Castle Street Community Garden Day March 28, 2010

We had a great day in the garden today! We had a good turnout and accomplished a lot. All the plants are looking good!

Our volunteers today had boundless energy! They were so excited to learn about the plants they could eat, helping Toni water the kids garden. 

Today was Steve's first day and he jumped right in helping to plant milkweed, a food for many native larval butterflies and moths. It is also the preferred (possibly only?) food for monarchs.  In this photo he is mulching the catnip/mullein/yarrow/St. Joan's Wort bed. We just found several volunteer St. Joan's Wort! How exciting!

Another first day volunteer, Michelle, took care of watering the whole garden as part of her inaugural contribution. 

I had tried to set up the trellis over the peas and pole beans, but a height/wind/balance problem brought the whole thing crashing down. Fortunately, the bamboo poles we are using are very light and there were no casualties. Tom did a fabulous job putting up twin teepee trellises with a bridge between them. Scroll down for a look at the completed structure. 

One of our regulars, Chris took care of watering all the plants in the greenhouse. She didn't know much when she started gardening with us, but she is a fast, enthusiastic learner. A teacher couldn't ask for more!  The plants you see toward the lower right hand corner were propagated by my high school students (check out their garden blog here and here. ) The seedlings are on spring break hanging out at the local plant hot spot, also known as The Greenhouse. I hope they don't learn any bad habits from those leggy tomatoes.

Nicole was with us today, planting milkweeds as well. We put in about a dozen plants scattered through the garden in non-bed spaces. She helped the garden stay organized by digging the bricks in around the perimeter of a new bed.

The second wave of enthusiastic volunteers came towards the end of the day. 'Voya and Nia helped mulch the catnip bed with sawdust after Steve and I finished mulching it with compost. That bed looks so good now! That patch in the back is where the young yarrow is growing.

The almost finished trellis. Thats Valerie from Cape Fear's Growing Green with her faithful companion, Maisy. Valerie has been a huge supporter of the garden since our inception last year. Check out an article on the garden and to find out about more green happenings in Wilmington at the website for her magazine here. She also has a calendar of green events on the website that is admirably current.

Join us next week to plant tomatoes and some other veggies and learn about compost! 

What's growing in the garden? March 2010

The garden is really beginning to show her green. All of the plants featured in the "Blizzard of '10" post made through the long cold winter and have come back strong! This photos were taken on March 26. With each plant is a brief description and it's uses (edible, medicinal, supports native species).


Medicinals

This bed of catnip (Nepeta cataria) has continued to thrive since it was planted from seeds and transplants at the beginning of last year. Catnip is most well known for its effect on cats, but few people are aware of its medicinal uses for people. Catnip, brewed into a tea is good for an upset tummy, anxiety of sleeplessness. It is a pleasant, minty tea that is good with chamomile. 

Also in this bed in the lower right hand corner is a mullein (Verbascum thapsus) also known as lamb's ear. The leaves of this plant are good for coughs and congestion and respiratory problems. The flowers are used in a preparation for certain ear infections.

This is a stinging nettle (Urtica dioica)  transplant that is the relative of a nettle start I brought back after my apprenticeship at Red Moon Herbs. This plant is used as a general tonic beverage that supports many of the body's systems. 

This patch of pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegiodes) seems to thrive more outside its bed in it! Pennyroyal as a mosquito, tick, flea and ant repellent. It is a very aromatic plant with delicate purple puffball flowers in the early summer. It can also be made into a tea for upset stomach, but it should not be consumed during pregnancy.

Motherwort (Leonarus cardiaca) is another one of my favorite plants. Its name in latin means "lion-hearted" and it is beneficial to soothing frazzled nerves and emotions. 

Here we have a few small lemonbalm (melissa officinale) plants. It has a zesty lemony smell and is soothing, safe and easy to grow. 

This bed has more catnip and mullein, but it also has chickweed (Stellaria medica) and St. Joan's Wort (Hypericum perforatum). The chickweed, above the catnip on the left hand side, is an excellent spring green that is high in minerals. It can be eaten raw or made into an herbal preparation.

St. Joan's Wort is a very well known plant for its soothing, mood stabalizing properties. An oil can also be made from the flowers that is good for burns, including sunburn. 

This is a small wormwood (Artemesia absinthum) shrub. The flowers are used as an anti-parasitic.

This bed has mostly chickweed growing in it, the light green small leafed plant. The plant with the larger darker green leaves are volunteer mystery potatoes from the compost pile. 

A volunteer chamomile (Anthemis nobilis) from last year's starts. There are maybe ten or twelve volunteers just in a small radius around this plant. We had a great harvest from chamomile last year and I hope it to increase this year. There will be chamomile tea in a the next couple of months for the members of the garden. Chamomile is a safe, effective soothing tea.

This is one of several purple coneflowers (Echinacea augustofolia, purpurea) growing in the front flower bed. There is a difference in the flower petal shape that can help determine the specific variety. Echinacea is most well known for it's immune system boosting properties. Many different parts of the plant can be used. It also attracts beneficial pollinators to the garden. Echinacea is a perennial that grows through runners and by self-seeding. 

Here we have three pictures of the dozen or so milkweed plants my friend Matt donated to CSCG. According to him these are tropical milkweeds (Asclepias curassavica) and monarch larva actually prefer it to the native milkweed because its leaves are softer. The importance of plants like milkweeds is that they provide larval food for moths and butterflies. For every one hundred eggs that hatch, only one butterfly reaches adult hood. All the rest provide food for other animals.  You can check out more information on supporting native species at this website, based on the book Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy. Or you can check out Airlie Gardens new exhibit - the Butterfly House - hopefully being opened up the end of May. 

Our waterer catchment system has been working really well. These are three rain barrels that store water that has been drained off of the roof. We have had such frequent rain that we have not had to use tap water to water the garden for a while now. The rain water is free of chlorine, a chemical that kills beneficial bacteria in the soil. It may contain other contaminants that have been washed out of the atmosphere.

Veggies and Fruit

These strawberries (Fragaria spp) are transplants from the Tidal Creek Community Garden. Strawberries don't always flower (produce fruit) their first year, but it looks like we are going to have at least a few to munch on this spring! I don't know if these are everbearing, which produce fruit all season or the kind that only have one flower and fruit producing season. I guess we will find out!

This is the same "broccoli in disguise" that was features in the "Blizzard of '10" post. You can see she is a little spindly, but we have 12 new broccoli that we will be able to harvest if it doesn't get too hot too soon. We harvested several small floret bunches off this plant after the big snowstorm.

Here we have collards, broccoli and parsley that all overwintered. The collards are tiny partially because we harvested individual leaves off of it in the fall instead of waiting for the whole plant to get bigger. The parsley has been delicious all winter.

"Star Wars Vegetation" is the children's garden at Castle Street Community Gardens. The design utilizes Square Foot Gardening that helps children learn about plant spacing. The white PVC piping you see is the frame for our mini-greenhouse. We have a two sheets of landscape fabric that when secured down over the frame protect the plants from too-cold temperatures.

These milkweed plants were donated by my friend Matt and provide larval food and habitat to native species of butterflies and moths. Butterflies and moths are a significant source of prey in the local food chain. The loss of native plant species has been hurting native moths and butterflies which is in turn bad for the species that prey on these insects. 

From here on through the season, the garden is only going to get greener!

Folks Cafe Garden!

March 27, 2010

I was in Folks Cafe one day last week and while I was waiting for my coffee I heard the word "garden" out of the corner of my ear. Juan (the owner of Folk's), Gwen and Jock were speaking in conspiratorial tones about digging up the sandy patch below and putting in a flower bed. The topic under discussion were the logistics of such a plan. Gwen saw me perk up and invited me to join the conversation.  Long story short, after work today I loaded up a barrel of horse manure that has been "ageing" at Castle Street for months, a barrel of compost (full of fire ants) and a barrel of sawdust and set out to turn this patch of ground at 15th and Princess:

into this flower bed: (!)

By the time I got there after loading up the MGU (Mobile Garden Unit), my two grunts, Jock and Fish had already turned over the soil and removed the sparse bit of weeds. We removed some  of the soil to prevent it from washing into the storm drain. To get the bed ready for planting we "turned in" the liquid mush horse manure and compost, finally covering it all with a thin layer of sawdust. Once the seeds come up we will mulch a thicker layer.

I have never used sawdust before as mulch, but considering it comes much more cheaply than hay straw I have been working with it in all my gardens this year. It seems to do very well. It tends to fly around a little more and laying down too thick of a layer in the beginning will prevent seedlings from pushing through. 

We planted Orange Coneflower, Dianthus, Nasturtiums, Black Eyed Susan, and Calendula. Everything but the Orange Coneflower and Black Eyed Susan we planted from seed. 

We chose plants that would provide nice color, but not grow to high so as to restrict visual space at the intersection.

Fish donated the transplants from his garden. Fish also donated and installed the granite stepping stones that provide access to the middle of the garden. You can see them more easily in the second picture

Gwen was an excellent supervisor. Everyone stayed on task and got the job done!

Gardening is a very serious business (the sun was in my eyes so it looks like I am almost smiling, but it was supposed to be more of a grimace). 

As the plants come up I will post more pictures on the progress. The next step is to put in gardens at the other three street corners of this intersection!

This garden was a first for me in the sense that I have always planted "useful plants", that is plants that are either edible, medicinal or both. It was a breakthrough for me to put something in simply for the sake of making a spot look more beautiful. There are so many more plants and places I can put them than just the useful ones in the useful places!

The Blizzard of '10

March 27, 2010  

 Here are a couple of pictures of the "Blizzard of '10 that hit on February 13, 2010.  When I moved to Wilmington, I knew that I was going to have to say good bye to regular winter snow. I go back to NJ every winter, so it was a loss I could take. When I woke up on this morning and recognized that hush that always settles after it has been snowing during the night, I crept out of my warm bed, put on boots s and went outside to marvel at the snowy wonderland in the blue dawn, just as I had when I was a kid.

  This is the view from my front door.

Below are some of Castle Street Community Gardens.

This is our children's garden. Toni and her son Ethan have been the main contributors to the garden. Tom constructed the PVC frame and provided the landscape  fabric to make our easily movable greenhouse. We have harvested oak leaf lettuce, mustard greens, bok choi and broccoli that was started back in January. 

 

The entrance to the garden is just to the left of this shot. 

From the front of the garden looking back.

        

Something about a cardinal in a green tree covered in snow is another image that reminds me of snow days in New Jersey. 

  

There are plants under much of that snow!

I was worried that our rain barrels might freeze, but they were just fine, it definitely didn't get that cold. In fact it was such a warm, wet snow it was practically gone by the end of the day. 

All that remained by the day after were randomly placed mutant looking snowman dotting muddy lawns.

  

This picture was taken right next to the children's garden towards the back of the space.

These are the trees behind the garden. 

This is part of the culinary and medicinal herb beds. The shrub sticking up is a lemon verbana.

       

A Broccoli in disguise. I harvested the florets after they got a little bigger and it didn't seem that the snow had much affect on the flavor.

We didn't lose any of the plants to the snow, any that were damage were the transplants that got hit by the frost a couple days prior.