Maple Grove UMC Garden

Green beans are ready over at the Maple Grove UMC Veggie Garden. We harvested the first of the beans tonight and we'll have even more to harvest later on this week. Check out the 2 volunteer tomatoes that have sprouted up at the end of the beans. We also harvested some lettuce and 1 quart bag of chives. The harvest from the Maple Grove garden will be donated to the food pantry at the Clinton Resource Center.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Zucchini

Things are growing like crazy up at the Epworth Veggie Garden. We had been watching a small zucchini grow and figured it would be another week or so before it was ready. We looked again tonight and discovered we had missed a few of the zucchini and they need to be harvested. It looks like soon we will have lots of zucchini and yellow squash. Before too long the tomatoes should start. We've been focusing this week on getting the weeds under control - not only in the garden, but in many of the flower beds around the church. Its amazing how quickly things will grow with some rain and some sun.

Epworth Veggie Garden

Added some flowers to the garden today. Figured since we are at the end of June and the 4th of July will be here soon we should add in some red, white and blue flowers. We finished up the smaller asphalt garden with some tomatoes, peppers and squash along with the red, white and blue flowers.


Also make another flower bed with red, white and blue flowers over by the rain barrels.

Here Comes the Veggies!

With all the rain and warm weather that we've had lately, some of the veggies are really growing. You can see florets on some of the broccoli and small baby yellow squash and zucchini. Its so exciting to take a look around the garden and see how much plants have grown. It won't be long until we are harvesting veggies more than once a week. The only bad part about all the rain and warm weather is that the weeds are growing just as much as the veggies.

Maple Grove UMC - Gate

Tonight we worked on installing the gate over at the Maple Grove Garden. When we put up the fence we some how left a much bigger space for the gate then we normally do. Roni decided to make this gate in two parts. We will probably paint the gate at some point in time. The gate is made of untreated lumber. Another project that needs to be done is to add a few more wood chips to patch up some places where you can still see the weed fabric.

Welcome to the Edge

Tonight at Water's Edge there was a big block party. We gave a few tours of our community garden - Takin' it to the Edge and enjoyed all the great food. There were hamburgers, hot dogs, brats and all the fixin's. A couple of inflatibles were also setup - one was a Tigger bounce house and the other was a big obstacle course.


Another exciting event was to tour the new property right next to Water's Edge. The new property has been named "The Tom Sawyer House" and will be used for different things related to children and youth ministries.


We are also excited about expanding our gardening ministry out at Buckeye Lake. Check out the back yard.

Epworth Veggie Garden

We added another mini cement block garden over at Epworth this morning. We had some left over blocks so we decided to start on a new project that will be just one block high. We are also adding topsoil in the holes of the cement block so we can plant some type of flowers. We'll probably plant flowers such as marigolds or petunias in the holes. We will also plant something in the middle with a fairly small root system such as lettuce, beans or perhaps some herbs.
Another continuing project is working with the wood chip pile. We loaded up two different loads of wood chips today. One load went over to Ascension Lutheran's Helping Hands Garden. The second load went over to Buckeye Lake. As we move more wood chips out from the pile we are constantly raking and sweeping the area to make sure this spot looks ok. We have also used wood chips around some of the mini gardens in the parking spaces surrounding the garden.

Ascension Lutheran Garden - Wading Pools

Tonight we went over to the Helping Hands Garden at Ascension Lutheran Church. The produce from this garden is given away at the Helping Hands Clinic that is held 2 times a month at Ascension. I believe there is over 40 wading pool gardens that contain vegetables such as lettuce, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, onions and many other vegetables. Another cool project in this garden is growing vegetables out of a feed sack. We also worked on adding wood chips around the edge of some of the wading pool gardens. These wood chips not only give the garden a more maintained look, but also makes it easier to mow in the surrounding area and keeps weeds down that might otherwise grow around the edge of the pool.

Buckeye Lake - Wood Chips

More work was done today at Buckeye Lake. We added some much needed wood chips to give the garden a more finished look. Several of the kids at Water's Edge took turns loading, unloading and raking the wood chips. We are working hard on the garden so it will look good for the block party next Monday. We also added Purple Petunias, Red Salvia and Dusty Millers.

Maple Grove UMC Garden

The veggies out at the Maple Grove UMC Garden are looking good! We have some lettuce that will be ready to harvest soon. Also have a few green tomatoes and the beans will be ready before too long.




Tonight we worked on adding some additional wood chips around the edge of the garden. We still need to add some wood chips around the inside edge of the garden and also add some more straw to the main garden to help conserve water and keep down the weeds.

Carrots

We are beginning to harvest a few carrots from the Epworth Veggie Garden. Pulling carrots is one of the coolest jobs in the garden. I'll usually take my finger and rub the dirt off the top of the carrot to see if its big enough to pull. Its always exciting to see the carrots when you pull them out.


We ended up with 15 carrots from this round. In about a week or so we'll take a look at the next batch of carrots and see if they are ready.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Stepping Stones

Tonight we worked on some stepping stones at the garden. There were two different routes we took when creating the stones. We had 4 stepping stone kits left over from last year. These kits had the "smoother" type stepping stone mix along with some items such as pieces of stained glass, round colorful stones or letters. These kits typically cost around $10 to $15 each. The words in the stone above are: Dream, Hope, Imagine (its a little hard to make out at this point).


The other stepping stones we tried we used pre-bought molds (about $4 each) and cement (an 80 lb bag is about $4 and will make 12 to 15 stepping stones). Using a generic cement/concrete from the store is tricky. I'm not an expert in all the difference between cement and concrete, but I do know there are different size particles in different types. The biggest issue when using these concrete or cement bags from a home improvement store is the size of the particles that make up the cement/concrete. When making stepping stone its easier if the mix is smooth and does not contain pebbles.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Wading Pool Gardens

We added a couple more wading pool gardens to the garden at Epworth. We have learned this technique from Job at Ascension Luthern Church. Ascension has a number of wading pool gardens and they are also working with a number of other gardens to implement this type of container garden. Faith Mission on 8th has 96 of these wading pool gardens at their shelter.

The process is fairly simple and these wading pools make great containers for gardening and all the materials needed can be purchased for under $20 per container (includes pool, soil mix and plants). The first step is to punch or drill a number of holes in the side of the pool. This allows water to drain so there is not standing water in the pool.


Next you fill the pool with a mix of top soil, compost and peat.




Once the pool is filled with the soil mix then you can plant some plants in the pool. Depending on the time of year and weather you might plant something like tomatoes and pepper or perhaps in cooler weather crops like onions or lettuce. There are so many possibilities.




We have placed 2 pools in a parking space in the parking lot at the church. We also added wood chips around the pool to give the area a nice appearance. You could probably put 3 or 4 pools in a parking space, but for now we just went with 2 pools.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Growing, Growing and More Growing

Things are really starting to take off in the garden. Above you can see a couple of small cucumbers that are growing. We are harvesting lots of lettuce and strawberries. We have blooms on many of the tomatoes and zucchini. The warm weather and finally some rain have the garden looking great with lots of growth around. The strawberries are naturally sweet with all the sunshine.


We've planted a number of flowers around the garden too. Check out this orange marigold:


And small zinnia:

Epworth Veggie Garden - Robins

Seems like this time of year we have lots of robins waiting to see what we turn up in the soil. Tilling the soil or a good rain is like opening up the buffet. They patrol the garden in search of a worm or other insects. I found this robin patiently waiting on top of a rock on one of the posts. The rock is really cool too. Not sure where the rock has been, but its very smooth and much different from the normal rocks we find in the garden.

Maple Grove Garden - Cleanup

Tonight we worked on cleaning up around the garden at Maple Grove. Last year when we put up the fence, we put a small amount of weed fabric down. We haven't been very diligent in pulling weeds along the fence. We decide to attack the weeds growing around the fence along with the path we walk on between the main garden area and the raised beds. A couple of the weeds that seem to be most common at the Maple Grove garden are ground ivy and thistles. We did not get wood chips all the way around the fence, but we are making progress.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Wood Chips

Cleanup continues at the Epworth Veggie Garden. We've got lots of wood chips so we've been spreading them around the fence, picnic benches, swing and to mark some basic paths through the garden. We don't use these chips to "mulch" in the garden because they have not decomposed significantly. If they decompose directly on the soil with the plants the process could rob the soil of nitrogen. Weed fabric and wood chips help to keep down the weeds and give the garden a more "maintained" look.

We have part of a big tree trunk that we use in the garden. This "slice" is from a tree that was cut down from the church grounds a couple of years ago. Based on the size of the tree it has been part of the Epworth property for a while and we wanted to keep a piece of history. The tree was cut down as part of a project by a utility company. The utility company wanted a clear view of their pipes from the sky so a number of trees in the neighborhood were removed as part of this project. We often sit on the stumps around the big slice. The stumps were mixed in with some of the wood chips.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Blooms

The plants are growing nicely at the Epworth Veggie Garden. It is exciting to check on the garden, see if the plants have germinated, see how much they have grown and now to see blooms on several of the plants. We are seeing blooms on some of the tomatoes and the zucchini.



The cucumbers are growing well also. The weather continues to be in the 80s with lots of sun. This weather is great for the warmseason veggies like tomatoes, sqaush, cucumbers, egg plants, peppers and similar vegetables. Hopefully we will have the rain barrels filled up with rain before too long.