Lexington Interfaith Garden

Volunteers from: Follen, First Parish, Redeemer, Lex Catholic Community, Hancock, Lex Methodist

Weather:  Started out raining but then dissipated.  Lots of good cheer despite the initial sogginess.

Produce picked and delivered this week:  About 95 pounds which included eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, Swiss chard, kale, beets, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes (cherry and regular), Romano beans, pole beans, cucumbers, bok choy, acorn squash, basil, zinnias.

Saturday’s excellent crew spread out, taking initiative to harvest in Carla’s absence.  There was a list of 18 crops to check for harvest readiness.  Lots and lots of kale got picked, as well as lots and lots of bok choy.

A fraction of the kale harvested!

…and more kale from the small garden!

We might have had a lot of butternut squash, but opted to leave them for one more week.  Having seen the butternut earlier when their steroid growth swarmed and overwhelmed that quadrant of the garden, seeing them now in their mature stage is very interesting.  As Carla had forecast, signs of their ripening would start with the vines and leaves dying off.  In fact you can now see more soil than plant, quite the contrast with not even a month ago! (See Aug 28^th report with pictures.)  As the butternut matures and turns more brownish yellow, the green on the outside retreats until what remains is primarily stripes like external ribs.   The Saturday crew studied the green stripes and concluded there was still too much striping.  The consensus was to let the butternut sit another week.  We thought that there’s more risk of picking too early than a little late. My guess is that next week will be a big one for this crop.  A lot of the acorn and spaghetti squash got harvested, so despite no butternuts, the squash family was well represented at the Pantry.

Mom and son working together!

This mother and son spent their time in the tomato patch.  The direction was to pick all the tomatoes that were at least half red and separate out the ones with splits for the chickens.  The tomato seconds were just another of the delicacies fed to the chickens that morning–they also feasted on kale and chard that didn’t make it through quality control.

When you work at the garden, it’s not just an opportunity to learn about vegetables.  On Saturday, the sighting of a hawk flying overhead led to a short tutorial about hawks.  Shirley and Dave, experienced birders, identified our hawk as a female red-tail variety.  And did you know that the females don’t have the red tail of their name, only the males do?  Females are larger than males and have more muted plumage.  Apparently if you really want to watch hawks, Massachusetts has some areas well known for hawk aficionados…like Wachusett Mountain and Mount Watatic.  Shirley and Dave happened to be there on the day that some 5000 hawks (not red-tail, but another variety…broad-wing?) flew through on a southerly migration.  If you are interested in learning more, check out Eastern Mass Hawk Watch, http://massbird.org/EMHW/Hawk_Watch_Program_2012.htm

by Amy Swanson

Volunteers:  Temple Emunah, Hancock and Lexington Catholic Community

Weather: beautiful fall afternoon

Since I usually work on Saturdays, it was nice to get a taste of the Tuesday routine.  Without a deadline of getting produce to the pantry, there’s a different vibe…a bit more relaxed.  But I’m making this comparison during the busiest part of the garden cycle, which will be pronounced on Pantry days!

Watering and Weeding Bok Choy

This crew had some experienced gardeners, so when a question came up such as whether some squashes were ready for picking, or whether we needed to do a deep watering, there was an informed answer in Carla’s absence.

We opted to pick a lot of tomatoes on Tuesday.  The idea was to pick the very red ones.  Leave them on the plant too long and tomatoes can start to split.  In fact, it might be smart to protect against splitting by picking tomatoes with a little green.  Leave them out on your counter and they will ripen very nicely.

The other big harvest was the Romano and pole beans.  We picked pounds and pounds of beans…possibly as much as 7?  We had a young helper who loooved to find the beans hiding among the leaves.  And good thing, because had we waited for Saturday morning when it rained, we wouldn’t have been able to harvest any, since you don’t want to pick beans when the plants are wet.

Our diligent bean pickers

by Barbara Munkres

Today was a special day:  the first day of Carla’s much deserved two week vacation.  She will be visiting family while we will be caring for the garden.  As you might guess, she was in the garden this morning helping us get started with the harvesting in spite of her mid-morning departure time.

We needed a mini-van to carry all the produce to the pantry

Seats down, trays carefully layered, this was one full delivery wagon!

by Amy Swanson

Volunteers from: Hancock, First Parish, Pilgrim, Temple Isaiah, Lex Catholic Community and Follen

Weather:  Very light rain

Harvested: 226 pounds…Another garden record.  17 crops were delivered, including basil, beans, beets and their greens, cabbage, celery, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, kale, onions, potatoes, Romano beans, squash, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and zucchini.

Many, many thanks to the dozen volunteers who showed up in the drizzle to pick, clean and weigh in time for us to deliver 226 pounds of produce to the pantry this morning.  Having extra folks answer a call for last minute help ensured that we could get this bounty to the food pantry in time for pantry helpers to set it up for their clients.

Our garden delivery added a lot to the produce table

The 226 pounds we delivered this morning brings our season-to-date harvest total to 850 pounds.   This virtually ties what the garden produced all of last year (854 pounds).

When we arrived this morning, Carla had plenty for us to do.  About 50 pounds of potatoes had been dug up on Tuesday and they were waiting to be cleaned up for delivery.  Having a few days for them to dry off left them easier to clean—rubbing them in one’s hands was all that necessary to brush off most of the dirt.  Additional baskets of beans and 42 pounds of tomatoes, harvested yesterday, were ready for the weighing station. By the time the potatoes, beans and tomatoes were weighed, Mark and Lisle were busy keeping up with the stream of freshly cut vegetables being dropped off at the barn by the other volunteers.  And kudos to the garden volunteer who did a terrific job in the cucumber patch, finding the 50+ pounds of the harvest-ripe cucumbers hiding in the greens.

This morning I learned more about Butternut squash.  I had commented in an earlier note about the lucky timing of picking the last of lettuce from one of its beds before the squash tripled in size in a space of a week, totally spilling over the former lettuce bed.  Today Carla was counting the butternut squash…20, which is about right for 3 plants.  Mark and I both took a double take!  The green squash sprawl was only 3 plants?  Really?!  The sprawl which I was guessing might be as much as 20% of the main garden?

The “green sprawl” of the butternut squash

Immature butternut…note the leaves in the foreground are starting to die.

When are they ready to be harvested?  In about a month, when you see that…

• All the green is gone on the squash (not yet)
• The stem has turned brown (not yet)
• The leaves die (just beginning)

Quick primer on harvesting cabbage:

• Pull the whole plant out of the soil
• Cut free the center cabbage
• Discard the surrounding leaves in the compost.

Theresa ready with her knife

by Amy Swanson

Bonding with basil

Volunteers from:  Scheduled from First Baptist, Pilgrim, Lexington Methodist, St. Nicholas and others helping from Hancock, Follen, and Lex Catholic Community

Weather:  Not raining!

Delivered today:  163 pounds including green beans, Romano beans, cucumbers, eggplants, corn, potatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, kale, chard, mint, cabbages, onion, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and basil.

With lots of the garden waiting to be picked, it was nice that the forecasted rain never arrived!  Fortunately an advance guard had been at work and done some harvesting ahead of Saturday.  For instance, beans which should not be picked if the plants are wet, had been culled before yesterday’s rain arrived.

Pulling the stalks to make room for the next crop

Corn– Knee high by the 4^th of July and history by 8/11^th.   The last of the crop was picked and delivered today.  That which wasn’t pantry acceptable was served up as a treat to the chickens.  The remaining cornstalks were pulled, cut up and delivered to the compost bin (left side bin).  The bed was then hoed, cultivated and a layer of compost from the right side bin was spread and lightly worked into the soil.  Corn takes a lot out of the soil and so the compost will help add back before the next crop of lettuce and cooler crops get planted in the same space.

Cabbages—This is another crop that is almost through its cycle.  Between last week and this week, 33 pounds of cabbage were picked and delivered.  This morning Carla had Cindy and Isaiah pull entire cabbage plants out, slowly emptying the bed.  The cabbage got cut free of the plant and the greens fed to the chicken.  By next week, likely the whole bed will be ready for replanting.

Chickens feasting on garden leftovers

Potatoes—The first of the potatoes were dug up this week.  Two of  us helped cultivate the now-emptied row, prepping for replanting.  (I believe bok choy is the plan.) If you recall, potatoes are planted in trenches and as the plants mature you push more dirt back onto the plants to keep the bottom of the plant covered by cool dirt.  In the process you create “hills”.  So today, we un-“hilled” the row.  In the process I found what looked like miniature green tomatoes.  Turns out that they are potato seeds, growing from the plant blossoms.  Carla uses an alternative way to plant potatoes, namely cutting (seed) potatoes into chunks with at least two eyes per chunk and then embedding them into the soil.  So I collected the “mini green tomatoes”, adding them to the compost.

Cleaning the potatoes

“Un-hilling” the potato row