Northwold Harvest

We harvested our first veggies today from the pools over at the Northwold Garden. The garden got a late start and we switched over to wading pool gardens right around the 4th of July. I guess you can say this year at Northwold has been more like a scientific experiment. The wading pool gardens seem to be doing a bit better than the wading pools at the Epworth Veggie Garden. One theory is that the wading pools at Epworth are directly on the asphalt and the pools probably dry out faster. You can see than growing veggie in container still present challenges. Our first tomato seems to have some bottom rot. This is probably a results of the inconsistent moisture level of the soil.

Ascension Lutheran Garden

Things are growing right along over at the Ascension Lutheran Garden. Lots of tomatoes, some eggplants, peppers and many other veggies. The harvest from this garden is shared with clients at the Helping Hands Free Clinic that is held typically every other Friday. Not only are there veggies growing in the pools, but also flowers. These marigolds caught my attention. Although the picture might not accurately reflect the size of the marigold bloom, I found these some of the smallest marigold blooms I've seem in a while.

Epworth - More Veggies on the Way!

We continue harvesting at Epworth Veggie Garden. We've got eggplant and okra growing in the wading pool gardens. Another round of yellow squash and beans.




We also have peppers that should be ready to harvest soon. Banana Peppers which we have been harvesting already, a couple of different types of bell peppers and cayenne peppers that have yet to turn red?

Takin' it to the Edge - Buckeye Lake

Another Wednesday evening out at the Takin' it to the Edge Community Garden at Water's Edge Ministry - Buckeye Lake. We had a nice harvest of broccoli several weeks ago and now we have broccoli flowers! They're kinda cool I think. The thought was to wait to pull out the broccoli until we have the compost pit built. As you can see we aren't quite to that point yet.


We continue to get several tomatoes each week. Some of the tomatoes though have interesting features. Some times split from the rain/sun, some have been a little snack for someone and then there is the tomato with scratches?

Maple Grove Harvest

We continue to have a nice harvest from the Maple Grove Veggie Garden. Tonight we harvested lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers and broccoli. This time of year we seem to have tomatoes everywhere! Its amazing how many tomatoes you can get off a single tomato plant. The cucumbers are slowing down just a bit as the temperature has turn a few degrees cooler on average. We continue to harvest a number of smaller florets off the broccoli plants. Peas, swiss chard and beans are still young, but in a few weeks we should have some of these veggies to add to the harvest.

Fall Lettuce

We're starting to harvest our fall crop of lettuce. We've got 3 rows of lettuce planted at the Epworth Veggie Garden including the rows that we planted beans and lettuce accidentally. We transplanted some of the lettuce that grew with the beans into the "green" box.


I'm hoping the cooler temperatures will keep the flavor of the lettuce mild and not bitter like we some times see in the hot summer. Another goal has been to continue harvest the leaves of the lettuce when they are younger. Tonight we harvested 9 more 1 gallon bags of mixed lettuce. This puts our total harvest for this year at 109 - 1 gallon bags and we hope to harvest alot more lettuce in the coming weeks.

Tomatoes!

At the Epworth Veggie Garden, we have lots of tomato plants. Every year we take a look at the plants we have and they seem so small at the beginning of the year. It never fails that we continue to plant more and more tomato plants, folks donate tomato plants and then we have lots of volunteer tomato plants that we feel the need to save and transplant somewhere else. Then come August and we have lots of tomatoes to pick. Most of the volunteer tomato plants are cherry tomatoes and they produce hundreds of tomatoes per plant.





For example, this year we have already harvested over 1400 cherry tomatoes. I went back and tried to count the number of tomato plants we have growing and I'm fairly sure we have over 40 plants. We have tomatoes planted directly in the ground (2 rows), in hanging 5 gallon buckets, in wading pools and in the cement block gardens.

Livingston Seeds

Our gardening group has been blessed once again to receive another donation from Livingston Seeds. This year they donated both vegetable and flower seeds. Its amazing the number of different varieties of vegetables. We've been trying to think of the vegges that we don't have and I can't really think of anything. A couple of the unique selections we've seen include a red/crimson okra and strawberry popcorn! Next year, we will not only share seeds with a number of other church and community gardens, but we will continue to work on our techniques to rotate crops to get the maximum amount of veggies to donate back to the community.


We are working on rainy days to sort and catalog the seeds. Ideally we'd like to have some type of storage system - perhaps Rubbermaid containers or something similar that we can "roll out" and have other gardening groups look at. When you look for seeds consider choosing Livingston Seeds. They have always been so generous with their support of local gardening groups.

Buckeye Lake Harvest

We've begun to harvest a few tomatoes, yellow squash and golden zucchini at the Takin' it to the Edge Community Garden at Buckeye Lake. Typically, the kid in the neighborhood will help themselves to the veggies during the week. This is ok because we grow vegetables for the community so we will just evaluate what seems popular and grow more of those veggies next year.


We've also had our fair share of pests. We found a slug on a tomato. I've never seen that before, but because we have not taken good care of the tomatoes and staked them properly I was not that surprised we'd have a slug on any of the veggies. Another issue is vine borers in the squash and zucchini. Tonight we decided to just go ahead and take out the squash and zucchini plants.


One a more positive note the flowers seem to be doing well with the warm weather and dry conditions.

Epworth Veggie Garden

It was a little late this evening when we went up to water the garden. Its been hot a dry this past week. The temperature was probably 90 degrees or close to it. The same type of temperatures are expected the first part of next week as well. Some of the plants are doing well with the warm weather like the Cosmos, Pentunias, and Salvia. The tomatoes in the wading pools and the 5 gallon buckets tend to dry out faster then the tomatoes planted in the ground. The cherry tomatoes have really picked up lately. We probably pick around 100 to 125 every 2 days off the tomato plants. Some of the larger tomatoes are starting to ripen. Over the next two week I expect lots of tomatoes.


We started some new yellow squash. The original batch of yellow squash have really struggled and are almost dead. Next year we will probably make an effort to have 2 different rotations of zuchinni and squash.

Buckeye Lake

Cody is our guest photographer this week. Tonight we picked some ripe tomatoes that were a hidden just a bit. It seems like a few of the other veggies are being harvested by some of the neighborhoo kids. This is ok, because this is a community garden after all and we grow veggies in hopes that the community will use them. Some of the plants look a little rough from not having been watered regularly. Perhaps next year we can connect a rain barrel so watering will be a little easier.


The flowers for the most part are looking great.

Maple Grove Harvest

The number of veggies we are harvesting each week over at Maple Grove has really picked up. Some of the veggies we have been harvesting include large and cherry tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, zucchini, green peppers and lots of cucumbers. We've probably picked around 40 cucumbers over the past 2 weeks from the garden. One of the theories is that having the cucumbers next to the white wall has really helped the cucumbers. It would be interesting to measure the temperature at different locations in the garden. I bet something about the white wall reflects the sun in a way that is beneficial to the cucumbers.

Northwold Watering

We've got a new method to water the wading pool gardens over at Northwold. Our friend Jonathan with Rain Brothers donated a rain barrel to our group and now we can fill the rain barrel up at the Epworth Veggie Garden and put it in the back of the truck to take over to Northwold. We typically fill the barrel about half full which is plenty of water for the pools at Northwold. Today was one of the first days since the end of June that the temperature has gotten over 90 degrees. The wading pool gardens really dry out fast in the hot sun, so I don't imagine it will be long before we're haulin' water in the rain barrel again.

Garden Tools

Today I learned today an important lesson on trimming plants with clippers while wearing headphones. Its very important to pay close attention to exactly what you are cutting! All of a sudden it seemed like the music stopped. I thought it was a short in the wire, but upon closer inspection it was a much bigger problem. A couple of weeks ago white paint got all over my mp3 player. There was so much paint on the microphone jack that it was no longer fitting into the jack on my pc. Now that I ended up cutting the wire to my headphones I guess it time to reevaluate some of the tools we are using in the garden.

Saturday's Tour

We were blessed to have a number of visitors in the garden today. The Epworth Veggie Garden was part of the Church/Food Pantry tour as part of the American Community Garden Association Conference. We had visitors in the morning and in the afternoon. Its was a great time to share with others some of the things we've done with our garden and also hear some of the ideas from other gardens as well.


Some of the gardeners from Takin' it to the Edge Community Garden out at Water's Edge in Buckeye Lake came to Columbus for the day. After both tours we then took at community gardening tour of our own stopping at the Northwold Garden, Helping Hands Garden, Maple Grove Garden and Christ the King's Garden. I think at the end of the day we took back a number of ideas that we hope to implement in the gardens next year.

Epworth Veggie Garden

We've been working hard all week to get the veggie garden in shape for the upcoming tour by visitors from the American Community Gardening Conference this weekend in Columbus, OH. Many of the youth have been spending time pulling weeds, watering plants, planting some of the fall crops and painting. I think this is possible the best the veggie garden at Epworth has looked in a long time. Thanks to everyone for their hard work!

Veggie Tales

You've heard of fisherman than hold their hands up to indicate the size of the fish that they caught or the one that got away. We discovered this zucchini over at the Maple Grove Garden and couldn't resist taking a picture. Perhaps this is the biggest zucchini Christian has ever picked? We've seen a few large zucchini that have unintentional ended up on the large size. Some get overlooked as we harvest and some times they just seem to grow really fast in certain weather conditions.

Helping Hands Garden

Veggies over at Ascension Lutheran's Helping Hands Garden are looking great. Not only are the tomatoes ripening, but a number of other vegetables are moving right along. Lots of wading pools make up the garden and its nice to walk down the rows and observe the varieties of veggies. We found at least a couple of different types of eggplant, squash, lots of tomatoes and peppers.

Pollinators

There was lots of activity in the garden today. The weather was nice and sunny. All around you could see butterflies, bees and other insects buzzing around from flower to flower. What a wonderful job these pollinators do in the garden. Some folks tend to see there creatures as annoying. Gardens understand the important jobs they perform.