Grow Grow Grow!

The garlic seems to have done very well with our mild Boston winter. I am keeping my fingers crossed for a great garlic harvest later this summer!!
The garden is off and running, nearly 3 weeks ahead of  when I have been able to get things going the last few years. Gail and I have made a few trips down there and have been hard at work weeding, digging and tidying up. We've also managed to plant a few seeds here and there - Leeks, Kale, Peas, Arugula, Radish, Spinach, and a Thyme plant with much more to come in the coming weeks and months.
Hopefully the on again-off again threat of rain will actually come to fruition- while Gail and I were weeding and digging we noticed the soil was incredibly dry. The water should be turned on at the Garden by now, I just haven't had the chance to make it down there to check.
Stay tuned for more growing updates!

Opening Day & First Harvest

I couldn't take it any longer! After an unreasonably warm winter I was finally ready to get back to the Garden. This past Sunday morning I brought most of my tools to the plot and opened up for the season! I saw at least 8 or 10 other gardeners, most of them knew members of the Fenway Victor Gardens, hard at work!
I cleared up some straw I insulated some of the garden with. The garlic looks fantastic I counted 48 garlic plants about 3-4 inches tall each! I can't wait to harvest all that garlic later this summer. We planted a few walking onions and it looks as if 1 of about a dozen managed to grow. I am hoping some of the rest will emerge soon. Much to my delight I found a volunteer leek growing under a pile of straw in the back corner of the garden. I managed to put some additional Leek as well as some Kale seeds in the ground before the afternoon was up!
I even managed a small harvest, with a big effort! I left one horseradish plant to overwinter, and it was time to dig it up as Passover is this coming weekendand homemade horseradish is in great demand!! After some serious grunting and digging I managed to uproot 7.35 oz of Horseradish! Not bad at all.

Still a lot of tidying and additional work to do, but it felt great to be outside and see some real signs of spring! Next trip down to the plot I will bring a camera to show off some of the great looking garlic!

Much more to come...we're just getting started!

2012 Garden Plan

I finally finished my Garden plan for 2012! Just in the knick of time... with the unusually warm winter I might be trying to get into my plot at the end of this month or early next month to get a jump start on this years gardening.

I'm doing something different this year: I sketched out, in 2 week intervals my garden plan from Late March/Earl April - Late September. Though it was fairly tedious I found it to be a great constructive exercise that allowed me to use the space available as effectively as possible.
My first season lacking any real knowledge I severely over planned and last year I only made a rough list of  what I wanted to grow and winged it for the most part. This year I am trying to strike a balance between over and under planning.
Sketching out the Garden in 2 week intervals allows me to produce an 'ideal' road map if all goes according to plan and the weather cooperates. It also let's me adjust plans on the fly as life and weather dictate my gardening time - one of the challenges of gardening in an urban community garden!
I'm ready to start growing! I just need to find the time to get to the garden and see how it looks after an unusual Winter.

Plotting & Scheming

It's time. By now most of the seed catalogs have found their way to my mailbox and I am ready to turn toward spring and start to plan out the garden for this year! I knew it was time to transition from daydreaming to actual planning when my Membership Renewal arrived in the mail from the Fenway Garden Society last week.
Earlier this week I took a look at the Grown Away seed box to determine what, if anything, will have to be ordered a head of time. For such a small garden space I've built up a fairly good stock of seeds allowing for plenty of variety when planning the garden for this year.

Grown Away seed box.

For such a small garden space I've built up a fairly good stock of seeds allowing for plenty of variety when planning the garden for this year. I plan on only ordering a few herb seeds to replenish what is depleted from my supplies, but when looking through the garden catalogs and reading about the grand plans of other gardeners who knows what I will actually end up with!
Once the concrete plans actually take shape I will make an attempt to share them before the fun (hours and hours of weeding) actually begins.

Have you started planning your edible garden yet? Will you try growing anything new or different this season??

2011 Harvest Totals & Thoughts

Closed for the season: this guy spends his winter as a boot guard at our front door.

The garden is closed and packed away for the year. A midst a weekend of both rain and snow (very early for Boston) Gail and I hurriedly closed down the garden and finished winterizing on Sunday. It's a bit on the early side, but the weather has been crazy & I have lots going on with work and life, and there wasn't much left to do. For record keeping purposes here is a look at this year's harvest/
2011 Harvest Totals:
Arugula: 2.45 oz
Basil: 2.21 lbs
Carrots: 4.18 lbs
Dill: 1.35 oz
Garlic: 1.11 lbs
Horseradish: 1.44 lbs
Huckleberry: 1.80 lbs
Lettuce: 1.96 lbs
Kale: 1.53 lbs
Marjoram: 2.35 oz
Mesclun Greens: 11.95 oz
Mint: 1.0 oz
Parsley: 1.35 oz
Peppers:
--Bell 3.87 lbs
--Cubanelle 2.63 lbs
--Gypsy 1.89 lbs
--Jalapeno 2.63 lbs
--Wax 3.68 lbs
Radish: 1.48 lbs
Rosemary: 3.00 oz
Sage: 7.60 oz
Scallions: .85 oz
Swiss Chard: 11.45 oz
Tomato: 29.38 lbs
Walking Onion 7.45 oz
2011 Total: 64.57 lbs (1033.19)
This is just a hair over last year's total of 63.84 lbs! Between the 2 growing season's the quantities were vastly different in some cases, and almost the same in others.
There were a few total failures this year:  no beets, broccoli, bush beans, dry beans,  leeks, & zucchini grew at all this year.
The failures were offset with some great success's. The carrots, chives, horseradish, huckleberry, peppers, radish, sage, and tomatoes did really well. I won't be growing the huckleberries next year - they tasted downright terrible fresh, though they have a much better taste cooked with sugar for jam purposes they were a nice addition for my cranberry jalapeno jam. I still have some frozen, along with cranberries for another batch next year! I over planted horseradish and took home more then enough for the condiment and for re-planting!
I was happy with the walking onions, and will continue replanting some! Most of the herbs did really well too, especially the sage which really took off.
This year was a hectic but fun season gardening and I am already planning for next years season!!

Garlic Review & Lessons Learned.

My experiment growing garlic was a mild success and offered a few lessons. The garlic itself grew pretty well. Of the 31 cloves of garlic we planted last fall 28 of them produced garlic that we harvested. Between the 'green' spring garlic we picked early and the bunch I was able to dry we got a total of 1.11 lbs of garlic. 28/31 is a result I am happy with, but like I said there were lessons learned.

Lesson 1 - Patience. As it was our first attempt growing garlic we ended up pulling a good amount early as a way to check our progress, and use some of the garlic when it was still young and fresh. We also pulled the garlic a little on the early side. Next year we will still probably pull some spring garlic, but maybe a little less, and I will try and be more patient and give the garlic the final few weeks of growth it needs.

Lesson 2 - Salt marsh hay & leaves are an excellent overwintering mulch. After planting the garlic, walking onions, and relocating some chives last fall I covered them all in a thick layer of fallen leaves and salt marsh hay, and when Gail and I returned in April and cleared away the straw and leaves I found all the garlic, walking onions, and chives were flourishing!

Lesson 3- find garlic you like & plant more of it! The elephant garlic produced the biggest heads but the German Purple & Ukrainian hard neck varieties had the most flavor, while the soft neck produced smaller heads with a lighter flavor. I have set aside some of the best Ukrainian & German Purple heads we grew for planting this fall, as well as picking up additional heads from the farms that grow them.

All in all between the farms and the harvested garlic we set aside I should be able to plant in a larger bed this fall, leading to more garlic next year! Hopefully we will get enough next summer that I can self seed the following year!

Signs of things to come

The garden has quickly transitioned from waking up to promising future delights. While weeding on Sunday I snapped a few pictures.

Our first 2 tomatoes made their presence known! Almost 2 weeks before I spotted one last year these 2 tomatoes can be found on one of the Cherokee Purple's that Gail picked out!

Not to be out done 3 bell peppers have already set fruit as well! Hopefully the cubanelle and jalapeños won't be terribly far behind!

Some of the summer (hopefully) lettuce is finally out competing the weeds as well. Here's a nice shot of some Red Cross butterhead that is reaching for the sky.

Finally, a nice pink rose, after all it's not ALL about food, just mostly.

Opening Day!

Yesterday was Opening Day!!! Not for my beloved Boston Red Sox, but for my plot at the Fenway Victory Gardens, just behind where the Red Sox play! I retrieved all of the gardening equipment that we stored over the winter and Gail and I headed to the garden, wondering if anything would be alive.We were greeted with a lot of mud, wet fall leaves, and straw that we had used to insulate some of overwintering projects. Beneath the straw and leaves the garlic, walking onions, and chives were all flourishing! Below is one of the walking onions that had climbed through the straw in search o

f sunlight. The chives and garlic were both alive and ready for sun when we delicately pulled the soggy leaves and straw off of them.

We also brought along a bunch of herb seedlings we started on our windowsills as well as kale seedlings I picked up at Allandale Farm on saturday.

Picture above are the kale seedlings after we got them in the ground and pots with chives, garlic chives, marjoram, sage, thyme, rosemary, basil, flat leaf parsley, and a volunteer curly parsley. We are going to try leaving most of the herbs in the pots (except the chives we over wintered) and using the space that was occupied by last years herb garden to grow:

Horseradish! I ordered the above horseradish roots from Johnny's in the winter. They ship when it is an appropriate time to plant them in your given growing zone. The roots arrived in the middle of last week, and were kept in the refrigerator wrapped in damp newspaper until we planted them yesterday afternoon. Hopefully after the first fall frost I will be digging up enough horseradish to grow more as well as for a few batches of the delicious condiment.

In the coming weeks Gail and I will finish cleaning and preparing the plot for the growing season as well as planting, planting, and more planting!

Spring is back and so is the garden!

A Garden Award, A Gift Certificate & Pictures

Saturday afternoon was the Fenway Victory Gardens annual Fens Fest, an end of the summer Barbeque with live music, a huge raffle, a flea market style 'white elephant' table, garden contests and awards.

It was a great afternoon, the weather was perfect, and I was really able to get a sense of the community aspect of the victory gardens. I saw gardeners I only saw briefly at the start of the season, as well as many (most) who I had never met before.

I even won an award!!!

Best New Gardener for my section! Along with the certificate pictured above I was also given a green ribbon and a 'medal' which was an outdoor faucet handle painted gold:

I also picked up one of the new Fenway Victory Garden T-shirts:

Finally, to round out an already fun afternoon of food and conversation with some fellow gardeners they held a raffle with some really great prizes. Gail and I ended up winning a $50.00 gift certificate to the Boston Public Library book sale, unfortunately Gail and I have plans the day of the book sale so we traded our prize to a garden friend for a $25.00 gift certificate to Johnny's Selected Seeds

It was a really nice way to wrap up our first year season as gardeners. Though the season isn't over yet, I'm transitioning to fall with kale, lettuces, leeks, bush beans, radishes, and hopefully potatoes on the horizon! Maybe even a walking onion or two if we have a warm streak mid fall.

Here are a few photos of some recent harvests

We finally got a decent showing out of our second planting of carrots:

The radishes came in fast and are crisp and delicious! I'll definitely be enjoying them until it turns cold:

Finally, a nice harvest of tomatoes, green pepper, radish and dry beans:

Notice the pot in the back left of the photo? We've made a few batches of tomato sauce and they are great! I'll be really excited to enjoy them when my garden is buried under snow and ice!

Grown Away on the Radio!!!!

Last Wednesday I mentioned I had been interviewed by my local NPR affiliate's afternoon program Radio Boston. The story on the Fenway Victory Gardens aired this afternoon. It featured Mike Mennonno, a fellow gardener who has a gorgeous plot full of flowers and bee's, Meg Muckenhoupt author of Boston's Gardens & Green Spaces, and yours truly!!!

You can CLICK HERE to find the story. Click the listen now button once you open the link. The story is a little over 8 minutes long and I am in the last 3 minutes.

Feel free to pass this along to anybody who may find it interesting!

Garden Visitors - the NPR kind!!!

I had some visitors to my plot today. My local NPR affiliate WBUR has a weekday afternoon program called Radio Boston which focuses on stories pertaining to Boston and Massachusetts in general. About a month ago I was contacted by Meghan a staff member at Radio Boston. They were planning to do a story with Meg Muckenhoupt author of Boston's Gardens and Green Spaces and wanted me to speak with them about gardening, and the Fenway Victory Gardens! Early in the evening Meghan, Tom (i think that was his name) and host Meghna Chakrabarti stopped by to take a look at my garden and ask me a few questions. The interview was fun and I think it went well. Hopefully they were able to get something good enough for their piece. The program should be airing next week, once I have all the details I will be sure to share them. In the meantime here is a photo of my visitors from Radio Boston:

(Tom, Meghna, and Meghan of WBUR's Radio Boston)

Doorstep of Summer Garden Tour

With summer officially starting yesterday I thought a pictorial of my plot would be nice. So here is a photo tour of plot Z-1(aka my plot) at the Fenway Victory Gardens on the eve of summer. Photos were taken Sunday afternoon.

Walking through the gardens, below is the view as you approach my plot:

(Z-1 is the first plot on the left)

When you arrive at the gate you will notice the hi-tech security system:

(intruders beware!)

Upon entering the plot, to your left, along the front fence bed 1 - Broccoli, Carrots (poor germination), Leeks, Cabbage, and Onions (poor germination):

(Broccoli, Carrots, & Leeks in the front. Beyond the nasturtium is the cabbage and poorly germinated onions)

Moving on to bed 2 - A mishmash of Broccoli, Mint, Mesclun, Carrots (much better germination), Cucumbers, Sunflowers, Romaine and Spinach:

(The first half of bed 2: Broccoli, Mint, Mesclun, Carrots, & Cucumbers)

(2nd half of bed 2 - Sunflowers, Romaine, Spinach. The blank spot on the left housed the first planting of mesclun greens)
Bed 3- the center bed is home to the Tomatoes, Peppers, Basil, more Sunflowers, and more Nasturtiums (most of them are between the tomato cages):

(the view of bed 3 from the front of the plot)

(Basil at the back of bed 3)

(Looking from the back of bed 3 towards the gate down the row of tomato cages. You can see the Nasturtium flowers between each cage)

Bed 4 is the home of the Potato Trench & Pole Beans:

(The potato trench is filling in nicely, and the trellis' are starting to fill up with pole bean vines)

Behind the 2nd bed is a small batch of chives and then the herb bed (bed 5) - Garlic Chives, Dill, Parsley, Cilantro, some Sage, more (but smaller barely visible) chives, and borage:

(patch of chives between bed 2 and the herb bed)

(the main herb bed. Garlic chives in the front left look like grass. Dill, Parsley, Cilantro, some Sage growing close to the Cilantro)

Next to the Herb bed is the usual home for 2 of the 3 tomatoes in buckets. I move these around at my whim, but generally 2 of them sit between the herbs and the final bed.

(no such thing as enough tomato plants)

Bed 6, the last bed sits in the back right corner of the plot. There are 2 rows of Beets, Zucchini, and more Sunflowers in this bed:(Beets in front, Zucchini in the middle, a few Sunflowers and Daylily's in the back)

Here is a view of the plot from the backside. The gate can be seen in the back of the photo:

(plot Z-1 in all of its glory)

Finally, the last shot is a view from the front left corner as you approach the plot:

Thus concludes the tour of my plot on the eve of summer.

Busy Garden Weekend!

Lot's of work was done at the garden this weekend. Gail managed to weed and thin most of the overgrowth around our plot, making things look much cleaner! We also weeded all of the beds, lay wood chips in the paths around the beds, planted cucumbers (and erected a cucumber trellis), planted zucchini, started to hill up the potatoes, added some soil to the leeks, thin our beets, transplanted our new moonflowers, and transplanted 2 of our broccoli's to give them more space.
Here are some shots of our progress:

Also, a picture of a garden visitor I manged to snap. We had quite a few ladybugs, bee's, and a few butterflies stop by, however this was the only decent picture I was able to snap:

Busy non-gardening week and the potential for a good amount of rain this coming week so my posts may be limited.

Seed Potatoes: Planted!

The seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm were planted this afternoon!

After visiting the family on Sunday to show reverence to my wonderful Mother I set out to prepare the potatoes and their future home. First I cut up the potatoes, making sure there were at least 3 eyes per piece.

While the potatoes sat in the light I headed to the plot and got to work digging the trench which will house the potatoes. After some digging and clearing I was left with a nice 10 inch deep trench, sprinkled with a generous helping of compost.

My hard work was clearly appreciated. This bird below was extremely excited to see a freshly dug trench for him to patrol, a veritable bug buffet! Here he (she?) is just about ready to dive in.

While at work on Monday I realized the temperature might drop too low to plant the potatoes in the next few days, I was also concerned with the brown cavities in the Russian Banana Fingerlings in the 1st photo so I called Wood Prairie and spoke to Jill at the potato growers helpline. She was extremely helpful informing me that the brown cavities in the fingerlings were of no concern, and despite the unreasonably cool temperatures I would be alright to plant out the Potatoes today. I cannot stress how excellent the customer service from Wood Prairie has been- I explained to Jill I was a first time gardener and merely wanted to alleviate my concerns before putting my potatoes in the ground. Jill patiently answered all of my questions and gave me some additional tips for successful spuds!

With my newly found potato confidence I stopped at the plot and placed my cut potato pieces in the trench, being careful to evenly space the pieces out.

I made sure not to note which potatoes were places where in the trench so that when they grow I can be surprised by what sort of potatoes I'll be able to randomly pull from the forthcoming hills.

Once the potatoes were evenly spaced I covered each piece with a few inches of a soil and compost mixture.

Next stop: Spud City!

We have liftoff (and bindweed)!

Gail and I headed to the plot Friday afternoon. When I arrived I found Gail happily weeding with a large pile serving as proof that we will be fighting an uphill battle against Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Lots of serious hand weeding is ahead of us!

Besides the Bindweed springing up everywhere it can we saw signs of a garden coming to life.

I am extremely ecstatic to report numerous Beet and Mesclun mix seedlings emerging from the ground a mere 6 days after planting! I looked very carefully in the rows next to the Mesclun for Spinach and Romaine seedlings and believe I saw a few, however the Mesclun mix and Beet seedlings were easily visible in abundance so I will only confirm those for now. No visible seedlings from the Onions, Carrots or Cabbage yet but I will be back Sunday afternoon and hope to find more signs of life.

To celebrate our growth we began planting our herb bed. Garlic Chives, Dill, Sage and Chive seeds were planted in short rows before we left on account of darkness.

Seeds, Seedlings, and What I Hope to Grow

A few readers, friends, and fellow community gardeners have asked me what I'm planning to grow now that I have a plot so I thought I would give a break down of the seeds I've acquired and seedlings which will be picked up soon.
1)From Fenway Community Gardeners & The Fenway Gardens Spring Meeting:
Leeks (transplants gifted to us from a fellow gardener), Chive Seeds & Spinach Seeds - The Fenway Garden Society was nice enough to provide some seeds for their spring meeting, I got Chives & Spinach!
2)From the down:2:earth expo Gail and I attended in early April:
Mesclun Mix(planted last week!), Scarlet Nantes Carrots(planted last week!), and Dill seeds were all given out from the different garden & landscaping companies at the expo. Coincidentally all 3 seed packets were from High Mowing Organic Seeds.We also picked up packets of Basil & Sage seeds at the expo, but these come from the farmers of the Cabot Creamery Dairy Cooperative! Gail and I are huge fans of their cheese's and I think their business model is fantastic. They do not seal their seeds, they were giving them out as a gift. I am a proud supporter of their cheese products and will be proud to grow their herbs in my garden.
3)From fellow bloggers:
Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions was kind enough to send me some delicious looking Ottawa Cranberry Beans(seen here). While Ottawa Gardener at The Veggie Patch Re-imagined provided me with Garlic Chive seeds, some of which were successfully grown indoors over winter, while the rest are ready to be planted in the plot soon!
4) Hometown Seeds:
The kind people at Hometown Seeds saw my blog months ago, long before I had a plot and were nice enough to send me their Survival Seeds package to try out. The Survival Seeds package contains 16 non-hybrid 100% GMO free seeds which are meant to have a shelf life of at least 5 years. The seeds were not in individual packets, but in 5 0z, 5 gram, & 10 gram packages, more then enough for my small plot. From the Survival Seeds package we will be planting Golden Acre Cabbage(planted last week!), Long Green Cucumber, Utah Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions (planted last week!), Detroit Dark Red Beets (planted last week!), Black Beauty Zucchini, Parris Island Cos Romaine Lettuce (planted last week!), & Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans.
5) Natick Community Organic Farm:
The Natick Community Organic Farm is a non-profit certified organic farm just west of Boston. Their mission is to provide farm products, hands on education for all ages, and to foster community goodwill through love of the land. I have visited the farm numerous times since I was a child and am honored to support them in their spring seedling sale. Next week Gail & I will be picking up the following organic seedlings for our plot:
Yankee Bell & Hungarian Wax Peppers. Peacevine, Early Girl & Striped Roman Tomatoes. Diplomat Broccoli and Cilantro.
Along with the above vegetables we will also be adding Morning Glory, Autumn Beauty & Mammoth Sunflowers, and a mix of Nasturtium's
6) Wood Prairie Farm
The prospect of having a garden of my own made me think of Potatoes. I absolutely love them. Wood Prairie Farm has a reputation as one of the best sources of certified organic seed potatoes. Not wanting to limit myself to 1 variety of potato and taking into account the limited space I will have for potatoes I decided to order the Experimenter's Special which allows you to choose 4 different varieties of potato. Each package contains 3 potatoes of each variety for a total of 12 hills. I picked All Blue, Cranberry Red, Russian Banana Fingerling, and Yukon Gold for a nice variety of color, size, and taste. Potatoes were ordered last weekend and shipped out on Monday. They should be here before the end of the week!

Looking back at this massive list of vegetables and herbs I realize successfully growing all of these varieties will be extremely daunting. I don't expect every crop to be a smashing success so I am growing a large variety in smaller quantities in the hopes that the success's will outweigh the failures. My hope is that smaller plantings will allow Gail and I to slowly ease our way into the challenge of caring for all of these(hopefully) delicious edibles.

With research, hard work, and some luck hopefully the season will be full of gardening success and delicious vegetables!

Getting down and dirty at the new plot!

This weekend Gail and I were finally to get to work on our plot at the Fenway Victory Gardens. We both had friday off and were able to spend most of friday and saturday working on our plot. We met quite a few of our neighbors while we worked. It's really nice to feel the sense of community as complete strangers came by and said hello or struck up a conversation with us. We were offered tips on identifying some of the major weeds in our plot, given advice on having a successful plot, and we were even gifted a few plants! The knowledge that many of our fellow plot holders passed to us went a long way in helping us prepare the plot. We also managed to meet some of the animal inhabitants of the gardens:

Gail spotted these mourning doves with her young expertly camouflaged in a neighbors plot. We don't know anything about birds, but were fortunate enough to intrude on a group of birders (thank you Gail) who were able to identify the species. We also learned that it was a great surprise the nest was so out in the open and the birds were really relying on their ability to blend in rather then having a nest on safer, higher ground. According to the birders the young were between 2 and 4 weeks old.

After the short distraction it was time to get to down to business. Here is look at what we managed to accomplish with two days of hard work on plot Z-1:

Gail began weeding and outlining plots while the major cosmetic task was undertaken: I built and installed a new gate(above) for the plot using 1 in x 3 in x 8 ft boards and some wire mesh fencing.

With the gate installed Gail and I weeded and started to dig out our beds...

and we kept digging...

and digging!

Over the course of two days we got the gate built and installed, weeded the entire plot, as well as digging, amending with compost, and cultivating the soil in all six of our beds!

We even managed to do some planting:

The above photo shows our half rows of newly planted Mesclun Mix, Romaine, & Spinach. We also planted Beets, Onions, Carrots, and Cabbage. Along with the seed we were given the gift of leeks to plant, which we planted along side some volunteer plants Gail found while cleaning up the plot. I suspect they are pearl drop onions or something closely related (our volunteers are the healthier looking bunch on the left, the leeks are the smaller looking bunch closer to the fence):

After two days of hard work our plot is clean, weeded and starting to look like a garden:

All in all it was a fantastic way to spend my birthday weekend!