Update 11-11

Well what a nice wrap up to the year. Just about one year ago today I talked to Dale on the phone and he said it was okay to plant a garden in the empty lot. Shortly after, Tish and I met to begin to hatch a plan. And last night the city recognized us with a civic award from the beautification committee. It was a fun night and we received a nice plaque. Maybe when we build our little shed we can put the plaque inside it! In the meantime I'll pass it around.

Wednesday night was a fun potluck night hosted by Rob and Jan. Next month it will be at Mark and Diana's house Wednesday December 2nd. Mark you calendar now - you may not get another reminder. In fact , if you haven't already, just mark every first Wednesday of the month for our potluck. (Everyone still wants to have our traditional holiday party or cookie exchange or whatever it is we do for Christmas, so whoever was thinking of doing that - it is still a go! - I guess we like each other! )

Clem and I picked up a couple of bails of hay from the park last night after the beautification event. There are a few more down there (in the parking lot where the leaves and stuff are). If someone can grab them that would be great. Also once again this is the time of year people put them out in the trash and we should pick them up! It will save us hours of weeding in the spring if we have lots of hay to use as mulch so please be on the look out for these and store them in the garden! Right now is our little window of opportunity for these.

And I have noticed the leaves on the beds in the garden look very packed down already. When you rake your leaves if you could please take them down to the garden and dump them on the beds it will help them have a nice warm winter with a heavy blanket.

Betsy Breckels

P.S. If you want a copy of the Pointes of Horticulture that was done about our garden, drop a blank DVD off to Rob and Jan and they will make you a copy.

November 2nd update

Pick brussel sprout whenever you want them.

If you see haystacks put out for garbage - please grab them --- we can definitely use them for mulch for next year!!! We won't have to water or weed as much if we mulch --- and now is the time we will see those haystacks put out in the trash.

This Wednesday is our potluck, 6:00 at Jan and Rob's. See you there! ( no pesky meetings to get in the way of our enjoyment!!!! )

We covered the beds with leaves on Sunday. We can still add more if anyone wants to drag them over there when you are out raking ---- just pile 'em on - the more the better.

Betsy Breckels

Kudos everyone!

Hi All

I am very pleased to announce that we will be receiving a beautification award from the city of Grosse Pointe Park, it is a civic award.

"Your award is in recognition of the Grayton Garden Project. Hopefully, your project will become a prototype for similar area gardens."

Apparently the city has gotten a lot of questions about starting a community garden in the Park and they haven't been able to give them much direction. I agreed to help them with a seminar for others who want to start similar gardens.

There is an "Awards Night" that a limited number of us will be able to attend. While I would love it if every person involved in the garden could come, we had to go with those who put in some serious Sunday time. But it truly has been a project of the whole block and I am really pleased how everyone jumped right on board. I have really enjoyed getting to know all of my neighbors!

Speaking of the garden, there is STILL Arugula, lettuce, peas, lima beans, green beans, and beets in the garden............please help yourself!!!!!

Remember November 1st is the last day in the garden and no Sundays before then. November 4th is the first INDOOR potluck. 6:00 still okay with everyone? It will be at Jan and Rob's house. Kids, as always, are welcome.

Betsy Breckels

Letitia's Update

We harvested what we could today and removed a lot of the plants. Please continue to pick stuff as it is ready - kale, lettuce, green beans, Brussels sprouts, beets, radishes, chard, lima beans, and parsley. There is not much to do for the next few weeks so we will NOT work the next two Sundays.

Our next work day will be November 1. We will put the garden to bed for the winter that day - harvest and remove plants, amend the soil with a cover crop or compost, and put leaves on top of the beds.

Please save your leaves!! You can bring them to the garden between now and November 1 or save them in your yard.

Potluck re-cap

Hi all,

It was an especially delicious potluck last night!!!! Next month , (the first Wednesday of November, always the first Wednesday of the month - put it on your recurring dates) the potluck will move indoors to Jan and Rob's house. As always kids are welcome, and she has plenty of toys!

There will be no more meetings at potlucks!!!! Yay!!!!! Do we want food related educational food movies? (King Corn, Food Inc., Future of Food come to mind) Or do we just want to hang out?

We have a steering committe: Beth, Mark, Vikte, Jan, Tish, Meg, and myself. We will begin meeting in November. We will be the deciders! Of course we will take everyone's (who is truly involved in the garden) opinion into account and come up with what we think is feasable and what pleases most people.

We generally decided that jobs would be more spread out this year, and it would be a tighter group. I would like to include any family (on any block!) that wants to be involved and can commit to the work , limiting the number to 10 families. But I guess we didn't really decide this yet.

We all feel that any neighbor who wants to be involved, but cannot be involved in a regular way should feel free to stop by whenever they feel like it, help pull weeds, plant or water, take a cucumber or two, come to the potlucks, in general feel welcomed! This is what a community garden is all about!

So we won't bore you with details anymore. If you feel strongly about bed expansion/no bed expansion, what should be planted/not planted, what the membership requirements should be and who should be welcomed, talk to one of the committee members and we will take your view into account.

See you Sunday!


Betsy

PS Jennifer Meldrum from the city might buy the corn stalks from us. If she doesn't but them, she offered us a free booth at the market. Anida expressed an interest in manning the booth. I would be interested too. It could be good "retail experience" for the kids. Even if we don't do it this month, we might do it next year - we could make our garden self sufficient - which really appeals to m

Garden Update/Potluck Reminder

Hi guys

We had a pretty easy day in the garden today. Lots of harvesting: basil, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, lettuce, arugula, beets, cabbage, kale, ...... yum.

We put leaves over the garlic beds.

We pulled some of the plants that we deemed done.

*****As you have leaves please bring them right over and pile them on any empty bed!!!!******* we can pile them very high.

We emptied the rain barrels so they wouldn't freeze.

We had a lot of chit chat.

We trimmed off the tops of the brussel sprout plants in hopes that they would actually produce some brussel sprouts.

We tasted a paw paw that Clem and I foraged.


Remember Potluck is Wednesday! At the Garden . 6:00 pm. If you've brought a table in the past please bring one again. Bring your own chair, a dish to pass, and whatever beverage you desire. I will bring forks, Tish can you bring plates? I will bring napkins.

Bring your ideas for the garden layout for next year, and how you think the group should be organized for next year. We will talk about that and hopefully form a "steering committee" (I guess that 's what it's called) to make decisions.

If you want to be on the committee you need to show up for this meeting and you need to have been fairly involved in the garden this year (have showed up Most Sundays).


Betsy Breckels

Words of Wisdom From Betsy

Hi all

At our potluck this Wednesday we will have a meeting. Really, this time we will. Jan is going to bring a long table and we will talk and eat at the same time.

We need to make some decisions about how we want to lay out the garden next year (if we even want to change it at all) so that we can plant garlic - which needs to be planted now.

So here are some proposed topics:

Reflections on this year

layout for next year

Requirements for Membership for next year

Treasury Report

Scavenge List

(Other than the garlic - I think we can hold off on deciding what to plant next year - though we can definitely throw around thoughts and ideas)

If you can't be there and have ideas you want heard, feel free to email me


Betsy

ps don't forget to come out in the morning Sept. 2nd for our 15 minutes of fame - 9 am

Just sayin'

Sorry guys. We won't be down in the garden helping out on Sunday. So if someone else can cut the grass, that would be great.
We're moving two kids into their digs at college tomorrow. Pray for rainy nights and sunny days. Everything looks fantastic down there! Grayton rocks!

Pick guys!

Hey everyone. Be sure to head down to the garden and pick up some dinner. Especially the beans. If we don't pick the vines clean, they'll start going to seed and quit producing. Be sure to grab a milk crate and pick the hard to reach beans.

Trash picking

Be on the look out for:

More Barrels! (we need at least 4 more - maybe more if we can fit them)

Other kind of Barrels for potato planting

Flexible downspout thingies

Any lightweight tubing to make more movable trellises with

string

doors and windows that we can make cold frames with.

It would be nice if we could work on some of these things this September and October. As far as the rainbarrels go, we really need more now. Cold frames or hoop houses would be nice to have set up in September so we can have lettuce in October, November, March and April!.

Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@gmail.com

The Return of the Pot Luck

Even though the Garden Tour falls on the first Wednesday, several people expressed interest in having our pot luck dinner. So we're rescheduling it for Wednesday the 12th. Bring a dish to pass and see you there around 6 p.m.

Update from Letitia

Sunday we took out the peas, planted lettuce, beets and pickling cucumbers. The cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and muskmelons have mold, so Vikte did some research and found three non-toxic sprays (vinegar, hydrogen peroxide and borax mixed with water) to combat the mold. We tested all three.

There are lots of seedlings in the garden, so be careful when weeding. If there is any doubt if it's a weed or a seedling, let's leave it in the ground.

We need signs for the beet and lettuce seedlings that were planted Sunday.

Garden Captain
Or boss or whatever you want to call it. Betsy suggested that we take turns leading in the garden each week. The person who is responsible for each week needs to make a to-do list prior to when we start Sunday morning and then bring the list to the garden on Sunday. The August schedule is as follows.
Ausust 2: Mark Domin
August 9: Meg
August 16: Suzanne
August 23: Vikte

Watering
We have had more cool temps and more cloudy days this summer than usual. We discussed the mold on Sunday and decided that a likely suspect is excess moisture comibined with lack of sun/heat. We also discussed watering and came up with some suggestions.
Seedlings need to be watered every day, unless it rains enough to water them.
Established plants may not need to be watered every day when we have cooler temps and clouds.
Established plants, when the weather is cooler, do better with a deep watering every couple of days than with shallow waterings daily.
Some notes on what was watered when may help waterers. Suzanne & Diana provided a waterproof container, notebook and pens. Waterers can write down what they watered to help subsequent waterers decide if the established plants should be watered.
Don't be shy - stick your finger into the soil to check the moisture if you are not sure if plants need more water.
The garden should be watered as early in the day as possible, particularily given the recent weather. That being said, everyone understands that waterers may not be able to get to the garden until late in the day.
We will also list when we planted seeds and where in the notebook so that waterers know where seedlings are (might help with accidental weeding of seedlings also).

Mold Spray
Here is a list of which plants received which remedy for mold so that we can watch to see what works. (Vikte - if I am wrong about any of these, please update.)
Right half of zucchinis (as you are facing Vikte's house) were sprayed with peroxide.
Left half of zucchinis were sprayed with vinegar.
Pumpkins and cukes were sprayed with borax & water mix (1 cup Borax to 1 gallon of water).
Melons with the peas and the new cucumbers were sprayed with vinegar.

Raspberries
We discussed planting raspberries on the hill and determined the following. Vikte said that she will be raspberry captain.
We would like to plant 3 horizontal rows of raspberries on the hill (from the top down to the Mack side).
The first step is to till the hill.
We should not need to buy any raspberry plants. We can transplant from Vikte's yard.
We need to decide if we will amend the soil. Raspberries grow in several yards on the block and a couple of people mentioned that they seem to do well in a variety of soil conditions. We discussed leaving the soil as is and just planting or amending the soil but we did not reach a decision.
Rob, can we use your till for the hill sometime in August?

Garden Tours

Hi All,

Two weeks from today is the time we would normally have our community potluck. But on August 5th the Greening of Detroit and the Detroit Agricultural Network hold their annual urban garden tour! The plan is for our group to have a field trip! We will get a chance to see many other community gardens as well as some large backyard gardens.

We should each sign up individually for it (sign up is a must - it sells out). There are 4 tours to choose from, one of which is a bicycle tour. Clem and I did the bicycle tour last year which was very good. I think it would be fun if we all did the same tour and I'm thinking we should do the Eastside tour - since we are eastsiders!

All tours leave from the Catherine Ferguson Academy (in itself a wonderful thing to see) on the near west side at 6:00 sharp. There is a meal at Catherine Ferguson after the tours. (Registration begins at 5:00 - last year we got there a few minutes before 6:00 and we were okay)

I realize some people may want to go right from work, but for those of us who are starting off from Grayton it would be good to carpool.

I'm attaching a link to a link (DAN and The Greening Websites are hard to navigate) that will let you sign up for the tour. Let me know what your plans are. It would be good if we can all get on the same bus. As always, kids are welcome.

http://blog.eatlocalfood.com/2009/07/2009-urban-garden-tour-is-wednesday.html


Betsy Breckels

Pick, Pick, Pick!

Hey guys. Just a heads up--come down and start picking the vegetables. And don't be shy and just pick a couple beans here and there. Take enough for a meal for your family. The more you pick, the more the plants produce. Right now the zucchini, beans, and cucumbers are producing like crazy. We're giving the peas another week or so before we yank the plants. It's starting to be payoff time, so eat well and enjoy!

And thanks everyone who worked today. I think we got quite a bit done. Once again, you guys rock!

This just in!

We're getting a bunch of fall vegetables from Earthworks. So we need to expand the beds a bit. We're planning on meeting down at the garden around 8 A.M. on Thursday morning to expand the beds and plant. If you can make it, that would be wonderful. Don't feel obligated.

Mark

Watering

For these hot dry months Vikte and I decided you all could use our hoses for watering. We guesstimated it would cost about $20.00 for the 2 months and we'll deduct that from the kitty. (It turns out a meter would cost about $100.00 - not really worth it.)

So if the rain barrels are empty hook up the hoses to Vikte's or my or both spigots.

Be sure to give everything a good soaking now that we are not getting much rain.

Also be sure to pick zuchinni, cucumbers , beans , Basil and parsley often.

Betsy

Let it rain! In the mean time...

Hello Trusty Waterers.

Notice that there are new seedlings that need to be generously watered. They are in the former beet bed and the former potato bed. They are marked (not prominently) chard, beets, lima beans and cilantro.

Okay I'll go back to my rain dance now.


Betsy

Reacp

Notes from Betsy:

Hi all,

Steve was a very informative speaker last night! With taking his advice we can extend our growing season well into October! He asked at the end if he could join us on Sundays, I took a poll of most of the core members and a majority is all for it. Frankly we need his expertise. I plan to call him this afternoon and let him know that we'd be honored to have him take part in our group.

I plan to order seeds today as well. We will need lettuce, radish, beets, carrots (I won't order the short stubby kind everyone was dissin' last night). I think I got all the seed packets he gave us but if some one has more please let me know. If you're yearning for a particular crop let me know. Lisa from Earthworks said she would get us a distribution of transplants including kolrabi, cabbage, kale, among other things.

Already I think we've had a great bounty. Be sure to go down and pick dill, parsley and Basil whenever you need it. Zuchinni and cukes are on the way. Get your zuchini recipes out! We should have more potatoes (the kids should definitely take part in this harvest!) this week but next year we can definitely plant more --- maybe we can use the garbage can method and it won't take up any garden space but will give us lots of yield. (not for fingerlings though from what I understand.)

A few weeks ago on Sunday we all went around the garden and figured out together what needed to be done, made a list, and then went right through the list. I think that is a good model. I plan to do that again this week and every week so please be ready to do this.

Both of our speakers mentioned books. Patrick had suggested an organic gardening book by Elliot Coleman. I have not read it but I did go to the workshop which was very interesting.

Steve mentioned Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Polan. (I'll throw in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver). If you're interested in reading Omnivore's Dilemma, both Tish and I have copies we would be happy to lend to you. If you want the reader's digest version go see Food Inc. at the Main theatre.

Also it is time to cough up another $10. The group owes me $24.00 for rain barrel faucets and plants. plus I'll be buying seeds this week. Please drop an envelope in our mailbox. So far I'm very impressed with how cheaply we've done this whole thing. Impressed in general with how when we work together we pulled off this amazing bountiful beautiful garden.

Betsy Breckels
betsybreckels@gmail.com

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!

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!