Photo by Annie Odette: Park Police visitor Visitor's footfalls are like medicine; they heal the sick. ~African Proverb It is not the quantity of the meat but the cheerfulness of the guests which makes the feast. ~Edward Hyde Volunteers don't get paid, not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless. ~Sherry Anderson Wow! We did it all! It took all of us to get ready for Harvest Festival, make our scarecrows, prepare for our amazing harvest lunch, get our tomato seed exchange set up and pepper tasting station! Thank you for pitching in wherever it was needed! It was great to see a lot of our crew out today. Thank you for heeding the call! Note to self: Do not wait until the last three weeks of the season to try to fit everything in... hope we can be better prepared next year and spread activities thru the season. What makes our demonstration garden special is the ability to share it with people. Today we had several visitors. One very special one that made a lot of us very happy, park police with a beautiful horse! Two moms with 10 children between them came at the end of the day. The children are home schooled and were very happy to learn we are available to share information with them and the home schooling community in the future. Garden Reports: Shade Garden: Carol Martin- Thursday September 22 What a delightful morning in the Shade Garden. Mother Nature is not letting summer go quietly, but early morning was cool & the humidity was low. The usual crew made short work of planting a few new purchased & donated plants on the hillside. Others worked on plant inventory & identification with the goal of placing all new labels/stakes in the garden. There were a few updates & deletions, but we still have more than 130 different species plus various cultivars. Of course, general watering was still required in addition to watering in new plantings. At the end of the work session, four of the group ventured for a first-time visit to Gray Goose Nursery on Rt. 108 for a walk through & a little educational venture. It is a nice nursery, friendly staff, most of the stock was in good shape, but feels like they market mainly to landscapers. One shortcoming we noted was that there is very little information on the plant markers & labels beyond Latin names. Next week we will be focusing on chipping paths & mulching beds to tidy up the garden for the Harvest Festival. Compost Central: Kristy Hardy and Susan Eisendrath Larry, Susan and I enjoyed a beautiful day at compost central. Larry tested the temp of the county compost bin that Marlow turned last week and the temp was low. Susan felt through it and it felt good and it smells good, so we will let it sit and it can be used as top dressing at a later time. I turned pile 1 into bin 2 adding more green material. It started at a temp of around 100 and also looks good, so we are probably going to let that sit also. Larry started filling bin 3 with garden leftovers and we plan on continuing to fill the empty bins in a similar way until the garden closes in October. One compost bin is finished and can be used when new beds are being prepared for the fall. Susan also checked all of the plastic trash containers where the weeds with seeds and rhizomes were stored for the last few months and the materials we're decomposed enough to add to the mixed pile to add to our next round of composting. Photo by Robin Ritterhoff: Kristy ready for compost workout! Children’s Garden: Annie Odette In the Children’s Garden Susan Kirby and Annie Odette prepared for the Harvest Festival. The glorious Lady in Black Aster (Aster lateriflorus) is in full bloom. Also the Cotton plant, a pink variety shone in the morning sun. The Shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeeana) is also enjoying the fall weather. But we did see, unfortunately Harlequin beetles on the Brussel sprouts. We also has a surprise visitor to the Demo garden, the park policeman on his trusty mount. Photo by Annie Odette: Lady in Black Photo by Annie Odette: Shrimp plant Photo by Annie Odette: Cotton Butterfly Garden: Peggy Stanford The Butterfly Garden Team trimmed and readied garden for the Harvest Festival......looking good considering fall is upon us. There are a few vestiges left from summer. We were also visited by a Park Policeman riding his horse Ozzie. And then we were off to a terrific team lunch. Photo by Bill Newman: Ginny and hibiscus Photos by Peggy Stanford Container Garden: Carol Olson The container gardens have had a successful summer season, and many of the herbs are still looking good, especially the lemon grass, tarragon, sage, oregano. There are still a few green tomatoes on the leggy plants. Two hot peppers were picked for Manna. The containers were tidied up for this Saturday's event. Kitchen Garden: Lily Bruch Ida’s Kitchen garden is not usually featured as Ida is not a computer person. Ida has maintained this garden for many years.. Patty and Millicent have been a huge help to Ida with weeding, dividing plants, adding compost and mulching. Lots of beautiful Malabar spinach was harvested this week. Patty weeded and clipped seed heads to make garden ready for Harvest Festival. Photo by Bill Newman: Malabar Spinach Therapeutic Horticulture beds: Bob Loesche Even as Fall is beginning to be felt, last night's rain noticeably freshened up the TH beds. All the plants looked a little crisper and their colors were a little brighter; even the foliage on the Lavender was a deeper shade of soft gray. The two Mums are at their absolute peak, and also continuing to flower nicely are Celosia, Marigolds, Ageratum, Gomphrena, Anis Hyssop and Fennel (nearly five feet tall!). The Zinnia are still blooming but, like last week, their rate of flower production appears to be slowing down. The Celosia appear to have been partially trampled by something--a wayward child, a lost dog, or perchance an extremely large rabbit?--but the damage wasn't fatal and there are still plenty of plants left. To prepare for the Harvest Festival, Virginia and I spruced up the appearance of the beds. We cut all the remaining Yarrow stalks down to the foliage and sprinkled the seeds from the heads onto the ground--no doubt next year we'll complain about an excess of Yarrow seedlings! We similarly cut off all the remaining seed heads from the Garlic Chives so as to inhibit undue volunteers next Spring. We trimmed back a number of plants that were spilling out onto the paths, and pulled out all the stakes that were not being used and returned them to the storage shed. Photo by: Bob Loesche Photo by Robin Ritterhoff: Annie picking from beds Children’s Therapeutic Garden: Ellen Meyerson The regular group of children came today with their counselors. Surprisingly there were quite a few pole beans for the children to pick even though the plants looked pretty dead. We pulled up the old zucchini plants after picking the last zucchini. They also picked radishes. The radishes we planted recently have germinated well. We may still be able to harvest them this fall. We had some flooding from the irrigation system which mainly affected the fall carrot planting. I don't know if they will have enough time to get to harvest size. The lettuce in the salad table looks good. Sandy harvested some Okra which we gave to Manna. We picked some cotton balls which we plan to use next week for an art project with the children. We will also decorate the pumpkins we grew for Halloween. One basil plant looked good so we harvested some for Manna along with some rosemary. The other was blighted and we removed it. Other than that we mainly weeded and tried to improve the garden for the Harvest Festival. What an amazing team for the Children’s therapeutic garden! Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathy Tsai Today was another rather slow day in the Herb and Fragrance garden. Mostly, we weeded, but also trimmed back on several plants, including the African blue basil, the chaste tree, apple mint, crossvine and artemesia. We think that this area of the Demo Garden will look good for the Harvest Festival. Two welcoming scarecrows were built and are stationed outside the gate at the gazebo. In the next week or so, we will lower the purple martin house, look for and remove any nesting materials, and close it up for the winter. We didn't attract any martins this year, but there is always a "next time." Photo by Bill Newman 100 Square Foot Garden: Mary Anne Normile A very comfortable morning in the garden, but the long trend of persistent hot weather and heavy insect activity has taken its toll on the little garden. Despite adding a new, sturdier row cover (Micromesh), harlequin bugs somehow made their way into the bed and devastated the mustard seedlings. Some of the kale was also heavily damaged. Bush beans continue to produce despite damage from bean beetles. We pulled most of the remaining cucumber plants, which never reached the size of previous years' plants. The much-maligned pole beans are now producing well with their heads high in the sun thanks to Hope's teepee. We harvested a few large bags of beans and one bag of jalapenos. Harvest was reduced in order to leave some things growing for Saturday's Harvest Festival. The jalapeno plant, which stands out as one of the few plants in our garden that has been untouched by bugs or disease, is from the variety Jalafuego (Johnny's Selected Seeds), a hybrid variety that is high-yielding and resistant to cracking (we haven't seen a single cracked pepper yet!). The finicky Scotch Bonnet plant finally stopped dropping flowers and has a pretty, if small, display of the hot peppers.The Eleonora basil, which is partially resistant to basil downy mildew, has finally shown signs of disease after a long and productive disease-free summer. Ever hopeful of filling in bare spots with something green and growing, we sowed seeds of Bloomsdale spinach and arugula. Edibles: Erica Smith The garden is spruced up and looking ready for Harvest Festival on Saturday! Thanks to everyone who spread mulch, pulled weeds, relocated labels, and otherwise made our space presentable. Harvesting was light this week because we want to show off produce to our visitors - especially those mouse melons that families come in the gate looking for - but please do catch up next week (when I will be away). We did harvest some beans, okra, peppers (mostly green from a branch I broke off by mistake), kohlrabi, and squash. Cover crops are up and growing. This week I just planted a little spinach to fill in the raised bed of lettuce - that's probably the last thing we'll plant this year aside from garlic in late October. We checked under the row covers for pests on the brassicas, and found some harlequin bugs (not as many as last week) and caterpillars. On the whole the plants are doing very well, though, and it was great to be able to harvest some kohlrabi that was planted in early August. Photo by Erica Smith: Avocado squash Photo by Erica Smith: Mouse melon Small Fruit: Patti Oseroff Today we made good on our intention to keep the grass from invading the pawpaw area by installing edging around the area. Barbara and I also put up a short fence up to protect the pawpaws from any spilling mulch. We enjoyed a visit by a very handsome percheron/paint mix named Ozzie and his mounted policeman. It made me want a horse : ) they are amazing creatures. Tomato Bed: Dan Ward & Joslyn Read Last week all tomato plants were pulled. We were able to pick a few Juliet's that were getting ripe, and the one ripe Brandywine Sudduths was gnawed by an unknown assailant (which I suspect was a squirrel since they do eat only the ripe ones in my garden). We picked quite a few green tomatoes to add to the Manna delivery. Added to the sadness of the end of the tomato season, it looks as though rabbits ate 2 of the 3 rows of radishes which were planted in the some of the space vacated by the tomatoes. To help save the remaining row we put a white cloth over that row in hopes that will deter them. We'll see. Erica recommended that we plant Groundhog Tillage Radish in the remaining space. This radish is supposed to be a broad, long radish that leaves a good size hole in the soil when pulled in the spring, acting as an aeration agent. The seeds were hand spread and raked into the soil, followed by a drink of water. Photo by Erica Smith: Forage radish cover crop MANNA: Robin Ritterhoff50 pounds donated, for a YTD total of 1276 pounds Photo by Robin Ritterhoff: Tina with Kohlrabi KEYHOLE & BALES: Robin Ritterhoff We spruced up what’s still growing in the bales and the keyhole garden, while leaving nearly-ripe tomatoes and peppers for Harvest Festival visitors to see. The bales’ evolution toward compost has diminished them to perhaps two-fifths of their original stature, but they continue to support and nourish the roots of some vigorous tomatoes and hot pepper plants, as well as some recently transplanted chives. In the keyhole bed, we are encouraged that the arugula and chard seedlings planted last week in the keyhole garden have taken well -- little do they know that the keyhole bed will be taken apart over the next few weeks as we ready the garden for its winter respite. Photo by Robin Ritterhoff: Carol and Sandy Closing Comments: Lily and Bill The morning started out by Dar and Bill getting enough straw for our scarecrows.. not to mention Bill chasing after a big truck hoping it was our delivery of leaves...unfortunately it was only soil for the park...Darlene and Cindy working on the boy scarecrow. The garden looks wonderful for Harvest Festival which is a popular event both at the agricultural farm and Derwood. Lets hope this year it does not get canceled because of rain. After heavy work of covering walkways with wood chips (thanks Karin for the non- stop work with the mulching) we celebrated with our harvest feast! Thanks for all the wonderful cooks! No surprise that great gardeners are good cooks too! It was amazing! What a variety: venison stew, chile con carne, smoked pepper with quinoa, soup with sweet potato leaves and peanuts, malabar spinach quiche, lots of different salads with so many varieties and so much more! The desserts were awesome too! Photo by Robin Ritterhoff: Lily and Bill enjoying our feast! Not only did we have our feast, but also our first ever pepper tasting. Not many varieties- but a good start. Let’s do this earlier in the season for next year. 7 pot brain strain won the hottest pepper award. We were lucky to have a new mg join us today for her first workday. We welcome any new MG to the garden until the end of the season. If you would like to be involved with the leadership of the garden, please contact Bill or myself as several opportunities exist.
Our last day of work is October 25. Shed clean up is scheduled for October 21. Joe will be leading a tool maintenance – 10 at 10 - Will update you on the date. We will also be scheduling outdoor storage space clean up and repairs. End of season party at Maria’s on November 1st! Have you submitted your reimbursement requests? Please do so as soon as possible as we are wrapping up the year. See you all at the Harvest Festival on Saturday!
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