Welcome 2012 Gardeners!

We hope you have all enjoyed a nice winter, mild as it has been.  And though it's only February, it's time to start thinking about the Main Street Community Garden again!  There are signups to be completed, direct seeding to take place, transplants to be started, signs to be painted, compost to be spread and tilled and fun events to be planned.  Dates and details are below.

We really want everyone to ENJOY their time being part of the garden and feel like the garden is their own backyard.  Due to feedback from last year we will be sending out fewer emails and relying more on this website to relay more detailed info on plants, to do lists and other fun tidbits.  Start checking the garden website on a weekly basis to keep up with the latest! 

Sign ups & Expectations:
We will hold a sign-up and composting, tilling, sign hanging session on TUESDAY, APRIL 24th, 2012, 4:30-6pm.  Please mark your calendars and plan on attending as this year we will once again be limiting the garden to 40 participants.  Cost will be $35 for the season.  We are once again parterning with the Cameron Place CSA to get seedlings started and access to gardening materials as needed.

Our sessions will be held on Tuesdays from 5-7pm.  Throughout the season everyone will be required to participate in a beginning of the year event and an end of season event as well as 10 hours for the season.  In order to allow everyone to keep better track of their participation, there will be a sign up sheet located on the side of the tool-shed. Every week there will be a garden leader who will be responsible for helping direct the activities, weeding, planting and harvesting for the evening.  Please let us know if you want to be a garden leader or waterer this summer, these are critical to keeping the garden going!

Keep in mind our garden is all natural and herbicide and pesticide free!  (This means more manual weeding and sometimes creative ways to address bugs!)  For those of you that are new, we plant the garden together, meet on Tuesdays to care for the garden and harvest once a week.  Everyone present on Tuesdays is encouraged to take home a share of veggies.  For people that can't make Tuesday evening work sessions you should plan on working and harvesting at a time that works for you, and remember to log your time on the sign up sheets.

If you know you want to be involved in the garden again this year (or if you have moved or for some other reason won't be participating, let us know as well!), please reply with an email so we have an idea of how many new people we can bring on this year (aka how much outreach and advertising we should do!) We will be limiting the number of participants this year and will develop a wait list after the sign-up day.  We will do an assessment of participation in mid-June, and if some spaces open up then we'll invite people from the wait list to join. 

This year we will once again be participating in Grow Another Row, and the excess veggies not taken home by garden members will go to this great organization which donates fresh veggies to soup kitchens. 

Plants & Plantings:
We know there were some great hits last year (everyone always loves the tomatoes!) and then there was some produce that maybe wasn't a huge hit (anyone love picking those okra?).  We have created a poll on the left side bar where everyone can vote for the favorites they want to see again this year.  Please vote by March 9th. If you have other ideas please comment on this post.

We also encourage all members to start their own seeds and bring the starts to the garden to plant, especially if there's something different that you'd like to see in the garden, a certain variety that you'd like to try growing or just want to start your own seeds but have no garden of your own to plant them in!

Upcoming Dates:
- March 6th-  Pre-sign up work day (designing the garden layout, discussing new ideas, painting signs, direct seeding greens, starts for transplants, cleaning out and organizing garden shed)
- April 24th- SIGN UP, composting, tilling, hanging signs
- May 1st- running drip tape, preliminary weeding, weed plastic
- May 8th- Planting Day!

Fun Things:
Since we want this to be a fun year, we are thinking of having more potlucks, perhaps a couple talks on various ag related subjects and show a movie or two.  These would all be on Tuesdays after the garden session.  We know there are quite a few kiddos that come to the garden, and if there's someone out there who wants to organize a small kids' plot, or even a coordinated dirt pile for kids to play in during work sessions, let us know!   If you have other ideas on how to make the garden more fun, interactive and community oriented, feel free to share your ideas in the comments section of the website!

Please email us with any questions or let us know if you would like to be a garden leader and/or waterer this summer.  We're looking forward to a great season together!

Your gardening gals,

Nina, Jenn and Ilana

Vote for your favorite veggies 2012!

Hello Garden Peeps!  Please vote for your favorite veggies etc on the poll to the right of this post before March 30th.  You may choose as many favorites as you want.  If you have other comments or suggestions (or strong dislikes...anyone else hate picking okra as much as i do?!), please feel free to post them below. We will try to make the garden as tailored to everyone's input as seeds/transplants/availability allows. 

The garden is resting

Thanks to a special member, the garden has been tilled and put to bed for the winter. We planted a rye and vetch cover crop to help stabilize and add some organic nitrogen to the soil. We also planted garlic for an early summer harvest in 2012! Until next year, THANKS members for a successful season.

Garden Potluck!

This Tuesday, August 23rd we will have our regularly scheduled  work session starting at 5pm which will be followed by our Annual Garden Potluck at 6:30!  The potluck is a great way to meet fellow gardeners, hang out with friends and eat delicious food together.  Please bring a dish to share, along with your own dishes/utensils.  Beverages will be provided! 

Watching out for the Garden!

Hello Dear Hardworking Gardeners!

Before I delve into our weekly work session, I want to thank Phil and Trish for being diligent  and watching out for the garden.  Trish confronted the guys taking off with our cabbages (mystery solved!) and produce after a second week in a row.  Although we want to maintain an open fence policy and encourage all of you to work/harvest during the week if the Tuesday session does not work for you, we also want to make sure that all of our dedicated gardeners benefit from the efforts they have put in. 

If you encounter people you have ever met before in the garden feel free to introduce yourself and ask how they are involved.  If they are not involved, please tell them about the garden, and feel free to give them info on how to get involved (I will be putting some brochures on the garden board on the side of the shed), but make it clear that produce is only for garden members!   You will either meet a new garden member you haven't met before or you will help us weed out people that may just be mooching off our hard work.

I also want to remind everyone that the garden should be a supplement to your weekly vegetables.  With 35 members and Grow Another Row, we want to make sure everyone gets a piece of the pie so please take/harvest with that in mind...there is PLENTY to go around!!  And will only have more as the season progresses!

On to this week's session: We have our weekly garden session tonight from 5-7pm.  We will be addressing weeds (the ever constant battle, we had a GREAT session last week, let's repeat that!), removing dead zucchini plants (in to the garbage since they are infested with squash bugs), and harvesting:  onions!, green beans, ripe tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, eggplant, cukes, chard, kale, basil...etc!

See you tonight!!

Ilana

Squash Bugs: a call to arms!

sad squash plant :(

ATTENTION gardeners!  there is an invasion going on in the garden, and unless you want ALL the squash plants to look like this (on the right!)  then we MUST join together in a unified front.  this is a call to arms (or in the case of an organic gardener, your fingers and feet).  every single time you are in the garden this summer whether it is to work or harvest (hopefully both) please take a minute to inspect the zucchini plants.

eggs!

FIRST: turn over the leaves and look for clusters of eggs that look like this (on right). they may also be paler brown to yellow to white.  then, use either your thumb and finger, or a rock on either side of the leaf to CRUSH the eggs.  they are resilient little things so you'll have to use a little effort to squish them completely.  it's ok if the leaf gets a little bit crunched in the process, the eggs must be destroyed.

 

nymphs

SECOND: if the eggs hatch out, they produce nymph squash bugs, which look like this (on right).  these little greenish critters will start sucking the juices out of the leaves and stem and pretty soon start doing in the plant.  to prevent this, we have to get them too.  once again, bring the fingers and thumb together to crush.  if there's a big infestation (recent hatch) of these and you have some organic soap spray with you feel free to spray a cluster of the little nymphs.  the soap spray will suffocate them.  be careful adn try not to spray too much of the plant.

adults! mating pair!

THIRD: and finally are the adults.  as seen here (a mating pair!  getting ready to lay eggs!  don't worry, they are now in the land of squash bug heaven).  look near the base of the plant to find these.  they are fast, but they don't bite.  pick them up and either squish them with your finger-thumb or put them on the path and step on them, quite firmly!

i know, this is a violent post and i am not a supporter of violence.  but we have a problem and there are only so many of my lunch breaks that i can try and tackle the squash bug invasion alone.  if this is not taken care of almost daily we will lose all our squash plants, so get on it!  (and if you can't find any eggs, nymphs or adults, feel free to do some weeding :) )

~ilana

SQUASH BUGS!

Squash Bug!

If you do head down to the garden this week to do a little work, keep on eye on the squash plants as the SQUASH BUG has infested! The only promising organic means of exterminating this unsightly creature is to squash him between your thumb and forefinger! If we stay on top of eradication we'll have healthy squash all season, which, that being said, the SB has already gotten to a few squash plants.  Yikes!

For those that do NOT know what the squash bugs or the eggs look like, see this VERY helpful link sent by our very own Jerry Stringfellow: 

http://www.elperfecto.com/2010/06/25/squash-bugs-what-are-they-and-how-to-get-rid-of-them/

Jessie: that was a squash bug that you brought over last week for inspection! Good work --- they must perish! That was a HUGE adult and if you could only imagine how many babies come out of those eggs. Squash the bugs away!

One other word of caution w/ all of this unusual rain we are having: please do NOT pick the beans when the bean plants are wet as it spreads bacteria to the plants.