Northwold Garden

This year we've got big plans for the Northwold garden site. This garden will be a partnership with Minerva Park United Methodist Church (a campus of Church of the Messiah) and Ever-Green Gardening Ministries. This plan is to have a handful of individual plots available on about 20% of the gardening space and the other 80% would be a communial garden. We hope to have folks from the neighborhood join us each Saturday as we continue to develop this site into a community garden. Last week we have the site marked for major utilities so we can start removing the sod and adding topsoil and compost. We continue to find deer tracks on the garden site so it will be interesting to see if the deer bother the garden.

 

Zinnias

We started these zinnias bak on Feb. 13th. The zinnias are by far the tallest and most developed of all the plants. We really can't plant these in the ground until early May. So for now I've adjusted the height of the lights and hope they will slow down a little. Note to self for next year - start the zinnias later in the season and start pepper plants much earlier! 

More Seeds

This morning we started lots more seeds. We had a complete assembly line going with some folks making the newpaper pots, a group adding potting soil to the newpaper pots and then someone planting the seeds. We must have started around 18 additional flats of seeds. Some of the seeds planted include various tomatoes, mini pumpkins, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, peppers and marigolds. The plan is to start as many seeds as possible - not only for planting in the 6 gardens, but also to share with folks that might be interested in growing their own veggies. We found a new method to make the newspaper pots where we don't need an official pot  maker, but just a small container and a little bit of masking tape. This new method has great increased our production rate.

Lettuce

The lettuce is looking good. We've got some lettuce planted up at the Epworth Veggie Garden. Some of the lettuce plants will be shared with the Helping Hands Garden at Ascension Lutheran Church. We've also got a second planting of lettuce that has germinated and looking good. Soon we'll be in a position to directly sow lettuce seeds in the ground.

Strawberries

We've been working on the strawberry bed. Cleaning out this bed should have done this late last summer or fall, but we never got around to it. Some additional strawberry plants were purcased and we transplanted many of the plants that had grown outside the box back in the middle of the box. These are June-bearing strawberries so in a couple of months we'll see what the harvest looks like.

Epworth Veggie Garden

The weather in Columbus has been beautiful today. Temps in the upper 60's, lots of sunshine and finally the soil is drying up enough to work a bit in the garden. Our list for this morning included adding compost and peat into the soil, planting more strawberries, transplanting some of the strawberry plants that have grown out of the raised bed back in the box and starting more seeds. This morning, the soil was still a little too wet in places to till but by the afternoon I was able to till in the majority of the garden. When you till and the soil is a little wet you can really tell where compost has been added to the soil and what sections of the garden are still mostly clay. Towards the evening we were able to plant some lettuce, broccoli and pansies.

Seed Sharing

Today we had an opportunity to share seeds with some other organizations. We started the day at Epworth where we met Job from Asension Lutheran Church. At noon, we gathered at North Broadway United Methodist Church for a meeting with United Methodist Community  Ministries. We had a round table discussion on food pantries and community gardens with a number of other groups from several surronding counties. At the end of the meeting, we shared more seeds with a number of these other groups.

Here Comes the Sun....flowers

Every morning and evening I look forward to checking on the seeds. You never know what to expect with starting seeds. I've seen seeds like lettuce germinate in 2 or 3 days. Other seeds like rosemary have been quite challenging and seem like they will never germinate. This is the first year we've started sunflowers. I've checked every day to see if there's been any germination. On Saturday, March 13th we planted the sunflowers and today.....several sunflowers have germinated.

More Rack Space

Seems like there's always more seeds we want to start and never enough space to plant them. Roni added a couple more shelves to the current grow rack and we made sure we had two lights on each shelf. The plan is to build a second grow rack and we hope to have that rack complete toward the weekend. We would love to start more tomatoes and peppers. Based on the current calculations we can fit approximately 20 trays on each grow rack. 2 grow racks X 4 shelves X 5 trays per shelf = 40 trays.

Lettuce

A quick update on the lettuce. Above you can see the lettuce started back on Feb. 13th. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can get the lettuce in the garden next weekend. Knowing that we'll put the first round of lettuce in the garden soon we're already started more lettuce for round 2.

Moving On Up

We continue to repot plants into larger containers. Zinnias are looking really good and in the new pots they should have plenty of room to grow. The daisies are a little bit slower with their growth, but they are getting a new home as well. So today we moved the plants with at least 2 sets of true leaves on to bigger living quarter and got even more seeds started. We've got the seed starting process down to a fine art - more newspaper pots and lots more potting soil.

Standing Water

It has been a different kind of winter this year. February brought a record amount of snow for the Columbus area - over 30 inches. So.....as the snow has melted with the warm weather there has been standing water at the Epworth Veggie Garden. It's always a good idea to scout out the garden when we've had lots of rain and as the snow melts so you can see area of the garden that needs work. Hopefully this spring we can amend the soil with compost and continue to level out the garden.

Maple Grove Garden

We had a brief meeting over at Maple Grove UMC this evening. Checked out the garden to see how much snow is on the ground.

Epworth Veggie Garden

The snow is slowly starting to melt. Hopefully by the end of the week all the snow will have melted in the garden. Because of all the snow we've had this year, it will probably be close to the first of April before we can work the soil. I'm sure there will be places where water is standing in the garden and we'll need to come back and add compost and maybe a bit of peat to amend the soil.

Tomato Seeds

A few of us have talked about having a contest to see who can grow the biggest tomato (by weight). There are so many different varieties of tomatoes from cherry to supersteak and red to yellow. During the off season, I've been reading a little about some supersteak varieties and decide this year I'd try the Porterhouse variety from Burpee's. The description says that you can expect tomatoes between 2 to 4 lbs. We'll see what happens.

Transplanting Time

Now is the time for some of the plants to get a new home. I transplanted most of the zinnias to a bigger container this afternoon. The zinnias are looking really good. I probably should have started them a bit later in the season (and the pansies earlier!), but a lot of things become a bit of an experiment. I also thinned and moved some of the lettuce into larger containers so they can continue to grow as well. I hope that the soil will be ready to plant some of the cool weather plants like lettuce around the first of April. We still have some snow on the ground. I'm sure the soil, which is mostly clay, is wet.

Zinnias

The zinnias, by far, are doing the best of all the plants. The stems are looking strong. The plants are healthy and tall. Many of the roots are starting to grow out of the little peat containers.


You always worry that the plants might look spindly if the lighting conditions are not correct. With the romaine lettuce the stems are not that strong. The lettuce plants - especially the romaine seems to be some of the most fragile plants. If you're not careful you can easily damage the young plants.

Grow Plants Grow!

Checking on the plants tonight the zinnias and lettuces look great. I can't believe how fast they are growing. We've still got snow on the ground. I'm afraid it will be the first of April before we can work the soil. This weekend we will probably start to transplant the plants with 2 sets of true leaves into bigger containers. We'll also make adjustments to the height of the lights.

Dusty Miller and Pansies

The dusty miller and pansies continue to germinate. These plants are not germinating and growing as fast as the zinnias and lettuce. It seems like the paper containers dry out a bit fast then the plants in the plastic containers. We probably should have started the dusty miller and pansies a month or so earlier. Both of these plants will do ok outside when the weather is a bit cool.