Last Spring Harvest

The last of the spring lettuce, various herbs, and our first batch of pole beans and snowpeas...yum...

Garden Review

The gardeners got together on Memorial Day and we discussed our successes and failures so far. (Wine and spicy chocolate cupcakes were on hand to facilitate our conversation...)

First, it appears that we need to increase the drainage in our garden beds and to be very careful with moisture levels. We have lost several seedlings and all of our spinach as a result of problems related to overwatering. (Planting the spinach earlier in the season might also have prevented it from bolting, as we had an unusually warm spring.)

Second, in the large garden bed, the position of the pole beans and tomatoes on the far trellis should be reversed if we plant them again. The tomatoes do not seem to be getting quite enough sun, whereas the bean plants look a bit crispy.

Third, we need to be more deliberate in thinning our root vegetables and bok choy as they grow. Although the bok choy was certainly edible, the plants were spindly and didn't develop the deep green leaves, plump stalks, and classic bok choy taste that we were hoping for -- we think that overcrowding might have been the problem.

We will take these notes into account as we prepare for our next planting season!

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Free Wildflower Seedlings: Cardinal Flower

Virginia has been growing wildflowers from the seeds that she gets as a member of the North Carolina Botanical Garden. And because she believes in spreading the love, she'd like to give some of those seedlings to friends of Savasana Community Garden.

Right now, she has about six cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis) seedlings that are ready to find new homes. According to the Botanical Garden, cardinal flower is a hummingbird favorite with its "striking red flowers," and it requires average soil and sun to part-shade. Read more about this plant here.

If you would like a seedling or two (or more), please leave a comment on the blog or contact Virginia by phone or email. The seedlings will be a distributed on the usual first-come-first-served basis. Enjoy!

There will be more wildflowers to come!

Remember Kids: Safety First!

The garden has received several days of steady rain, which has been great for the veggies but not so good for the gardeners, who were left with slippery and treacherous paths between the garden beds. To remedy this, Peggy and Virginia spread several bags of rubber mulch between the beds this afternoon.

We also snipped a few herbs (the basil smells amazing), harvested the rest of the radishes and some lettuce (and replanted both), and thinned out the bok choy to give the remaining plants more room to grow. Salad, anyone?

This is how the garden is looking today - fabulous, no?

Our First Harvest: Radishes!

We harvested our first crop of bright red, crunchy, and delightfully spicy "Cherry Belle" radishes after yoga class on Thursday - Raphanus sativus never tasted so good! We will plant another row in the next week or two because we just can't get enough!

Our zucchini and tomato plants are starting to flower, and everything else looks happy and healthy.

The best defense is a good e-fence!

As promised, here are some photos of our new electric fence, which appears to be successfully protecting our garden from the local rabbits and squirrels. It's a very simple system, with aluminum wire (about 75 feet) strung through metal cotter pins attached to 2-foot plastic rods. We strung two wires, one about six inches above the ground, and the second about two inches above that. The wire is connected to an energizer on Peggy's deck, which is grounded by a 2-foot rebar sunk into the ground below.

Now we just have to be careful about not tripping on the wires as we garden! Peggy's going to devise a flagging system to help us remember that the wire is actually there.

As for the garden itself, we have some new friends in the form of toads (who were instantly given a toad house, thanks to Peggy) and some new seedlings (because even if you're urgently shopping at Lowe's for electric fencing, it's hard not to cruise through the veggie and herb aisle!). We lost the Hillbilly tomato (which did start out in poor shape) and all of the cucumber seedlings (due mostly to overwatering, as mentioned previously). But from Lowe's we gained parsley, replacement cucumbers, sweet potato "Beauregard" (it seemed like a good idea at the time!) and...um...asparagus (you see, asparagus looks a lot like dill when you're in a hurry...). Jane's husband Greg has also donated a Roma tomato plant.

The new cucumber seedlings have gone into the large garden bed, the parsley is now in one of the herb tubs, and the sweet potatoes are in the new tomato bed, along with the Roma tomato and the accidental asparagus. (We took a "let's throw it in the tomato bed and see what happens" attitude toward the asparagus because we really don't know what we're doing there.) Peggy has also rustled up some actual dill, which will find its way to a herb tub very soon.

And now, with any luck, we just sit back and watch it all thrive.

Invasion!

Yesterday afternoon at 3:41 p.m., Jane and Virginia received an urgent message from Peggy: 

Ladies, we had our first rabbit in the garden this afternoon!!!!  I chased it away with a fierce threat, but I think we’ve been found out.  If the little creature tells his friends we’ll be cleaned out in a matter of moments.  Any suggestions for prevention? 

Needless to say, we went into high-alert mode and held an emergency garden meeting. It was decided that Peggy and Virginia would attempt to find an effective and yet reasonably priced protective system for the garden that could be installed by nightfall. Since we were pressed for time, Lowe's and Home Depot were really our only options. The local stores offered nothing that met our needs, but a knowledgeable employee at Lowe's directed us to the store in Garner, which carried electric fencing. (Interestingly, the Cary stores are considered "too metropolitan" to carry such items...?) Off we went to Lowe's in Garner, where we found a very reasonably priced electronic fence kit, which promised to give us 100 feet of fence and appeared to be easy to install. (We had measured the perimeter of the garden before heading to the store, and decided that we would need about 75 feet of fence.)

We raced back to the garden and tackled the fencing project, working by the light of a large halogen flashlight held by David S as the sun set. We couldn't really tell if the posts holding the wires were appropriately placed or if the wire itself was level and in the right position, but we did our best and David S helped us rig up the energizer. The highlight of the evening was Jane's courageous attempt to test the fence, which she did manage successfully after remembering to remove her rubber gardening boots!

This morning, Peggy sent us another message:

Well, this morning there was no evidence of garden invasion form our pesky friends.  However, there was a rabbit in the back yard who seemed preoccupied with the surrounding grasses as opposed to our garden.  I don’t know if he was shocked by our newly installed e-fence and decided to avoid the garden or not.  I left him alone to see what would happen and when I returned after breakfast he was gone and the garden was unscathed.  YEAH!!! 

We returned to the garden this afternoon to straighten out our work, and to add a second wire to the fence posts. Virginia found an electric fence tester to save Jane from further fence-testing trauma. Photos of the finished project will be posted soon. We sincerely hope that our e-fence will end this threat of rodent hooliganism!