Heading to Cape Cod

Alex is already in Boston for a business trip.  Lil and I are on the road to meet him.  Then we'll stay a week at Alex's aunt and uncle's house in Marion MA, a small town on Buzzard's Bay. I have so many blog posts rattling around in my head.  I hope the internet connection is fast enough and I have enough free time to let some loose here.

In the meantime, I'll be worrying about my garden back home.  Veggies don't take a vacation.

The peas were not quite ripe, but I think we'll miss them at their peak.  I asked my lovely neighbor Jan to watch over things and water.  Weather.com tells me a thunderstorm is soaking the beds for me today.

Cheers!

Community Gardens

What can you do if you don't have space to garden yourself?  Or, what if you love to garden so much you have extra energy and supplies to share? Community Garden, of course!

Community gardens are lands gardened by a group of people rather than a single owner.  Some gardens have multiple plots given to individuals for their own harvest.  Others have one large plan where the work and harvest are shared.  Still others are sown and tended simply to beautify a neighborhood.

Whatever their organization, community gardens benefit the land and people in so many ways: growing healthy food, beautifying and preserving green space, providing recreation and intergenerational gathering spaces, and conserving resources.

The American Community Gardening Association has an extensive database of resources and community garden locations.

In my own neck of the woods (central Ohio), the ACGA lists 117 gardens! I see them as I cycle around the city and am hopeful we will have a garden at the school under construction down our street soon.

One interesting community garden underway is the Three Sisters Garden at Brookside Elementary in Worthington Ohio.  They have a beautiful design in the shape of a turtle shell that includes Native American historical planting techniques and a seasonal calendar sculpture.  Students, teachers, and community volunteers provide the labor and donations provide the supplies.  What a wonderful example of working together!  I can't wait to see the garden as it progresses.

My own garden keeps me busy enough that I am not a regular volunteer at a community garden.  Yet.  I know there will be a time soon when I can devote my attention to one of the many group gardens nearby.  Do you work in a community garden?

Volunteers

We started veggies from seed, we planted seedlings and saplings, and now we are tending volunteers?

Yes, I can't resist a plant that reseeds itself!  There is something exciting about tending plants that put themselves in the ground when we don't know exactly what might come from the volunteers.  Above are sunflowers that grew from dropped birdseed.

When we moved the compost bin earlier this spring,  we didn't consider all the seeds lurking in the dirt below.  Tomatoes and squash are popping up now. The sunlight isn't great, but if the tomatoes and squash can survive we'll add to our harvest without adding to the cost of start up.

Two potatoes couldn't wait to grow and now have happy homes in the garden.  One is an errant potato that was never harvested last fall.  The other is a sweet potato that started sprouting in the potato bin and Alex just couldn't help but find a spot for it.

The most surprising find was some chamomile flowers that popped up among the grass.  We can't keep them all but moved some into a flower bed.

Do you have any volunteers in the garden this year?

Make It Yourself: Stockade Fence

Earlier in the season I was looking for fencing to go around the new dwarf cherry trees.  The dogs were running through the tree patch and I didn't want them to damage the poor young things. Previous owners of our house left behind lots of these beautiful metal border fences.  I tried to find some to match but the high quality ones were cost prohibitive and the cheap ones just looked cheap.

I decided to use sticks from around the yard and make a stockade type border.  I chose 12 - 15 inch long sticks and embedded them as deep as I could pushing with my hands.  I spaced closely so the dogs would get the idea to stay away from the trees.

Later, I made another fence around the kale bed.

When you are next looking for a free, easy border, think stockade!

What's Growing...

...will have to wait a few days.  We are so busy recording video footage that I didn't take pictures of the garden this weekend.  I did make a super cool trellis for peas on Mother's Day and I'll be posting about that soon...

What's Growing: May 4, 2009

We had a lot of rain last week and with that came inches of green sprout growth! Peas are almost 6 inches, beans and squash are leafing, kale has sprouted, spinach is on second set of leaves, and lettuce is almost big enough to eat!

Alex finally convinced me that frost is not going to reappear until the fall so we planted the rest of our green babies outside.

Our potted meyer lemon tree (happily outside since mid-April) has erupted with big scent heavy blossoms. I wish I had a smell-o-camera because lemon blossom is one of my favorite scents.

Raspberry bushes are getting ready to flower.

A pair of cardinals is now frequently a window bird feeder returned to us from my mom. (We bought it for her when she had knee replacement surgery, but the squirrels wouldn't stay off.) We usually watch birds at our feeders in the middle of the yard, but to see them right at the end of our dining room is especially cool.

And, today I took my first bike to "work" ride: delivering packages to the post office. Except the post office was closed for lunch when I got there, so I was able to huff back up the hill with packages too. Are you on a bike to work team?

What's Growing: April 27, 2009

This week marks the start of a new series, What's Growing. We hope to post once a week a list and pictures of what's growing in our backyard garden and around the neighborhood. So, this week, here's What's Growing:

Tomato, pepper, foxglove, and broccoli seedlings, being hardened off for a growing number of hours a day Broccoli raab and broccoli in their beds Pea shoots about 3 inches tall Spinach and lettuce with second and third leaf sets Garlic and onions

Peach trees blossoming Dwarf cherries with one tiny dwarf cherry blossom Blueberries with blossoms Wicked crop of mint

Strawberries with buds Carrot and Kale seeds just sown One tiny pole bean sprout

What's Growing in your world? Please join in and let us know your URL if you make a What's Growing series.

Planting Together

Last week, we received two dwarf sweet cherry (Prunus Besseyi)trees I ordered online from Sandusky Valley nursery.  They arrived quickly and were well packaged in reused newspaper and plastic. We planted them on Saturday.  Lil helped dig the holes and plant the trees.  Then she and Alex moved some mulch and we mulched overtop.

Here we are after planting:

Then Lil and Alex planted beans.

We recognize that it could be faster to garden without three year old assistance.  It would most definitely be less messy.

But what a skill to teach a child? We are modeling good stewardship of the earth and giving her first hand experience with how plants grow.

Lil feels such attachment to the foods she help grows.  If I serve peas at dinner, she will rarely eat them.  Allow her to pick off the vines, and peas become her favorite vegetable.  Lil is already eating mint leaves right out of the garden this year and even drew a picture of a mint plant the other day.

Besides all that, gardening with other people, especially children, is way more fun than gardening alone.

Spring is here and our favorite family pastime is back too - planting together.