Castle Street Community Garden Day April 11, 2010

We had another fabulous day in the garden! We had a good turnout and got a bunch of plants in the ground. We planted tomatoes, sunflowers, calendula,  and cilantro. 

It was a good day for planting. It was also a good day for harvesting. Below is a photo of Toni and Ethan harvesting one of out looooong anticipated cabbage. We planted these cabbage back in the fall and for a possible variety of reasons they never really thrived. They looked like they were going to go to seed and not get much bigger so we decided to harvest one of them. I'll post an update on the others next week.

It was one tough cabbage! My snips are also very loved, and so are very dull. I have not yet mastered the skill of blade sharpening. My efforts have the disappointing effect of making the blade more dull rather than sharp.

Regardless, Ethan met with success and held up his hard earned trophy- a tasty (hopefully) naturally grown, community nurtured head of cabbage. Good job Ethan!

Here is one our community supporters - Stefan Hartmann, owner of Black River Organic Farm. Stefan has helped all of the gardens I am involved with -- CSCG, Tidal Creek Community Garden and The New Hanover High School Garden-- with an abundance of seedlings. Not only did he bring by plants on Sunday, but also a parasite that preys on aphids that was hitchhiking with the plants!

Thanks Stefan!

 

That jug of brown water in the right hand picture is a gallon of compost tea available at Progressive Gardens located on Oleander Drive. Bring your own container and get a free gallon of this probiotic garden tea. It helps to replenish the microorganism populations in the soil. The microorganisms are beneficial to plants and soil health in many ways. 

Chris is working hard!

Tom and Angelica were kept busy planting tomatoes. We planted several heirloom varieties that even have exotic names. I can't wait to see what "purple zebra" looks like. Other on the roster include pink beauties, a white tomato, black grape and some others whose names I will get up soon.

Here are a few shots of the garden, late afternoon on Sunday.

Angelica took these two, I couldn't decide which one I liked better. That is mullein in the foreground with broccoli and collards gone to seed in the background and catnip peeking in from the left hand side.

This is Vitex, also known as Chaste Tree. This is a very fast growing shrub I am excited to have for it's medicinal properties and also because it provides a nice filtered shade for some of the herbs. I expect it to grow fast enough to be able to shade the herb garden this year. 

The much anticipated asparagus  has sprouted! We have four of ten crowns coming up! It's hard to see in this picture, but the asparagus is the green plant with a ring of darker soil (compost) around it. As it grows we will fill in the trench. There won't be any to harvest for a couple of years, but the beginning looks promising! 

We did have one casualty - a snapped stem, so please be careful not to walk in the trench! I hope that crown will send up more spears, like the other three plants are doing.

Some more pictures of the garden. Enjoy!

 

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! 

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!