August 1st What's Up?

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here is a fabulous slideshow of today's harvest and garlic braiding:


If you click on it, and then look on upper left to choose "full screen slideshow" you can have a HUGE photo experience.

Today at D.I.G.S. we did the following:

Herbs
- Little Diggers did Herbs and took home fresh and dried oregano.
- other herbs (lovage leaves for use as celery flavour) were trimmed and you're welcome to trim more.
- Personally I removed the giant bronze fennel, as I felt responsible for it. I'd planted it when it was tiny and now it had become The fennel that ate Japan.
Not only did it not produce a bulb at all, but it hogged the heck out of the herb garden and spread its happy bronzily healthy progeny all through the other beds. So I replaced it with basil. Whew.......that was CLOSE! :>)



Garlic
- the garlic had been hung to dry inside the "social shed" and M & A.G. kindly showed all how to trim, braid and store it. Wonderful garlic braids!
GORGEOUS garlic braids. Seriously, we should have more garlic braids!!

Note: gardeners seem to love garlic, and took five home each. Next year we might double the beds devoted to garlic. Thanks so much M and A, as we could not do it without your expertise!

Harvesting vegetables

The following were harvested:

kohlrabi, carrot, beet,zucchini, yellow cherry tomatoes, some giant onions

Important: Don't touch the biggest ones that are entered in the contest please! Don't even breathe on 'em....eek. Wowza, are they huge! What is M and A's secret do you think? Feeding them with goat's milk by the full moon?



Also available: whole cabbage heads, and do ignore the grey aphids. They wash right off and are totally organic. ;>)

Tasted
dillweed, blueberries and raspberries.

And see if you can recognize all the flowers and vegetables and fun structures in the above slideshow. You should find a potato tower or two and a sunflower house which will have a morning-glory roof soon.



Oh yes, and do please feel free to click on COMMENTS below and add more information. What did everyone else notice or want to comment on?
There was alot going on today, and I'd love to have more contributers add to this blog.
Oh yes....Please consider becoming a team member of this blog! Only takes an email to me or Marg, and you can post, edit, link and add articles to this blog too. Come on and get creative!
Or just add comments.

Mystery of the week: We're still looking for the name of the disease that attacked the peppers in the green house. We could call it gray-floppy pepper-butt, but it might have a more scientific name. All investigators and pepper-sherlockian dudes welcome. :>)



Best,
Jen

Asian Vegetable planning & planting

Dear Gardeners,
As you can see from previous posts with slide shows, our DIGS garden is doing just wonderfully.

Oh sure, there's a tiny stunted squash problem in bed no.1, but hey; we don't want to be all perfect or anything; we have to fail at Easy crops sometimes, just to keep ourselves from getting too proud....ha ha. :>D

Here's something to think about though, while we're being 95% successful, and want to plan for year round planting, what about those incredibly difficult nomenclatural greens called Asian Vegetables?
They grow well here on the coast, and were featured in this month's newsletter from WCS.
Check out the excerpt below.
Best,
Jen



For those interested in year round vegetable gardening, here is a good quality article from West Coast Seeds about planting Asian vegetables now, for fall and winter eating.

From this month's newsletter at: WestCoastSeeds

About Asian Vegetables

Don't let the names scare you off! These vegetables are tasty, nutritious, fast, and some of the easiest to grow. Use the young leaves raw in salads, or chopped into soups, or cook them as you would spinach - a quick steam will do it. Better yet, use them in stir-fries with a bit of minced garlic.

Not too long ago, most of the vegetables we think of as "Asian" seemed altogether foreign. Over the last decade, however, it became commonplace to see snow peas and pac choi on the shelves of even the chain supermarkets. As time passes, we'll probably begin to see pac choi's sister choi sum appear, a better selection of the Chinese cabbage known as sui choi, along with gai lan, and the mustards.

The leafy greens from Asia include many that are incredibly cold tolerant. They do not require warm soil to germinate, and some of them can even be grown in partial shade. With a simple cloche setup over the row or raised bed, a number of these vegetables will grow better than any others throughout winter. They grow well in a variety of soil conditions, too - just keep them watered and weeded, and your winter greens will do the rest.

For a new Western gardener, trying to get a handle on the world of Chinese and Asian vegetables can be a baffling ordeal. Is it pac choi, or bok choy? Worse, there is no standard reference to work from! Open ten books on the subject of Asian greens, and you'll find ten different spellings for each. Many differences between spoken Mandarin and spoken Cantonese, for instance, are tonal (just think of the different variations on one syllable: mha, ma, maa, mah). Chinese words are written in English by means of a system called romanization, and over the centuries, several systems of romanization have been used, including the Wade-Giles system, the Yale system, and the Hanyu Pinyin system -- which has been the standard since 1982. But each of these systems produced different results.


Here's a simplified guide to some of our favourites:

Amaranth: This plant is a close cousin of beets, quinoa, and spinach. There are masses of varieties of amaranth, and nearly all of them have edible leaves, but look for the Red Leaf type known as een choi (Amaranthus tricolor). Even as the plant matures, the new leaves are always tender and delicious, plus they contain more vitamins and minerals than beet greens! Amaranth makes a sensible alternative to spinach during the heat of summer, as it doesn't bolt like spinach does.

Gai Lan: The literal translation of gai lan is "mustard orchid," which speaks to the subtle mustard flavour of the leaves. Harvest the broccoli-like stalks with leaves and flower buds intact by cutting them at ground level. Quickly stir-fry some minced garlic in hot peanut oil, and then add a bunch of gai lan. Turn this quickly, and add a splash of oyster sauce and vegetable stock. By the time the leaves are wilted, it will be heated through and ready to serve with rice or noodles. Yum!

Sui Choi: Chinese cabbages (sometimes called Napa cabbage - as well as hakusai, michihili, wong bok, and pe tsai) grow like upright, barrel-shaped cabbages, with the same sweet/bitter taste and versatility in the kitchen. It's excellent raw or cooked, and it's packed with nutrients. The michihili types are tall, and the true napa types are squat. Plant some mid-summer for a very easy fall harvest.

Mustards: This is a really big, diverse group of plants, but it includes the inseparable pair mizuna and mibuna, Chinese mustard known as dai gai choi, the so-called spinach mustard tah tsai, and the incredible vegetable komatsuna. Mizuna has deeply-cut, feathery leaves, and mibuna has rounded, spoon-shaped leaves, but both are fast to germinate, fast to grow, and EASY. Both are tasty, with a very mild heat to them. For more heat, go for dai gai choi, which brings a wonderful background taste to mixed stir-fries. Tah tsai looks like very low growing rosettes of pac choi, with the same succulent, crunchy stems, but with a slightly stronger mustard flavour. Komatsuna is the Maserati of the vegetable world, maturing from seed in 40 days! It is tolerant of quite intense cold in winter, and it's drought tolerant and slow to bolt in summer. Both the red-leaf and green-leaf types can be harvested for baby greens only three weeks after planting, and both have a nice, mild taste.

Pac choi: This vegetable should be familiar to everyone - but it's available in many forms. Shanghai pac choi has green stems, Taiwan pac choi has wavy, lettuce-like leaves, and there are dwarf and giant versions, too. It can be picked as a baby vegetable, while it's still buttery-tender, or grown on for chunky, crunchy stems. Its high water content means that it is super succulent and mild in flavour.

Choi sum: This is the same species as pac choi, but bred for a different growth form. Instead of forming urn-like rosettes of leaves, choi sum grows a central stem with a few leaves up its length and a rapini-like cluster of flower buds at the top. Just before the buds open is the time to harvest whole plants cut at the ground. The stems are so succulent, you'll be eating them fresh in the garden, but they're wonderful stir-fried as well.

There are lots of other vegetables that arrived from the diverse cuisines of Asia, including daikon radishes, snow peas, kabocha squash, and soya beans, but the leafy greens listed above are ideal for cool-season growing in the spring and fall. Plant some this month and enjoy them right through the fall!

-----------end article

For 4 to 5 articles like this per month (including tomato varieties being tested, tasted, and written up) subscribe to West Coast Seed Newsletter here.

Another great article with photos is the one on how to tell male and female zucchini blossoms apart. Enjoy!

Best,
Jen

What's Up? July 11th

Dear Garden lovers,

What's up at the DIGS garden today?

If you double click on the photos below, and then choose full screen slide show on upper left you can make the photos bigger!



Activities today:

Huge thanks to those DIGS members who transplanted all the fall-winter brassicas from seed flats to cell-packs. (sorry not to be more helpful, but I actually sat on an old garden chair yesterday and it went KABLOOM, and I, guess what, hurt my sit-bones!) But huge huge thanks to our greenhouse crew.
The baby brassicas are now on an open bed in their new flats.

Garlic was harvested and hung to dry in the social shed. The scent was fabulous!

Click on his picture to make it larger to see garlic close up:



Various other early vegetables were harvested, for example:

Harvestable today:

Carrots, Kholrabi, Beets, Garlic, Lettuce, Peas, Raspberries, few Strawberries.
Please continue to eat lettuce before it bolts!

Recipes for Kohlrabi include:
- treating it like a carrot or celery stick (raw, with salt, or with dips, dressing)
- slicing it like a radish or grating like carrot for a salad or kohlrabi coleslaw
- saute-ing or steaming, then cream-saucing it or cheesing it like a scalloped potato
- add to stir-fry at end like water chestnuts
- more kohlrabi recipes
- even more kohlrabi recipes
Little Diggers:

The Little Diggers built bird houses and hung them up and also built a bird bath with hanging drip fountain - please go see this in the DIGS garden near the roses. This is fabulouso!!
Carrots were tasted, and sunflowers were measured. What a beautiful day!


Pests seen today:

Yucky prolific and furry grey Aphids (use water sprayed hard on them to knock them off) and Onion Root Maggot. Some quick research on organic controls for onion maggot suggests:

- clean out all onion plants each time you harvest; don't leave onion debris in soil.
- use diatomaceous earth around plants (I have an enormous container of this, myself, so just ask if the garden needs it.)
- interplant radish between onion rows and let the maggot infest the radish (which it prefers) and then discard the ruined radishes.
- use row covers
- avoid replanting onions in same bed for several years.

More suggestions for ridding ourselves of root maggots welcome.

See horrificly close-up (ick! :>) pest photos above in the slide show, and please call our Ladybug (yes there's only one so far, and even SHE is missing) back home so she can continue to munch on aphids as she was doing up until yesterday on the tall Lovage plant in the herb bed.

Best, Jen

whimsy, individuality & gloriousness

Dear Garden-lovers,

Photos of the garden tour now taken down.
Let me know if you need to see 'em.

A huge thankyou to all who grew, helped and were both organized and whimsical. Such beauty!
Plus; what is that fantastic recipe for pecan chocolate chip brown sugar bars???
Those were scrumptious!!

Best, Jen

What's Up? June 20th 2010

Dear Gardeners,

Just a few new pictures in slide show form (if you click right on the photos, you can make the slide show FULL SCREEN, which is way exciting!)


This week in the garden we did the following:

- had to admit that peas were definitely experiencing diabolical pea trouble, and that, except for the snow peas, which are doing GREAT, we may have to move on without tears. :*>) (okay, one tear)

- fertilized with "Raingrow" which is an organic compost-tea product as some plants were a bit yellow (mostly celery). This product is currently out of stock and I can't seem to locate an alternative source, so if anyone knows anything about obtaining more, let us know.

- this leads to the question: Should we use granular organic fertilizer as a top dressing? let's talk about this next week.

- we transplanted chard, beets, basil, parsley, and planted more runner beans.
- we harvested spinach, lettuce, garlic scapes,and radishes.
- the Little Diggers finished their excellent planters (photos anyone?)

- we weeded til the cows came home (actually they didn't come home....so if you hear mooo-ing from out in the boat basin, let us know. hahahhaa). It seems that using tons of mulch means later doing massive weeding of every volunteer seed we ever wanted to re-compost. Sigh..... well at least it keeps us all chatting together over tiny seedlings.

- watered everything well, had coffee, chatted up a storm, and looked around in wonder.

And that was Sunday morning.
If you can think of any task you did that didn't get listed here, go ahead and add it by clicking on the comment button.

But WOW, looks great! Thanks to all our gardeners!!
Best,
Jen

Virtual Tour of DIGS June 7th

Dear Gardeners,

For a close up view of what's going on in each bed of the garden, have a good look on our virtual tour.
Here's the full screen slideshow.(click to embiggen)

And just so you don't trip over any hoses or gardening hoes, here's a map of everthing that's planted so far, followed by collage photos of the whole garden!



For the slower, more languid Virtual Tour there are some collages below. The viewer is starting at the right side of the garden, where you start to look at beds 1-3 where some chrysanthemums have been potted up from slips and are waiting for the next plant sale. If you click on this collage, it will be big enough for taking a closer look at everything in the photo: (use back button to come back here.)



Next, in the center right of the community beds (just near the potato tower) are beds 4-6:



Next, in the center left of the garden, as you have your back to the road, the community garden beds 7-8: Click to embiggen, use back button to return here.



And the very very exciting beds 9 and 10 (lettuce ready for tasting in bed 11):


Now I'm not sure what we call those little half-beds that are just under the left hand trellis with its lovely climbing rose and clematis, but for today, let's call them 12a and b. Here they are along with some other main features that you may like to see:



And I always admire the fabulous diversity of the family allotments.
So interesting!! The greenhouse is also shown; full of peppers. Yum. Peppers. :>)



Other news this week:

Time to plant seeds for crops that will go in July-August for cool fall and winter brassicas and greens.

Baby transplants that bolt, may have been root-bound in cell-pack. Next year we may have to be planting more transplants per Sunday so to keep transplants from root-bound-dom.

Seeding through mulch or top dressing may cause uneven germination. So on heavily lasagned or mulched beds, best to move mulch aside to set in transplants only.

Come have a look at the REAL garden when it stops raining.
It will take your tiny breath away!

Best, Jen

What's Up? June 1st 2010

Dear Gardeners,
Hi, Jen here. My gosh.....thank you EVERYONE who helped with the plant swap, bake sale (Yum YUM!) and all the spring work in the garden. The garden raised a nice sum for tools and education.



I was able to dash out once or twice with my camera.
Here's a wonderful slide show of "What's Up?" for June 1st. You can make the slides full-screen if you want. They are taken in the community garden and around the island over the past two weekends:



If you click right on the above pictures, you can watch the slideshow in large size too. Take a peek into the greenhouse to see tomatoes and peppers! Fun!

I was away for six weeks doing concerts (note spouse in dress-coat in slideshow above; shocker!) Meanwhile fabulous things happened, everything turned green and grew, and tireless volunteers brought the DIGS garden to life AND provided baked goods for the plant swap and bake sale! Huge success, have a look:



1. The lettuce grew into full heads of red and green leaf butter lettuce. Outer leaves can now be eaten! Seeing onions and lettuce growing fully beneathe the raspberry plants is a wonderful sight.





2. The snow peas took off and grew tall in the Community garden, but the spotty germination of the regular pea seed might mean quiet pea failure. Yikes. Was it a pea-seed storage mishap? Or did the birds steal each one as it sprouted (I did notice, as did other gardeners, there was heavy Robin activity in the sprouting pea-seed area of the garden; almost an eating frenzy for four weeks. Hmmmm. ) Or is it simply that pea seed packets may have gotten damp over the winter?
Doh. What happened? Do comment. Oh well; we can't be all perfect like peas-in-pod...we might have to live with this smalll round green lesson. Eek. Easy to grow my FOOT!



3. The tireless DIGS volunteers have done an amazing job planting spinach, beets,lettuce, onions, leeks, carrots and transplanting peppers and kohlrabi (sorry I still can't spell that last one.) How gorgeous! I can't tell you how grateful I am that everyone makes such magical things happen.

4. The apple trees (heritage Protection Island vintage trees grafted to create new baby vintage trees) are growing strong, and being trained to espalier, on their dwarf root stock at the back of the garden. Thanks so much Jim for this brilliant project (back fence right behind new kholrabi.) What strong little fellows they look!

5. Both potato towers are planted now, and we're trying to beat our record of 55 lbs from last year per tower.



6. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries all growing strongly as well. The birds have found our garden, so here comes some berry netting in the next little while.
We'll try and pick a little lettuce first in the raspberry bed, and then put on the netting when the berries start to appear, I guess.



7. The island is as green as can be thanks to two weeks of grey, rainy weather. The creek from the duck pond is running, the waterlilies are just finishing their yellow spherical flowering. Wild lily seed pods are visible just on the north side of the bridge.







8. Volunteer flower seeds of calendula and cosmos have sprung up in our much-mulched community garden beds (1-11) in between the lettuce and spinach. How co-operative is that? :>) See slide show at top.

9. Squash vertical supports are in place in bed no. 1 ready for the weather to warmup to plant squash vines! This will be cool! Can't wait to take time-lapse pictures (if possible.) I suppose that UNDERNEATHE the vertical trellis that one could plant lettuce that will enjoy the shade?



10. The garlic is HUGE! Is it a different kind from last year? Or did the soil change and the mulch additions really boost it? What's the secret success? Anyone hazzard a guess?




11. There are herbs to snip and freeze, if you need curly parsley (bed no. 10 in pots), sage, fennel fronds, oregano, etc. Look in the herb bed front left and snip away! If you want to know what to do with these herbs by the handful, try this recipe for chimichurri sauce (for meat, fish, salads.)

12. The carrot germination (covered with white "remay" cloth back fence left) is terrific! Compare and contrast with open bed carrot sprouting. Maybe the constant drizzle was really what the carrot seed enjoyed most. Note: the remay cloth prevents carrot fly that lays eggs on young carrots and eats them as they grow; to be avoided by suppressing the carrot's scent so that the fly doesn't find it. (Note: I learn alot from the Little Diggers!)

Thank you everyone for a beautiful public garden. Wow. I'm almost speechless (but not type-less.)



Oh, and do please please comment using the comment button below.
And do please add corrections to the above ramblin' blather, as I am a novice gardener for sure. :>) I know nothink. :>)
Though when the sun comes out, I do feel summer is really coming now!
And greens to eat! (though no one eats too many collards as we can see from how huge they are now!)
Best and do join in and talk about the garden,
Jen

P.S. I just found a very good article on what seeds to plant now for transplanting for fall and winter crops in July. Plant these asian greens and cabbages now for later transplants....etc. SEE ARTICLE.

The Community Garden was a busy place this past Sunday as many islanders came looking for plants or baking to buy or to watch the Little Diggers plant their sunflower bed. The event was a huge success. Thanks to all who participated in some way.

Sunday, May 16 at the Garden

This past Sunday Little Diggers were busy building a potato tower. Big Diggers were also busy building a potato tower as well as planting beets and carrots.

Sunday, May 9 at the Garden in the Park.

Sunday, May 9 was a busy day at the Garden in the Park. Big Diggers were making signs, planting spinach and peas, leeks and onions. Little Diggers were learning how to plant carrots (purple and orange) and potted up a dahlia flower for their moms for Mothers' Day.

Garden news from Marg & Jim

ATTENTION GARDENERS: We will meet this Sunday, May 9 at 10:00 am in the garden. This week we will prepare beds, do some planting and build signs. All are welcome.

The LITTLE DIGGERS lesson starts promptly at 10:30 am. This week's lesson is
"Carrots and Mom".

Also for DIGS members,
I am looking for help for two upcoming DIGS events.

The Plant Sale and Social is on Sunday, May 23 from 10 – 12 at the DIGS garden.



Note that this year a bake sale will be held at the garden as well as a plant swap/sale.



If you could donate some baking for this and/or help with setting up and selling could you please let me know.
Also, DIGS is planning another Summer Solstice Dessert Auction and Musical Evening at the Beacon House, Saturday June 19. This fundraiser will be a joint venture with the House to House concert committee.
If you are interested in helping with this event could you let me know.



Membership:Don’t forget to renew your DIGS membership for 2010. I am at the community garden most Sundays during the work party session( 10 am – 12 pm) and will have the new membership forms with me.
The cost is the same as previous years - $10 for singles or $15 for families.

Discounts: Your 2010 membership card will get you discounts at the local garden nurseries. Happy Gardening!