Sunday, June 28, 2009
Potluck Redux
Don't forget, we're having our next potluck on Wednesday July 1, at 6 p.m. Bring a dish to share, a chair to sit on, and a table if you have one. I'm planning on grilling a bunch of chicken--so it'll be first come, first served. Hopefully there will be enough for everyone. We'll also be having a guest speaker. See ya there!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Please be seated
Thanks to Mike Novak, we now have a bench in our garden. Mike trash picked it, cleaned it up, and put in in our plot. Also, peas, lettuce, and radishes are ready for picking. So come on down and do some shopping for dinner!
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Peas, Potluck, and more!
Peas:
Last night Clem picked a few peas and we threw them in with our stir fry - they were delicious!
We should be picking them daily at this point, so go down right before dinner and see what you can find. They are best eaten WITHIN AN HOUR of picking!!!!! If you go down and find an overabundance please let your neighbors know to go down and start picking - they will lose their sweetness if they linger too long on the vine. If we end up with more than we can eat (unlikely) they should be frozen immediately to retain their sweetness.
Look toward the bottom of the plants for the more mature peas and remember there are peas on both sides of the trellis.
July Potluck:
Potluck is two weeks from tomorrow - Wednesday July 1st. Tentative speaker is Steve, the famous Charlevoix easement gardner. He has decades of organic farming/gardening experience and will talk to us about succession gardening - which it will be just about time to do. Bring what you brought last time in terms of set up - it seemed to work out fine - we'll bring a few extra folding chairs.
Raspberries/Roses:
We still need a raspberry/Rose captain. They require certain planting, spacing, trellising and pruning care that someone needs to be on top of. I'm confident we can do it - and there's nothing better than raspberries straight from the garden - we just don't want to do it haphazardly and have it turn into a raspberry nightmare. We can certainly wait til spring (and that's probably the best time) to do this but we do have offers of plants from Vikte and Steve now (I don't know how many - we will want to plant enough that everyone will get a good amount)
Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@gmail.com
Last night Clem picked a few peas and we threw them in with our stir fry - they were delicious!
We should be picking them daily at this point, so go down right before dinner and see what you can find. They are best eaten WITHIN AN HOUR of picking!!!!! If you go down and find an overabundance please let your neighbors know to go down and start picking - they will lose their sweetness if they linger too long on the vine. If we end up with more than we can eat (unlikely) they should be frozen immediately to retain their sweetness.
Look toward the bottom of the plants for the more mature peas and remember there are peas on both sides of the trellis.
July Potluck:
Potluck is two weeks from tomorrow - Wednesday July 1st. Tentative speaker is Steve, the famous Charlevoix easement gardner. He has decades of organic farming/gardening experience and will talk to us about succession gardening - which it will be just about time to do. Bring what you brought last time in terms of set up - it seemed to work out fine - we'll bring a few extra folding chairs.
Raspberries/Roses:
We still need a raspberry/Rose captain. They require certain planting, spacing, trellising and pruning care that someone needs to be on top of. I'm confident we can do it - and there's nothing better than raspberries straight from the garden - we just don't want to do it haphazardly and have it turn into a raspberry nightmare. We can certainly wait til spring (and that's probably the best time) to do this but we do have offers of plants from Vikte and Steve now (I don't know how many - we will want to plant enough that everyone will get a good amount)
Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@gmail.com
Monday, June 15, 2009
June 15 Update from Beth
Hi Everybody
Holy Moly what a beautiful weekend! I could take 51 more of those. We had a great day in the garden Sunday so I guess I am here with your weekend update.
We planted two varieties of Pumpkins along the Mack edge of the corn row: large jack o'lantern type and smaller baking pumpkins. I'm already dreaming of pies and bread! We're hoping to have these viney plants grow up the hillside along the side toward Mack. Harvest will actually be closer to August but mad scientist Meg has some ideas about developing a few super size pumpkins that may delay a while longer. She said something about waiting for the great pumpkin with Linus.
Yikes! Enough about Fall!
We harvested lettuce, picked a few peas and some scallions, thinned the carrots, beets, radishes, and corn. If you stop by during the week feel free to hunt up some pea pods or onions. If you see some leafy lettuce begging for your dinner or sandwich you can snip it at the base and it will grow back in a week or two. Beets are coming along nicely and are good for both the bulb and the greens. Mark has a great sounding recipe where you use it a lot like spinach. If you ever have an ingredient that you want a recipe for also check www.allrecipes.com and use the ingredient search tab. I love that site. Is distribution working well for folks? We can evolve this with discussion so don't be shy about chiming in.
More maintenance: Domins mowed, many weeded, Parents hooked up a new rain barrel and kiddoes pruned bugs off of plants (so brave!), Clem & Rob turned and sifted the compost and most notably set up a system for the compost. COMPOST ORGANIZATION: Kitchen scraps (no meat) should be put in the left hand bin. Grass clippings can be put in the right hand bin. We can use any untreated grass clippings for mulch, which will allow us to water and weed less. Guru weeder Suzanne is among many who will appreciate that :)
On tap for this week is a spigot for the new rainbarell (pun intended) and of course watering per volunteer schedule. It really looks beautiful and has been so much fun. Thanks to everybody for all the hard work!
Holy Moly what a beautiful weekend! I could take 51 more of those. We had a great day in the garden Sunday so I guess I am here with your weekend update.
We planted two varieties of Pumpkins along the Mack edge of the corn row: large jack o'lantern type and smaller baking pumpkins. I'm already dreaming of pies and bread! We're hoping to have these viney plants grow up the hillside along the side toward Mack. Harvest will actually be closer to August but mad scientist Meg has some ideas about developing a few super size pumpkins that may delay a while longer. She said something about waiting for the great pumpkin with Linus.
Yikes! Enough about Fall!
We harvested lettuce, picked a few peas and some scallions, thinned the carrots, beets, radishes, and corn. If you stop by during the week feel free to hunt up some pea pods or onions. If you see some leafy lettuce begging for your dinner or sandwich you can snip it at the base and it will grow back in a week or two. Beets are coming along nicely and are good for both the bulb and the greens. Mark has a great sounding recipe where you use it a lot like spinach. If you ever have an ingredient that you want a recipe for also check www.allrecipes.com and use the ingredient search tab. I love that site. Is distribution working well for folks? We can evolve this with discussion so don't be shy about chiming in.
More maintenance: Domins mowed, many weeded, Parents hooked up a new rain barrel and kiddoes pruned bugs off of plants (so brave!), Clem & Rob turned and sifted the compost and most notably set up a system for the compost. COMPOST ORGANIZATION: Kitchen scraps (no meat) should be put in the left hand bin. Grass clippings can be put in the right hand bin. We can use any untreated grass clippings for mulch, which will allow us to water and weed less. Guru weeder Suzanne is among many who will appreciate that :)
On tap for this week is a spigot for the new rainbarell (pun intended) and of course watering per volunteer schedule. It really looks beautiful and has been so much fun. Thanks to everybody for all the hard work!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Update from Betsy
Okay, now we have everyone's email address!
Things are looking great in the garden! Lettuce was thinned and replanted, Arugula was harvested, corn was planted, tomatoes that didn't make it got replaced, signs were finished, grass was cut, the herb bed was weeded and trellis work was finished. Two new rain barrels were brought over and Joe Parent plans to hook them up this week.
And we had fun.
We decided to plant raspberries and roses on the outside slope of the garden. Would someone like to volunteer to be in charge of this project? We plan to do it this Sunday. We will be using Vikte's volunteer raspberries and some found roses.
We also decided to have a potluck the first Wednesday of every month. We will try to have a speaker. The first Wednesday of August is the Urban garden tour that we talked about going to as a group.
We also talked about keeping notes on things that we would like to do or grow differently next year so we can talk about them over the winter.
We talked about distribution but didn't really come to any conclusions. When there are things that need to be harvested every day we will put it on the blog so people will know to go and pick. (http://www.graytongarden.blogspot.com/) The peas will pop up in about a week and will need to be harvested daily.
We decided to have short meetings on work days when needed. More formal decision making was discussed and rejected. I requested that everyone say their "vote" without others talking and we would come to consensus on things and that would be the decision. This sort of worked but their was still a lot of talking at once.
Meg mentioned that Peggy suggested the rain barrel area be cleaned up. If she or anyone else would like to be in charge of that this Sunday, just show up.
I have information on the workshop that Patrick talked about at our potluck on Wednesday. There are other ongoing workshops in the area we could be going to if there is an interest. Just pop me an email if you want more info.
I will try to do an update like this after each work day if you all think it is helpful. See ya Sunday.
Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@sbcglobal.net
Things are looking great in the garden! Lettuce was thinned and replanted, Arugula was harvested, corn was planted, tomatoes that didn't make it got replaced, signs were finished, grass was cut, the herb bed was weeded and trellis work was finished. Two new rain barrels were brought over and Joe Parent plans to hook them up this week.
And we had fun.
We decided to plant raspberries and roses on the outside slope of the garden. Would someone like to volunteer to be in charge of this project? We plan to do it this Sunday. We will be using Vikte's volunteer raspberries and some found roses.
We also decided to have a potluck the first Wednesday of every month. We will try to have a speaker. The first Wednesday of August is the Urban garden tour that we talked about going to as a group.
We also talked about keeping notes on things that we would like to do or grow differently next year so we can talk about them over the winter.
We talked about distribution but didn't really come to any conclusions. When there are things that need to be harvested every day we will put it on the blog so people will know to go and pick. (http://www.graytongarden.blogspot.com/) The peas will pop up in about a week and will need to be harvested daily.
We decided to have short meetings on work days when needed. More formal decision making was discussed and rejected. I requested that everyone say their "vote" without others talking and we would come to consensus on things and that would be the decision. This sort of worked but their was still a lot of talking at once.
Meg mentioned that Peggy suggested the rain barrel area be cleaned up. If she or anyone else would like to be in charge of that this Sunday, just show up.
I have information on the workshop that Patrick talked about at our potluck on Wednesday. There are other ongoing workshops in the area we could be going to if there is an interest. Just pop me an email if you want more info.
I will try to do an update like this after each work day if you all think it is helpful. See ya Sunday.
Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@sbcglobal.net
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Success!
Great turnout last night for our first potluck dinner. The lecture was excellent as well as all the food everybody brought and shared. In fact, it was so enjoyable, we're planning on doing it every first Wednesday of the month until it gets too chilly. So plan on meeting at the end of the block once a month. We'll send out reminders as we get closer to the dates.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Dinner is Served
Just another reminder, this Wednesday we'll be having a potluck dinner down in the garden patch. So bring a dish to pass, chairs, and beverages. We plan on gathering around 6:00. See ya there!
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