Live each season as it passes; breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Henry David Thoreau It was another beautiful, cool day in the Garden. The focus for today was preparing for the Harvest Festival this coming Saturday, Oct. 7, and our Open Garden next Tuesday, Oct.10. Tired, aging plants were removed and empty beds covered with leaf mulch. The garden paths were covered with a fresh layer of wood chips (thank you Maritza, Ellina and Mary Anne), and garden signage was refreshed and updated (thank you, Lee Anne!). The Garden looks beautiful! Thank you Darlene for our 10 at 10 on spiders! Announcements for October 3: October 10, 9-12: Open Garden for our fellow Master Gardeners. Our 10 @ 10 will feature a review of our gardening successes and not-so-successful efforts for 2017. Everyone is welcome to share their thoughts on this year's growing season. October 17: Lisa Berray will talk about the history of the Agricultural History Farm Park for our 10 @ 10. Dan Ward will also lead our annual fall cleaning and reorganization of the sheds. We will also have a chance to inventory our tools and supplies. October 24: regular workday. October 31: optional workday followed by our annual end-of-the-year lunch at Maria Wortman's. End of the season! Wow! Shade Garden: Carol Martin and Sue Schick ( Thursday September 28) We had another pleasant work day on Thursday, breezy but low humidity. This was our final work day for the season. We adapted one of the discarded pallets to make a small fence, at least a visual barrier between our patio and the garden storage area next to the sheds. We had enough shed stain left to make it the same color. It looks pretty nice for a temporary fix. We did some minimal clean up & removed a lot of some fungus that has come it in the wood chip paths. It resembles a sea sponge or coral, very interesting so we left some in a couple of places for people to see at the Harvest Festival. Of course, watering was the order of the day especially for new plantings which seem to be holding up. One of the crew volunteered to water again on Monday. The garden looks to be in good shape for the Festival with a little sprucing up on Friday. Compost Central: Kristy Hardy Yesterday was a beautiful day at compost central and we were glad to see Larry there 2 weeks in a row. Marlowe added greens and browns and turned from bin 4-5. Larry turned much of pile 2-3 and said it didn't need to be added to.. Both piles started at around 120 with pile number 3 mostly done. Larry and I took a lot of sticks out of that pile. Even if the temp drops on pile 3 next week, it probably won't be ready before the end of October, but is a large pile so will give a good start to the spring garden. Larry started a new pile in bin 1 last week, so we'll be adding to it next week. Tomato Bed - Dan Ward and Joslyn Read All good things must come to an end. Last week all tomato plants were pulled from the main area and the annex. One of the saddest days for us. This week was spent weeding and applying leaf mulch to the annex beds. A few weeks ago we put down cover crops to the future tomato bed and to the bed in the main area. As Bill says, it's time to put the garden beds to bed. This time of year is vitally important to healthy garden soil for next year's growth. Applying organic matter will allow for the replacement of vital plant nutrients used up over the growing season, as well as helping with the soil structure. Everyone loves a rich, loamy soil to grow plants. Vegetable Garden: Robin Ritterhoff, Erica Smith and Mary Anne Normile Harvesting: summer squash, collards, mustard, tomatoes, peppers, herbs. Tending: Almost all activity today was weeding, mulching and sprucing up for Saturday’s Harvest Fest.
Planting: planted (thanks to Darlene for the great help) Romaine “Rouge d'Hiver” seedlings in the empty spots in the raised beds. This variety does well in cool temperatures and is recommended as having particularly good flavor. Therapeutic Horticulture: Virginia White-Mahaffey Although the gardening season is drawing to a close, portions of the Therapeutic Horticulture beds are still producing abundantly. Verbena bonariensis, both varieties of gomphrena, both cultivars of celosia, and chrysanthemums are blooming profusely. In addition to deadheading and trimming and weeding, we planted gladiolus corms for next year’s garden. Thanks to intern Caroline Baker for growing and donating the corms, and to Bill Newman for assisting me on multiple tasks. In Bed 1, deep vermilion and bright orange celosia of medium height are both available in good quantity. The artemisia foliage remains luxuriant. The African blue basil smells and looks terrific but its blooms appear in limited numbers. The Cut and Come Again zinnia are still blooming, but likely not for much longer. In Bed 2, the tithonia offer intense orange blooms on strong stalks. In Bed 3, the strawberry gomphrena appear as hundreds of floating floral lollipops. The verbena bonariensis are bobbing in the breeze and are not slowing down production either. Chrysanthemums are blooming in copper and white. In Bed 4 outside the fence, the gaillardia plants are still blazing orange/red/yellow. The celosia there offer intense purple-red flowers on tall stems. In Bed 4.5, the feathery pink gomphrena are still producing prodigiously. Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson In case you missed the 10 @ 10 on Tuesday, here are electronic copies of the handout. They were from a UM training session 2 years ago. A gardener brought this little gathering to my attention on Tuesday (see picture below). My original ID was aphids, cabbage caterpillar, and something making a cocoon. I sent this to HGIC to get confirmation and best guess at what the cocoon held. HGIC replied ... (btw, they were all on a nasturtium leaf). We put the leaf in the pond for the frogs and fish. Here's the response to your question: We think this does look like a cabbage worm (on nasturtium maybe?). The cocoon is just a sibling who has already entered into metamorphosis, and that one will likely follow, but not necessarily on the plant. Answered by the Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC), UMD Extension horticultural consultants. For more information on a variety of gardening and pest topics visit our website http://extension.umd.edu/hgic Conservation Garden: Maria Wortman Things are winding down in the Conservation Garden these days, but there is still interest and beauty to be found. The dry hydrangea mopheads remain attractive for a long while. Many of the ground covers we planted earlier in the season have spread nicely, particularly the Packera aurea (golden ragwort), Waldsteinia fragarioides (barren strawberry), and Chrysogonum virginianum (green and gold), all of which are native to the eastern U.S. A shrub that we like a lot is the Viburnum nudum, which is now sporting its lovely multi-colored berries amid its lustrous green leaves. We think it would be a worthy addition to anyone’s garden. It is said that it requires more than one plant to produce a good crop of berries, but this one seems to be doing fine on its own. Speaking of berries, the Winterberries are putting on their usual Fall showing of bright red, a cheerful greeting for visitors to the garden. The Northern Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) has been decapitated. The very attractive seed heads have been removed and consigned to a new life in Horticultural Therapy arrangements, where they look very lovely. Let us be very clear – BACK AWAY VERY SLOWLY from this plant, and DO NOT EVEN THINK of using it in your garden. It has taken years to semi-eradicate it from the Conservation Garden. It spreads quite freely if not managed – but the seed heads are very pretty. Children's Garden: Sandy Chernin A lovely morning, with only a little weeding needed in Mrs. McGregor’s garden. It was a good time to take stock of the Children’s garden highlights that will be shared with Harvest Festival visitors next Saturday:
Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathy Tsai Time was spent today on cutting back several overgrown plants, including the tansy and the African blue basil. That basil, in particular, is a very vigorous grower and had overshadowed the chocolate-scented daisy, the ornamental pepper, and the heliotrope. It also was encroaching onto the walkway so we all took turns whacking it back. Marty spent time removing all the fennel that tends to grow around the bench and back fence and thinned out the coriander, the comfrey, and the chaste tree. The Shasta daisies were cut back and John added some leaf mulch to the area around the tansy and where he had weeded. Several other basils were cut back and the phlox plants were deadheaded. In the coming weeks we will be digging up the arabian jasmine and the bay leaf to winter them over at our homes so that, hopefully, we can enjoy them again next season. Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford Today we completed preparing the garden for the Harvest Festival. We trimmed and mulched the paths. It was a quiet day, the morning was heavy with dew. Butterflies were scarce but one Painted Lady who appeared to have faded colors enjoyed all the lush foliage and remaining flowers. Our Bloomerang Lilac is re-blooming. 100 Square Foot Garden: Hope Dieckhans Today, activities at the garden were all about beautification, safety, and the future! Safety first - PVC stakes and long rebar stakes meant to keep our center pole bean tower straight (they failed!) were removed to keep visitors from tripping over them as they tour the garden during the Harvest Festival on Saturday. Next, beautification- Lovely and showy lettuce and Swiss chard growing in four of the five sections and crimson clover ground cover that sprouted since last week provided a fresh green color to our garden. The brassica enclosure had a nice crop kale and collards. The tomatillo, still hanging in there - had some of its withered leaves and branches trimmed and the plant looked handsome again. Structurally, the boundary lines of each of the sections were tidied up to give the garden a pretty, organized feel. Finally, looking to the future, the center section was prepared and crimson clover seeds were spread. The garden was given a nice soaking drink of water. Special Projects: Carol Conrad and Carol Olsen Today was tidy up day for the Harvest Festival and Open Garden. All three areas, Key Hole, Straw Bales and Pallets had their paths freshly "chipped". Executive decisions were made about what to harvest and what could remain to have examples of our fruitfulness for visitors. Newly added greens were well watered. We had no losses from last weeks plantings. Marigolds were deadheaded. "Nursing" bottles were filled and examples of stages for creating the drip bottles were laid out for explanations of DIY. The gloriously spent Red Sunflowers were trimmed but some stems left intact to demonstrate their size, location, and great attraction for pollinators and then birds. Spent heads were strewn below to encourage volunteers for next year. We considered having a blown up/ laminated photo of one of our still life studies to demonstrate the diversity of what we grew over spring and summer and a return of the labels from the April GIEI event re-posted. The blackboard painted planks on the straw bales and the pallets were decorated with sidewalk chalk, but know that water will wash them away. We appreciated the lovely morning light and dew sparkle when we arrived and enjoyed the relatively quiet morning and gradual warming fall sun. The season may be ending, but there is much to do and enjoy before it ends. See you in the Garden!
Bill, Lily and Susan
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