Lexington Interfaith Garden

It takes a lot of time to weigh 183 pounds!

Volunteers from::  Hancock, Follen and the Lexington Catholic Community

Weather:  Hot and humid…great for the plants, not so much for the workers  (but we were done by 9:30, so not to worry.)

Harvested:  183 pounds with 17 types of vegetables delivered (18 if there were 2 varieties of cukes, as there were last week).  That includes: tomatoes, cabbage, garlic, shallots, yellow and red onions, Romano beans, green beans, corn, kale, Swiss chard, zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, basil, eggplant and beets.

Notes from the Garden:

• 183 pounds is the largest one-day delivery since the garden started.  But we didn’t pick all of it today.  Carla had put aside some crops (such as onions and garlic), letting them dry out sufficiently so they were ready to be added today to everything else.   We did need both of the garden carts, plus Theresa following with a newspaper cone full of flowers.

Normally the food gets sent over on trays that get collected later for reuse. Today we ran out of trays so we started filling grocery bags with the vegetables. Here they are being unloaded at the Pantry.

• The heat of the past week has pushed the crops into hyper-productivity.  One volunteer noted that she was afraid of having too aggressively cut the basil last week and was amazed to see such tremendous grow-back one week later!   I saw further evidence on the main path. Butternut squash seems to have tripled since last week.  Not only have they taken over where last week we emptied one of the lettuce beds, but they’ve also claimed a lot of the front path.

• The corn is ready!  This is a major accomplishment since the last time corn was planted, the vast majority, if not all, was feasted upon by the local raccoons and/or opossums.   That year we were only able to salvage a total of 9 pounds of ears.  Today alone, 18.5 pounds of corn was sent over to the pantry.

• Carla noted that there really has only been one failed crop this year.
  A more typical experience has been that cutworms get the broccoli or rabbits get the lettuce, etc.  But this year, pests have been very much under control.  However, the green peppers have a serious case of failure-to-thrive.  Maybe planted in the wrong place?  As we have been learning from our experienced gardener, part of the success of a garden is rotating where crops have been planted.  For instance, potatoes take a lot of the nutrients out of the soil, so beds get moved around year to year and former beds get reworked with amendments or replanted with crops like peas that add back nitrogen to the soil.  So if the peppers aren’t working, it may be the soil isn’t quite right for what that plant requires.

5 pounds of Basil harvested today!

• Basil harvesting 101:  Since working at this garden, I’ve discovered there really is a correct way to pick basil.  Let me share what I’ve learned:
  • Basil loves being cut, but cut from the top…don’t pick leaves off the plant.  Trimming from the top keeps the plant productive, delaying when it goes to seed.
  • Trim about 1/3 of the stalk, cutting back to just above where you find 2 leaves growing opposite to one another.
  • When the basil stalk first starts to go to seed, it looks like a concentrated cone of baby leaves.  I was expecting to see little flowers, but the flowers come later as the seeding process continues.  It’s hard to see, but the center plant here has a leaf cone…which made it a prime candidate to get trimmed today.

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    Beets and their greens being carefully cleaned

by Amy Swanson

Rinsing the lettuce

Working: Pilgrim, First Baptist, Lexington Catholic Community, St. Nicholas and an extra volunteer from Isaiah.

Weather:  Sun and lots of early dampness

Delivered:  61 pounds total including cucumbers (2 varieties totaling 17.5 pounds), yellow squash, zucchini, broad beans, green beans, kale, swiss chard, basil, garlic, tomatoes (2 varieties), lettuce and flowers.

Tomatoes:  All I can say is that before long the garden will be swimming in tomatoes.  We were sent to see what could be harvested.  Most of the cherry tomatoes appeared to have been harvested, but we still found some to deliver along with the first of another variety that looked like the very first wave of Italian plum tomatoes.

Cucumbers:  Do you know the difference between Armenian and regular cucumbers?  Armenians are smaller, generally skinnier and have a smooth skin.  I am much more familiar with regular cucumbers and their bumpy, somewhat spiky skin. Thankfully, we had another volunteer who explained to the rest of us the difference so we knew that the smaller variety was indeed ready for picking.

Zucchini and squash:  Definitely THE place for bees!  Lots of squash blooms to attract our pollinating friends.

Beans:  Did you know that you beans should not be picked if the plants are wet?  When I arrived, there was heavy morning dew so we opted to wait til the end to see if the plants had dried sufficiently to pick.  Not quite, so very few were added to what Carla had already picked previously for us to deliver.

Kale:  Last week I wondered how to use kale without heating up the kitchen. My repertoire of kale recipes was limited to sautéing, roasting and parboiling…all methods to transform the slight bitterness of the green to a sweeter flavor.  Turns out that kale can be a great salad foundation green, provided you dress the greens well in advance with acidic ingredients.  At the last farmer’s market, I picked up a “sweet kale” variety and chard and made a tasty Greek-inspired salad using a lemon juice and oil dressing.  Can’t wait for a redo!

Loading the wheelbarrow

Lettuce:  Couldn’t quite fit our lettuce haul in the big garden cart with the rest of the goods. 10 pounds of lettuce takes up a lot of room! So our lettuce got wheeled over to the pantry in its own wheelbarrow.

10 pounds of lettuce merits its own ride

by Amy Swanson

Working:  Hancock, First Parish and other volunteers from the community

Weather:  Sunny and cool to start giving way to the summer warmth you expect

Harvested:  58 pounds of produce including beans, kale, chard, radishes, cucumbers, basil, green onions, cherry tomatoes, beets, zucchini, yellow squash, zinnias and probably more that I’ve forgotten.

3 1/2 pounds of zucchini goodness

Loading the cart for delivery

Carla had other plans this morning so couldn’t be there to direct our work.  But she left good instructions on what was ready to harvest and where to find them in the garden.  It was time for us to fly solo!   We never know as much as Carla, and we certainly don’t work as fast, but nevertheless our baskets were full to overflowing with all the greens, squash, flowers and other pretty vegetables collected for the Pantry.

Lots of onions!

Zinnias too!

Other notes/questions from the garden:

Can you find the bee?

–       Unexpected:  To need a polar fleece at 8am!

–       Expected:  To peel off the polar fleece by 8:30am!

–       Bees peacefully buzzing the garden.  The garden is a happy place for the bees that live behind the barn.  And apparently they love the domesticated thistle.

–      Volunteers discovered the trap set in the middle of the corn. Don’t know if for mice or squirrels, but hopefully it means we will get to harvest some of the corn.  We were not so successful the first year, when savvy interlopers feasted on the corn, not the pantry clients.

–       Radish greens are indeed edible.  There was some discussion whether we should be trimming the greens from the radishes we pulled.  Definitely the beet greens stay, but radish greens?  In the absence of Carla, Omar checked his smart phone and discovered that people can cook the radish greens so no trimming was necessary.

–       Kale…anyone know good summer recipes for kale that don’t require cooking in the kitchen?  The kale we cut was magnificent and commanded respect!  But the few of us talking about it only had sautéing or baking recipes… and who wants to heat up the kitchen in the summer?  If you have other kinds of ways to cook kale, why not share them on the comments section of the Interfaith Garden website?

by Amy Swanson

A few folks from Hancock, First Baptist, First Parish, Lex Methodist and one friend from the neighborhood worked at the Interfaith Garden this morning.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather!  If you want to hear about an alternative use for tobacco in the garden, read on!

About 7 pounds of produce and herbs were cut and delivered to the Lexington Food Pantry this morning.  This is the time of year when the garden is on the brink of greater and greater productivity. Next week, Carla is expecting quite a bit of produce to be ready for harvest…especially the peas.  So for that reason, starting on Sat, June 30^th, Saturday garden hours will move earlier to 8am so we have enough time to do all the cutting, cleaning and delivering to the pantry before it opens.  Here is what was delivered this morning:

• Asparagus (still!)
• Swiss chard
• Kale
• Snow peapods
• Peas
• Plus a delightfully aromatic mix of herbs… mint, cilantro, parsley and dill

The garden scarecrow is back

Discerning volunteers picking peas

There is a learned skill on picking peas.  And with at least 2 varieties planted, the “doneness” looks different for each.  For one variety, you are looking for fatter pods (these are the peas that you shell.) For the other variety, you eat pod and all, so you want them fattish, but not too fat, which means that they are overly mature.  So good luck, next week, to the volunteers who will have many more to pick!

In the marvelous life cycle of the garden, once a crop is exhausted, out it goes and in goes another.  This morning I planted carrot seeds where recently the last of the bok choy in this bed was harvested.  The carrots will be ready in about 75 days.

Broccoli seedlings

And incubating in the sun on the bench inside the garden is a large flat of tiny broccoli and cabbage plants that are maturing from seeds.  About the time that the pea patch is all picked out, the broccoli and cabbage will be ready to go into that space.  And of course, the dirt will be re-energized with all the nitrogen that peas put back into the soil.

Who knew that tobacco has good uses?  Before planting the carrot seeds, Carla sprinkled natural tobacco on the dirt and had me mix it into the soil before planting the seeds.  Apparently it inhibits wireworm (a beetle larva), a pest that loves root vegetables like carrots and radishes.  In the past she has not had much success with carrots, but ever the optimist, she tried again and she pulled a young one to see how they were faring.  Wonderfully!  No wireworm damage to be seen. And chickens loved having a little bit of carrot for breakfast!

Garden Beehives are thriving

New beehive colonies are back at the garden.  They are thriving back behind the barn.  As you may recall from last year, someone who heard about the Interfaith Garden arrived one day late in the season and asked Carla if she would be interested in having some bees if she did all the work of installing them, etc.  It seemed like an offer too good to turn down.  Unfortunately, the colony had not sufficiently settled in and made enough food for themselves before the cold came so they did not survive.  This spring, this same friend of the garden came back and asked about a re-do.  Two new hives were installed and there’s lots of activity.  Carla put up a small fence so there would be respectful distance between their home and the rest of us.  But we are hoping that the bees are doing a lot of visiting in the garden.

 

Thanks to all the volunteers who have worked in the garden.  The space looks wonderful.  It is so obvious that lots of hands have helped in the weeding, mulching, and general maintenance of the garden.

Harvested and delivered to the Lexington Food Pantry:

2 ½ pounds of asparagus and smaller amounts of scallions and radishes

Fertilizing and Planting

Some of the things we got done today:

• Planted:  cantaloupes, bok choy, marigolds (anti-bug) and probably more vegetables that I didn’t know about
• Mulched and made more paths around the garden
• Transplanted stray volunteers like cilantro and dill from middle of beds of potato, melon, etc to edge of garden where they can continue to grow.
• Weeded and then fed weeds to chickens
• “Hilled” potatoes

More from the garden

Hilling

What is “hilling” potatoes?  You start potato plants by settling them into a dug-out trough. As the plants grow, you move dirt from the sides of planted trough to cover the base of the plant.  Doing this regularly means that by the middle of the season, the potatoes are growing in dirt mounds, with troughs on either side from where you kept getting dirt to cover the bottoms of the potato plants…thus the “hilling”.

Did you know there are such things as good weeds?  Carla had us leave one kind of bushy weed.  Aphids are attracted to this weed and so become another natural defense against pests.  But beware; I almost left one of the bushy weeds only to be told to take it out since that one was the toxic nightshade!

New asparagus shoots look amazingly like dill!  So if you are sent to weed the asparagus bed, leave them.  In that location, they are unlikely to be dill needing to be transplanted.

Remember me writing about garlic and how to know when it is ready to be harvested?  The “tell” was in the leaves.  They need to spiral and then un-spiral before you want to pick.  Well, one of the plants started to spiral.  Here is what it looks like:

Garlic Frond Corkscrews

Working:  Hancock, Redeemer, St. Nicholas

Weather:  Warm and a bit humid