New Pictures Added - Garden Album

Last week I picked some of the mixed lettuce in the communal bed and enjoyed a wonderful fresh salad from our garden! It seems like our garden is growing by the minute now! Check out the new pictures and the veggies that have popped out.

Growing garlic

Why do you garden? It's a lot of work. You wouldn't be doing it for no reason at all.

One reason to garden is to produce foods that you can't buy. Ground cherries come to mind.

So does garlic. For the past three years, only garlic from China is available in supermarkets. Not only is it tasteless, but it's been ferried and transported from the other side of the world, wasting precious fossil fuels on a vegetable that grows well right here. (Secretly I wonder if China keeps all the good garlic for themselves and ships us the garbage.)

If you long for the good ol' days of tasty garlic, you might want to consider growing your own. And now is the time to start finding some garlic to plant.

Steps in growing garlic:

1. Visit the market in early July to find locally grown garlic.

It should be available very soon. (My garlic is already harvestable, a good two weeks early due to all the rain.) Ask the vender a lot of questions. Where was it grown? What kind is it? When do you usually plant it? Do you have other kinds?

Consider visiting a few stalls and getting a variety. One popular garlic for Ontario is known as Music -- developed by a Mr. Music in Uxbridge, Ontario. Remember that each clove will produce one bulb, so buy enough for a year's worth of garlic plus enough extra bulbs to plant in the fall.

As an alternative, you can order seed garlic from seed stores for delivery in September. But they'll be more expensive.

Do not, do not, do not try to plant grocery store garlic from China. I promise it will be tasteless and not worth the effort.

2. Store the bulbs in a cool, dark place.

Cool, not cold. (Never refrigerate garlic -- it develops mould.) The back of a cupboard will do, as long as it doesn't get too warm there in the summer.

3. Plant in mid fall.

In October, you'll probably be pulling up your vegetable harvest and composting your plants. At that time, the CPCG will probably arrange for a delivery of soil amendments to dig and rototill in so that the beds are ready for planting in the spring.

Once that's all done, around Halloween, prepare a square in the corner of your garden for garlic. Sprinkle in some organic fertilizer or a scoopful of good compost and dig it in a little.

Separate your bulbs into cloves, leaving the papery coverings intact. Poke each clove into the ground, pointy-side up. Cover the cloves with soil but there's no need to push them down really deep. Plant in a square of tight rows, not in a long, single row. The cloves don't need more than 3 inches of space on each side.

When finished planting, gently step all over the bed to press the soil down. Then cover it with leaves, straw, or wood chips. Garlic is very frost-hardy, so don't worry if the tip starts to grow through the mulch before the snow cover arrives.

Then forget about it till spring.

By the way, if you like shallots, plant them at the same time in the same way. I've found that grocery store shallots grow just fine in our climate and produce a sweet-tasting shallot.

Next year

In March, you'll notice the garlic tips poking through the mulch. At this point, you can rake the mulch aside and get rid of it, in case it's harboring any insect eggs. Or you can just leave it in place -- it's your call.

Give the garlic bed another sprinkle of organic fertilizer and gently rake it in. Keep the bed as free of weeds as possible throughout the growing season.

In June, the garlic plants will grow a graceful, curling flower stalk known as a garlic scape. Snap off the scapes to promote good bulb development. Use the scapes in soups, stirfries, and oriental cooking.

Once the garlic has seven leaves and seems to be drying out in early July, it's getting to be time to harvest it. As a precaution, I always check with the organic market venders to find out if it's time to harvest yet -- they're very helpful. If you leave the garlic in the ground too long, the bulbs will start to open, and they won't store as well.

To harvest, loosen the soil with a pitchfork and pull each garlic out of the ground. Let the garlic dry outside in the sun for at least a week to help develop a strong bulb cover. You can do this on your back deck, but farmers just leave the garlic sitting in the field.

Once it's completely dry, brush off any remaining soil and dirt. Trim the roots off the bulbs. Then either cut the stems or figure out how to do that cool braiding thing.

Store your garlic in a cool, dry, dark place. As long as the garlic doesn't freeze, it will be good till next summer.

If it's still early in the summer, plant a quick-growing vegetable where the garlic was growing, such as lettuce, broccoli seedlings, or beans.

July 9th Garden Picnic

Mark your calendars! Everyone is invited to a garden picnic on Saturday, July 9th at 11:00 am.

Meet your fellow gardeners, share tips and delicious food, and enjoy surveying the fruits of our work!

More details to follow.

New Pictures Added - Garden Album

New pictures have been posted to our Garden Album. I've added dates to the bottom of the pictures so you can see just how fast things grow in only a weeks time. The difference from week to week is amazing! Check it out!

Gardening workshops in Kingston

Be sure to head to the Sunnyside Garden Party this Saturday, June 18th for good food, good folks, and good workshops!

Square Foot Gardening – June 18th, 11am-12pm, Sunnyside Community Garden (on MacDonnell at Brock)
Square Foot Gardening is a condensed, all natural method of gardening that grows more food in less space, with less time, less water and less work. Learn more about this innovative approach to urban gardening in a one hour workshop facilitated by Wess Garrod of WillGrow Gardens, and see a sample garden close up.

Garlic Growing and Natural Pest Control – June 18th, 1-2 pm, Sunnyside Community Garden (on Madonnell at Brock)
Familiarize yourself with ways to control pests naturally, including growing garlic.  Participants will learn about planting and growing garlic and will be invited to make a natural pest control potion that saves money and avoids poisoning. Facilitated by Tim Lyon of Main St. Market.

The workshop series continues...

 

Sat. June 18th 11a.m.-12p.m. Square Foot Gardening

Sat. June 18th 1-2p.m. Garlic Growing and Natural Pest Control

Tues. June 21st 7-8p.m. Direct Seeding and Bed Preparation

Tues. July 5th 7-8p.m. Pest Control and Weeding

Tues. July 19th 7-8p.m. Scything 101

Sat. July 23rd 1-2p.m. Composting

Tues. July 26th 7-8p.m. All Things Garlic

Tues. Aug. 9th 7-8p.m. Permaculture: A Lazy Gardener’s Guide

Tues. Aug. 23rd 7-8p.m. Seed Saving: Beginner-Intermediate Guide

Tues. Sept. 6th 7-8p.m. Bed-Preparation and Care

Helping Hands

Liz Neely's Grade 1/2 class from St. Thomas More School helped out with the planting of our communal beds earlier in the spring. With the permission of Liz, and her students' parents, we can share some delightful photos of the children at work. More have been added to our Picasa album - just follow the link on the left side of the blog.  Enjoy!

New Pictures Added - Garden Album

Veggies are growing and the garden is looking great! Each time I head out I cant believe how quickly everything is growing...our community garden sure is photo friendly. Check out some new pictures in the Garden Album!

Enemies

The cabbage worm has found our garden. Man the cannons! Boil the oil!

Actually, you can just brush them off with your fingers.

Look for small green worms and/or tiny pimple-like eggs on the undersides of the leaves of broccoli, cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, and related plants. A big clue is the chewed-up holes in the leaves. Once they're brushed onto the ground, they can't find their way back.

Broccoli Heads

The broccoli is starting to head, at least the ones in the communal garden. The head will start as a tight button that slowly expands.

A mature broccoli looks like this:



Harvest it right away, because two days later, it will look like this:



Cut the broccoli just below the head but above the side shoots. Side shoots are mini-heads (actually, one-quarter the size of the main head) that start growing if the main head gets cut off. If you leave the side shoots to grow, you'll get the equivalent of another head in about two weeks.

Karen's Rhubarb Dessert

Rhubarb Dessert

Mix together and press into a 9x13 inch pan:
1 cup soft butter
2 cups flour
10 tablespoons sugar
Bake this crust/base at 350 degrees F

Meanwhile mix:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Add 5 cups Chopped rhubarb to this egg mixture and then pour it over the baked crust/base.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45 minutes or until golden on top.

New Pictures Added - Garden Album

The garden is looking great! We have accomplished so much in a short period of time. New pictures have been added to the garden album - check out how wonderful everything is looking! Pictures will be posted through out the season capturing our beautiful garden grow, and highlighting fun memories.

Mulch and Beans

First, the beans.

It's time to plant them if you haven't already. There is enough heat to get them germinated. Besides, you want beans before the summer's over, so they gotta git growing.

Quick beans

Soak your bean seeds in a bowl of water on the counter before planting them. Overnight is best. They should be plump and smooth-skinned when fully soaked.

Soaked beans pop up in a few days. Dry beans take a week longer.

Free seeds

There are free bean seeds in the shed. Royal Burgundy is a sturdy purple-podded bean that can tolerate some cool temperatures. Save the seeds for next year. Tendergreen is another seed-saver with some cool tolerance. Both are also good for planting in early August for an early fall crop. There are also two packages of Pinto beans from the Sisters of Providence -- pick them when they're dry and make chili.

Okay, now the mulching

Mulching means covering every square inch of exposed soil with wood chips, grass trimmings, shredded bark, or dead leaves. A one- to two-inch blanket of wood chips will do it. Mulch around seedlings and sprouted seeds, right to the edges of the bed.

We still have tons of wood chips, for free, so it's handy. Get your beds mulched as soon as possible, since rains in June, July, and August tend to be far apart.

Why mulch?

1. Carrying watering cans to your garden every day is a drag. Heck, your arms will be six inches longer by October! Every day? Are you nuts? Who wants to do that? Mulch well just once, and you'll get away with watering once or twice a month for the rest of the summer.
2. The rain barrels are small, and we have a lot of garden. If every gardener waters every day, we'll never have enough water. Once the barrels are dry, you're carrying water from home. Unless you mulched.
   
3. Rain percolates through the wood-chip blanket. It leaches some of the nutrients into the soil and provides a mild fertilizer. But only to gardens that have been mulched.
   
4. Mulched soil is soft and moist. Our clay soil turns to concrete in the sun, and nothing can grow in concrete. But the sun can't reach through mulch, so it doesn't dry out or form a crust.
   
5. The sun's rays break down the wood chips over the summer. By late fall, they'll be dark charcoal-coloured, and some of it will have already composted itself into the soil. At this point, we can rototill the wood chips into the soil for next spring.

Where else can you find something that's FREE that does so much?

Please mulch your garden.

The white butterfly

I just her today, flitting around my garden looking for cabbage and broccoli (HA I didn't plant any!), going methodically from plant to plant. If I'm seeing her in my garden, then she's going to the communal garden too.

I'm talking about the cabbage worm butterfly. Cute, white, wispy. You'll hear your kids say, "Hey! Look at the white butterfly over there!" You'll see it and watch it gracefully twirl over the plants and and sigh and think, My, how lovely nature is!

Lovely my eye. This white butterfly lays eggs on the underside of the leaves of all brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, turnip, broccoli). The eggs hatch, and out come the tiniest green worms you've never seen (because they're perfectly camouflaged). They eat great holes in the leaves, growing in size like Otto the Goldfish, until they devour the plant.



Agent Orange Unnecessary

Fortunately, it's easy to control the situation.

If you see the white butterfly, then please consider it your job (thank you) to clear the leaves of eggs.

1. Gently turn each brassica leaf over and examine the underside.
2. Look for small pale-green bumps, about the size of one couscous (one coucou? one cous? What's the singular of couscous?!)
3. Gently brush it off with your finger.

Let others know you've seen the butterfly. It will lay eggs for about 3-4 days, so we have to keep checking.

If you see a hole in a brassica leaf, we missed an egg. Turn the leaf over and find the worm. Brush it off the leaf.

You can do it!