little fence for the pretzel beans to lean against. We pulled some very healthy weeds, including some nasty grass over near the hose area. There are plenty more weeds to inspire us next week! Watering: Our watering needs were taken care of for the short term with the heavy rains of last week. Pop-up showers and thunderstorms are forecast for the remainder of this week, but if Derwood does not benefit from them, please consider signing up to water the vegetable gardens. (Olney, about 4 miles east of Derwood, got almost no rain from the storms Tuesday afternoon that drenched areas to the south and east). The watering signup sheet is at https://www.volunteersignup.org/D4QDR Thank you! Manna: Robin Ritterhoff Today's delivery to Manna of 78 pounds of fresh vegetables and herbs brought our YTD total to 772 pounds. 100 Square Foot Garden: Hope Dieckhans The rain, rain and more rain hit our garden hard:-( Our leaning pole bean tepee continued to tip and was reinforced with rebar stakes. RIP the residents of our brassica enclosure (Kale, Collards, and Swiss Chard) and their neighbors the climbing cucumbers and summer squash all succumbed to standing water and drowned. A unanimous decision was reached to let the poor sopping wet and moldy earth rest and dry out before we plant again next week. However, despite the VERY moist weather the garden continued to produce lovely beets, basil, thyme, MANY jalapeños, one zucchini, one baby cucumber, several nice tomatoes, and beautiful pole and bush beans. We have our fingers crossed that Mother Nature settles down this week. The tomatillos are coming along and some will probably be ready for harvesting next week, a few beets are still maturing, and we have our eye on the newly sprouted Japanese mustard and lettuce. Special Projects: The Carols Keyholes The major work today in the keyhole gardens was staking up the tomato plants. One tomato laden branch of the Waratah Dwarf appeared to be doing a back bend over the side of the keyhole. Fortunately, with Bill’s help, Carol O was able to raise it up safely and tie it to the bamboo trellis. Apparently, the teepee shaped trellises that we constructed aren’t enough and sometimes require additional poles to support the tomatoes. Even though they are labeled as dwarf plants, the Sweet Scarlet and Bush Goliath are easily 3-4 feet tall. We were pleased to see lots of green fish peppers developing. Our other pepper plant (a bell pepper?) has 4 peppers on it, but we decided to wait one more week before harvesting. The Patio Star F Summer Squash is growing nicely. We did harvest a small bag of Mascotte Bush Beans from our two plants and a Bush Goliath tomato. Lots more are on the way! More kitchen scraps and leaves were added to the compost baskets and watered in and a light watering was given to the rest of the keyhole gardens. Pallets We were delighted to see that the radish seeds have germinated and a healthy crop is now filling four of the pallet pockets. Mini Munch Cucumber seedlings are poking up as well. At first glance, there were no sightings of any red basil seedlings, but while watering the top pocket, several tiny ones were found. Their reddish color blends well with the soil. The lone cucumber plant in the vertical pocket continues to hang on. Carol C added a small piece of bamboo to give it some support. The water bottles were refilled and the pallet pockets watered. Straw Bales/Rain Drain We harvested a few tomatoes, a beet and two carrots from the bales and a turnip from the rain drain! Only the tomatoes went to Manna as the other veggies were too small. Tomato Bed - Dan Ward and Joslyn Read The weather was lot better this week than it was last week. Still lots of maintenance to do. Most of the time was spent propping up drooping limbs and stems. We have a lot of tomatoes in the Annex section (the main garden tomato area is substantially behind progress but will hopefully pull into its own later in the season). Although we had lots of rain over the weekend there wasn't much damage due to the weather, perhaps because we didn't get much wind. Even so, there was still over 5 inches of rain to deal with. The main season tomatoes are still a few weeks away. Special thanks to Corinne, Linda, Margarita, Karin and Darlene for pitching in to help with the tying up, maintenance and picking the ripe tomatoes. We met with Bill, Susan and Lily to discuss postponing the tomato tasting event because several varieties will not be ripe for the event. It was decided to postpone it until August 29th. Mark that date on your calendars so you can bring yours so everyone can taste them. BUG REPORT Darlene Nicholson (Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!) We are dealing with our usual bugs in the garden; squash bugs, squash borers, cucumber beetles, harlequin bugs for the most part. Someone called my attention to this critter, and noticing the long hairs on this caterpillar's body, I suggested we didn't touch it. Turns out it is an American Dagger Moth Caterpillar. It doesn't seem to do much crop/flower damage in our garden except perhaps on the Maple trees. The problem is that the long fuzzy spines, or setae can cause welts on your skin. Note that not all species of dagger moths have the stinging spines, but do you want to be the one that test the theory? The other newly noted critter is pictured below, although I think Julie may photographed it a couple of weeks ago. It's a Common Whitetailed Skimmer, male. The thing to note about dragonflies is that they have the ability to bite. They are very quick and hard to catch but keep that in mind. Read more about them in this link. http://bugguide.net/node/view/603 Closing Comments: Lily, Bill and Susan So much going on everywhere! Ellina and Darlene worked on the container garden. So very thankful for Ram and Gail for their Small Fruit talk and all those wonderful goodies. Lily also made blackcurrant cheesecake. Link for the recipe is below. http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/recipes/blackcurrant-cheesecake We all enjoy feeding the frogs and just having them around. Julie Mangin has made a short clip. See link https://www.flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/35481950404/ Susan Kirby also brought cookies to celebrate Darlene's birthday! Please don't forget our tomato tasting on August 29th! Thanks all for joining us in this journey!
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