Northwold Garden - First Harvest

Our first harvest out at the Northwold Garden. This garden has a special place in my heart. Its been a  struggle to turn this city lot into a garden. We've had to remove the sod, amend the soil, till, pull weeds and lots of watering. By far this is the largest available space of all of ours and its in a  neighborhood that will benefit from a neighborhood garden. Slowly, but surely we are making progress at this site and I can't wait to see what veggies future harvests will bring.

Christian Assembly Garden

We harvested our first veggies this evening - 2 little tomatoes! This garden hadn't gotten much rain in the past few day so tonight it was mostly water the plants really well. We're seeing some other veggies that are close to being ready to harvest - cucumbers and green peppers. We also have some herbs we can  harvest soon as well - basil, parsley and rosemary.

Buckeye Lake

Tonight we tried to clean up some things around in the garden areas. Weeds have been easy to keep under control in the raised beds. We have a couple of ever-green trees that have tons of vines in the top and need to be pruned. Dakota and I tackled one of the ever-green trees and prunes some of the very bottom limbs as well as some of the dead branches. After the kids left Penny and I began to pull out some of the wild grape vines. Its definitely not safe having things like wild grapes in a garden with young kids. They are tempting to eat and I'm really not sure the variety and if they are ok to eat. This garden has way too much shade from all the trees  and vines, so we are slowly cleaning up the area so we can have more sunlight and healthy trees and plants. We did not bother the vine growing on the fence at this time. I'm not sure what it is and it might be poisonous. I've already gotten into something poisonous a couple of times in this yard.

Maple Grove Garden

We continues to harvest broccoli, cucumbers, yellow squash and a few beans from this garden. The plants are healthy and we have very few weeks. One issue we've had with the beans is the rabbits. They are slipping through the fence and munching on the lower beans. We still have quite a few blooms and hope to harvest more beans next week. We've struggle to harvest a small mess of beans (enough for a person or two for a meal?). Lots of green tomatoes on  the tomato plants. We  have several varieties - Porterhouse (which I am anxiously awaiting - suppose to be large slicing tomatoes), Brandywine and a couple of cherry varieties. Cucumber are still producing well. I'm hoping soon we will have cucumbers and tomatoes together to donate to the food pantry at the CRC (Clintonville Resource Center).

Northwold Garden

Our first ripe tomato out at the Northwold Garden - or what I like to call Tomato Town. This tomato is an Early Girl variety. I believe we have a number of Early Girl, Brandywine and some assorted cherry tomatoes as well. With over 100 tomato plants we should have a few tomatoes. For now garden work at this lot involves adding leaf compost, weeding and using "tomato tape" to keep the tomato limbs off the ground. We'll see how many tomatoes we get from Tomato Town.

Buckeye Lake

Slowly, but surely the plants are growing out at Buckeye Lake. A several factors have slowed down the growth of the plants: 1) the yard has more shade than sun 2) we got a late start planting this year and 3) we've watered inconsistantly. Above you see the tomatoes in their red box. Below you see some squash. Not sure exactly what variety yet. Could be zucchini or yellow summer squash.

Maple Grove Garden

The garden at Maple Grove is looking good! All the plants look nice and healthy. We continue to harvest broccoli and cucumbers along with a  few beans. The tomatoes are tall. I put Penny next to the tomatoes to demonstrate how tall the plants are getting. Penny is 6ft tall. Can't wait until the tomatoes begin to ripen.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Kids Harvesting

Cucumbers and more cucumbers! The kids hit the garden before Sunday night youth stuff this evening. Kept a couple of cucumbers for dinner and sent the rest to the food pantry.

Epworth Veggie Garden

Finally the veggie garden is getting back into shape. This garden has been in such bad shape for months it seems. Every time we'd get the weeds close to under control we'd have lots of rain and it would be too wet to work in the garden. Still a number of tasks to do including a bit more weeding, planting and mulching, but at least now it looks like someone cares and works occasionally in this garden.

Northwold Garden - Tomato Town

This morning at the garden we concentrated on pulling weeds, staking tomatoes, adding leaf compost and cutting the grass. Lots of guys helping out this morning - Justin, Corey, Taquin and Steven. Finally this place is starting to look like a real garden. The soil is horrible - hard clay mostly, but we will continue to work in the leaf compost and hopefully bring back in a bobcat. Some of the squash didn't make it, but we will have lots of tomatoes and a few cucumbers for sure.

Christian Assembly

The garden at Christian is looking good. Not sure how I feel yet about the straw in between the rows. It definitely gives a nice look to  the garden, but I worry about grass seeds in the straw. We pulled some grass tonight and also watered everything really well. We're starting to see more little green tomatoes.

Epworth Veggie Garden -Cucumbers!

Harvested lots of cucumbers from the Epworth Veggie Garden tonight - 52 to be exact. We'll leave a few of these at the Epworth food pantry and then take the majority down to the sat. food pantry at Christian Assembly. Could be a record year for cucumbers. I wish we were harvesting tomatoes at the same time. One other thing I noticed as well are the cucumber beetles. I'll need to figure out a way to deal with them. I could dust with Sevin, but there has to be an more environmentally sound solution. We also decided to harvest the garlic. All the scapes (tops) have died. We'll give some away and plant some back in the ground to grow again. I absolutely love garlic!

Rain, Rain and More Rain

It seems all garden season  we've have rain, rain and more rain. With so much clay soil we often have standing water. Above you can see standing water at the garden at Christian Assembly. Below you can see standing water in the rows over at the Northwold Garden. I guess  at least we don't have to water today.

Epworth Veggie Garden - Cucumbers

Roni harvest a bunch of cucumbers this evening at the garden. We've got a ton of cucumber plants and will have a great harvest this year. These cucumbers are heading down to the food pantry at Christian Assembly. It's worked out really well that we can bring our late week harvest to Christian Assembly. We will continue to send veggies to Epworth's food pantry Monday thru Thursday. Not if we could only have tomatoes to harvest at the same time as the cucumbers. Maybe one day we'll get it together.

Maple Grove Garden

The garden at Maple Grove looks great. The weeds are under control and the plants are healthy. We've harvested peas, lettuce, spinach, chives, lots of broccoli and now a few cucumbers. The one problem we are having is with chipmunks and rabbits. This evening we noticed the rabbits have been chewing on the beans and we continue to notice the young yellow squash are being snacked on as well. Probably in a couple of weeks we will have some tomatoes and yellow squash.

Epworth Veggie Garden

The garden up at Epworth still need lots of work. We were able to till between the rows, but with all the rain and then the heat the weeds have gotten out of control. We will need  to weed around the plants and stake the tomatoes. A few things are ready in the garden including some of the cabbage and cucumbers. We will have a few green beans soon as well. Lots of the volunteer tomatoes are doing well. A few have some green tomatoes on the them. I'm hoping this will be the big tomato cherry variety.

Northwold Garden

Things are growing slowly, but surely over at the Northwold Garden. We've gotten some squash planted and lots of tomatoes. I wasn't about to work over at Northwold this morning, but it looks like the crew added leaf compost around many of the plants. Late this evening Penny and I went over and water the plants. The soil in this garden is far from idea, but we are moving right along for the first year of having plants in the ground. I love how someone has marked the row for the tomatoes. Art in the garden adds so much. We also have a few small green tomatoes as well. Perhaps in a couple of weeks we will have ripe tomatoes.

Christian Assembly Garden

Tonight we added straw between the rows of veggies and also leaf compost around each plant. The thought is the straw will help keep down the weeds in the row and the leaf compost will help preserve the moisture in the soil around  the plants. The soil at this garden is still mostly clay underneath, but in some areas some topsoil has been added. We've got to be careful with temperatures staying above 90 a number of days that we keep the plants watered. One plant has a few small tomatoes, but we got a late start with that garden. I think its looking great though considering this is our first year and a couple of months ago there was grass covering the entire garden area.