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.