Erin's Garden Journal—September 13, 2015

August 31, 2015

The potatoes are up at last!

September 1, 2015
The greens looked like they could use a break, so I didn't harvest those for the food bank this week. I did harvest:
  • 1 bag broccoleaf
  • 1 bag Swiss chard
  • 2 bags basil
  • 1 acorn squash
  • 1 zucchini
  • 12 tomatoes

The peppers are coming along nicely.

The broccoli is still showing no inclination to flower.

The kale seems slow, but it will keep growing pretty late so hopefully it will have a good chance to grow big.

September 2, 2015

6 participants at Garden Together Night, and some other folks from the neighbourhood who dropped by to chat while a concert was warming up inside the church

Tasks accomplished:
  • Replaced torn burlap
  • Transplanted lettuce from what we had been calling the "mystery pots" to the sheet mulched bed
  • Washed pots and trays that won't be used again this season
  • Cleaned up trash that had accumulated around the site
  • Sorted wood scraps and put the ones worth keeping in storage
  • Cut back diseased squash leaves


Harvest:
  • A dozen cherry tomatoes
  • A serving of greens


September 3, 2015
The pots where the lettuce never sprouted can have their soil mixed in with our bin of worm castings

Four tomato cages were fallen over. Wrestling them upright again was hard since they are so heavy laden and some of them are tangled up with other tomato plants. The difference in quality between our larger, sturdier cages and the cheaper ones is obvious now.

New peas producing well.

New beans starting to produce.

September 7, 2015
The garden is looking good after a hot long weekend. It didn't hurt the lettuce and probably helped the tomatoes.

Food bank harvest:
42 tomatoes
9 bags mixed greens
1 bag Swiss chard
1 bag broccoleaf


September 9, 2015
8 attendees for Garden Together Night.

We built a new (quite low) raised bed for some raspberries we expect to receive this fall. Since we have lots of materials onsite, we didn't buy soil right away. Instead we dug down a few inches and filled it with:


A few inches of gravel

A few armfuls of brush

Several armfuls of leaves, mostly mulched


Worm castings and the soil we had removed to make the hole for the gravel


We will still have to buy some soil, but not too much. And the buried organic matter will give us richer earth as it breaks down.

Other tasks accomplished:
  • Wash and store empty pots  
  • Dump water pooled in tarp
  • Chop-and-drop clover within garden (we love nitrogen fixers and don't want to disturb their roots)
  • Give tomato plants extra support with stakes and sticks
  • Weed new crop of optimistic mulberry seedlings

This was the first time we walked into the garden on a Wednesday night and said, "We need to harvest tonight or else the food will spoil." It was a good feeling, and a great harvest. We lost the light before I could count it properly, but to estimate:

  • 150 tomatoes (I think that's a conservative guess!)
  • 2 large radishes
  • 5 bags of beans
  • 1 bag of sugar snap peas
  • 1 bundle of green onions
  • 2 bags of sage
  • 1 bag of thyme


These are guesses based on a picture taken in poor light, so if anyone counted in person—let me know!

September 10, 2015
The worm castings in the middle compartment of the composter look just about ready. We've been refraining to add anything to this section for months so that the worms would finish what was there and move out, leaving us with pure castings.


I think the tomatoes will go on blooming until the frost puts a stop to it.


New growth on the broccoli. Could flowers be coming?


Transplanted lettuce is happy.

September 13, 2015
The hot weather of the last week changed to cold rain this weekend. The kale loves it.

The tomatoes are ripening at a furious pace. We harvested 87 today which we will hold onto for Wednesday's Food Bank.

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