Maple Grove UMC Garden

Worked out at the Maple Grove UMC garden tonight. We are going to be meeting out at the garden every Tuesday night at 7PM from now until the end of the gardening season. On today's list was: raking up some of the straw left from last year and pulling up the weeds in the 2 small raised beds. Didn't take too long to get our list "mostly" completed. We did hope that we could till this evening, but the weather has been threatening all day and the ground conditions weren't favorable for tilling. Hopefully in another week or two we will begin planting.

Fence at Epworth Veggie Garden - Part #2

Work continues on the fence at the Epworth Veggie Garden. Looks like its going to be a 3 week project. This morning we put in the rest of the cedar 4 x 4 posts. Last Saturday we put in the 4 corner posts so we had 12 additional posts that went in today. Bill and Phadia rented a gas power post hole digger which was a tremendous help in getting the holes dug. It took a little to find a good system to get the holes dug, but once we got the tall folks with some muscle in the mix we were able to knock out all 12 holes in no time. We did not put any cement in with the posts, just made sure we tapped in the soil really well.

Another item we worked on in the garden was to add additional colors by repainting some of the raised beds and the posts for the hanging plants. Last year we painted everything blue and it seemed to some folks to be too much blue. I tried to pick out some colors that might be found in a garden, but the color you end up with doesn't always match what you had in mind to begin with. We thought about planting some veggie in the garden too, but it looked like it could start raining at any time and the weather report calls for possible snow showers tomorrow.

Buckeye Lake - Garden Design

On Wednesday nights head out to Water's Edge Ministries at Buckeye Lake to garden. We've had rain almost all day today, so we spent some time inside and discussed designs for a sign and the garden. The kids looked at the list of seeds available and penciled in some selections for the garden. I'm sure the kids would have rathered been outside, but it was just too wet. Here are some of the suggestions of vegetables and herbs to grow: radishes, spinach, carrots, lettuce, onions, broccoli, beans, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins, rosemary, garlic and basil.

Maple Grove UMC Garden

Tonight we had a meeting over at Maple Grove United Methodist Church to discuss their veggie garden. This will be the second year that Maple Grove will be growing vegetables. Maple Grove will be sending their harvest over to the Clintonville Community Resource Center (CRC). The gardening space at Maple Grove is approximately 500 sq feet. We're looking to grow lettuce, spinach, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, onions, peas, zucchini and green beans. We decided that we will continue gardening at Maple Grove on Tuesday nights.

Fence at Epworth Veggie Garden - Part #1

Today we started on the new fence at the Epworth Veggie Garden. The main change in the fence is that we are using 4 x 4 wood posts instead of the metal stakes. The 4 x 4 post should provide more stability for the fence. We decided on using cedar posts instead of treated posts. The cost on the cedar wood is a little more expensive, but some of us felt like we should stay away from treated wood since we are growing vegetables in the garden.
The main job in "part #1" was to put the 4 corner posts in place. Herb made all the calculations for the fence material and helped get us all headed in the right direction. We were only able to get the cedar 4 x 4 posts in an 8 foot length, so we cut the 4 posts down to 6 feet. Herb showed our group how to make sure we had all the corner posts lined up correctly by using the Pythagorean Theorem.

New Garden?

We're looking at partnering with Grace's Place to start a garden down in the 'hood. Checked out this city property available for a garden lease and seems like it has potential. The land is not completely level, but having a corner lot would be nice. Looks like the property gets lots of sun and its close to a local elemetary school. Of course we'll need to get the soil tested and have the utilities marked before we dig. This neighborhood is very unique and often over looked. There's not many places on the east side of Columbus to purchase fresh vegetables and not many grocery stores in the area either.

Buckeye Lake

Tonight was our first time back with the gardening group at Water's Edge since last October. We were so glad to see everyone! The kids are excited and just as energetic as ever. We had dinner (hot dogs, sloppy joes and even ice cream!) and then headed outside for the evening gardening activities. We make pots out of newspaper and planted seeds in both the newspaper pots and peat pellet pots. The kids decided to start orange marigolds and oakleaf lettuce. They will be expanding the building soon so we will relocate the garden to a slightly different spot within the next few weeks.