Drying Fruit & Braiding Garlic

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here are some photos from August 7th, the day that the garlic was braided and the fruit was dehydrated.



To enlarge for fullscreen slideshow, just double click on the pictures, and then choose Full-Screen when you arrive at the web albums.

Brussel sprouts and other cabbage-family members are being moved into their beds.
Note the veggies that are ready for harvest, especially if you love Swiss Chard!

Lots to see and taste in the garden!

Best, Jen

a bed in the park .. tomatoes growing beautifully ..

calendula

i've been slightly remiss in writing about our bed in the park on a 'regular' basis .. however, in spite of this, life goes on .. and tomatoes continue to grow .. i decided that for this post, i will take a more visual approach .. so, here are the tomatoes, and a few companions, as they have grown over the summer ..

from this .. 

to this .. 

to this .. 

and to this .. 

there are many tomatoes forming .. some huge .. some smaller .. and some with ridges .. i think those are the 'polish paste' .. there are even a few beginning to ripen .. mmmm .. can hardly wait to finally pick them .. frank and i shared a small 'early girl' the other day .. she was lovely .. juicy and full of the tomato flavour that only a fresh picked tomato has to offer ..

shiny green plumpness appearing .. 

every two weeks i've fed the tomato plants with a mixture of fish fertilizer and morbloom .. seems to be working .. 

not only that, but the companion marigolds are hearty, vigorous souls that continue to brighten the bed of greens with splashes of yellows, reds, oranges ..

won't be long, though, until these beauties are accompanied by the red hues of ripening globes ..

and, even with being remiss in babbling about the step by step growth of our bed in the park, it doesn't matter, really .. everything just keeps moving along its merry way, to fruition ..

Sunday Aug. 7th garlic braiding

ATTENTION GARDENERS: Gardeners will meet this Sunday, Aug. 7 at 10:00am in the community garden. Lots to discuss and winter veggies to plant. Mike and Andria will be processing our garlic as well as demonstrating how to make a garlic braid.

Little Diggers meet at 10:30 and this week will learn about dehydrating fruits.
All are welcome.

Garden Tour Photos

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here are the photos I took from today's garden tour.
I didn't make it to all the gardens on the map, and I don't actually know the name of the plants in the photos, but WHAT a lovely colourful day!
The end of the tour was at the Community Garden, and finally the Harris garden. Update: Sorry to say that google discontinued Blogger photo albums in 2022.



Click on the above, and then choose FULL SCREEN.

At the very end are some photos from father's day a week ago. The Little Diggers made gift plants. Enjoy.

Note: Get your photos now please!
Oops, ha ha, oops:

I'm seriously running out of space to store photos online in these web albums, so please do download the ones you'd like to keep, thanks. I'll leave the following DIGS slideshows and photos up until, by request, Dec 30th 2011. Then I have to take all these older photos down to leave room for new ones. So please grab the photos you want to keep now. The older archived photos will be stored on DVD and copies will go to the DIGS society archive. (wherever that is, I'll find it :>)

So please use these links to previous garden-year slide shows, to jump to and download your favourite shots. Here are the direct download links below. Please help yourself - free. Lots of nice ones of the Little Diggers Days, and two years of very exciting veggie growing.

Slideshows and photos - Events, plantings, harvestings. Very nice to see how the community garden just grows and grows!!

All DIGS photos from this blog.

ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
Jim's Thankyou Day


Download your favourites today!

Thanks to everyone for the Dessert Auction, Solstice Celebration and Garden Tour.
Simply marvellous!
Best, Jen

Keyhole Permaculture

Dear Garden-lovers,
Cate pointed the way to information on this fascinating food-water project in Africa using keyhole gardens. It looks very do-able and fun, and if we islanders could figure out a raccoon and deer-proof design for our particularly greedy habitat of furry friends, it could be great for transforming a patch of flat lawn using the stones we find all over our properties.
It's interesting that the original pdf of African project instructions mention that such a raised bed needs to be replaced with new soil every five years if intensively productive.
Take a gander at the videos. Fascinating stuff.
Best, Jen
___________________


How to make a keyhole garden to prevent dry,cracked soil and heavy rain soil erosion in mountainous Africa: VIDEO

How to make a keyhole garden step by step:

Pilot Project in Africa:VIDEO
Key hole gardens in the mountains of Africa:




Original African plans and notes for keyholes in pdf.


More photos of completed gardens: keyhole and potato bags:

Keyholes in bloom in African garden
Keyhole & mandala shaped beds

a bed in the park .. planted ..

well .. i see the last time i wrote a post was late may .. now, it's late june and we planted our bed about three weeks ago ..

although there had been many ideas about what to plant in the bed in the park, we finally settled on tomatoes .. it seemed the most likely choice since we use lots, sauce lots and freeze lots .. and the sun that touches the community garden far surpasses anything that we get in our little garden beds in the back yard .. and so it was decided .. tomatoes it would be ..

after planting .. end of may ..

traditionally, the may 24th long weekend is the time to plant, but we've had such a different spring, with cool rainy weather that we waited a few extra days so we could plant the tomatoes into lovely, warm soil where they could just take hold and grow ..

about three weeks later ..

and now, twenty tomato plants are nicely nestled together in the bed .. tucked between them are basil and a few marigolds .. basil because it is a companion plant for tomatoes, and marigolds for the colour and repellent qualities .. ah, yes .. and a number of squash and watermelon volunteers from our home compost .. so many, in fact, that we've had to cull them so they won't take over the garden bed ..

renegade squash amongst the tomatoes

last week we staked the tomatoes and nipped the suckers that were starting to grown at the crotch between leaf and stalk .. pretty soon, i suspect, these lovely blossoms shown below will turn to lovely little green tomatoes .. of course, a little heat would be an asset ..

Garden Tour this SUNDAY! June 26!!

ATTENTION GARDENERS AND LITTLE DIGGERS:
There will be NO work party this Sunday, June 26th.
Instead we will be taking part in the Annual Garden Tour which starts and ends at the community garden.
Little Diggers are encouraged to join the adults and visit all the gardens on the tour.

Also:
Saturday June 25th is our fundraiser Dessert Auction and Solstice Celebration at the lighthouse. Sat. 6 pm - 10:30 pm Music, Fun and Food. Free! Just bring an appetizer to share or a dessert to auction. (see yummy dessert pictures below for more info.) See you there!

After the sugar-rush:
(click to enlarge)

Salad day - sprouting sprouts

Dear Garden Lovers,

Some photos from today's community gardening day:



(click on the photos to choose fullscreen for a big, sprouty slideshow.)
Happy days! Those matina lettuces are so fabulouso we can barely rave enough about them! And don't you just love those feisty sprouts!

And speaking of food and its relationship to our community garden, take a deep sugar scoop, and, I know it's difficult, since we all love vegetables so much, but cast your mind toward desserts!



D.I.G.S. has a dessert auction fundraiser coming up (drool, drool! whooop and holler! music and dancing! appetizers too!)

Here's the announcement from Marg:

COME TO THE DIGS FUNDRAISER
DESSERT AUCTION/SUMMER SOLSTICE PARTY
Where- The Lighthouse.
When- 6 pm - 10:30 pm, on Saturday June 25th

Join your friends and neighbours in celebrating the start of summer, and our culinary skills too!
Entry FREE with either an appetizer for the table
or a dessert for the silent auction.
Eat appetizers - bid on desserts.
Complimentary tea/coffee.
Friendly bartender, Live Music, 50/50 Draw
See you on the 25th!

---------------
Need a new dessert or appetizer recipe?

Desserts

Dessert recipes blog 1
Dessert recipes blog 2


Appetizers

Appetizer recipes 1
Appetizer recipes 2

All kinds of delish-looking food blogs with recipes.


Take a look at these great recipe sites (and send in some more good recipe sites if you have links too!).
You can leave recipes or links by clicking the word COMMENT just below here too.
Any hey, if anyone begs me to, I'll happily put my favourite "Hot chocolate pudding cake" which has the mysteriously very few ingredients, on top of which you float 2 cups of hot water, (I know; kooky!), and it turns into a cake-pudding combo!! Serve warm with cream. EEeeek!
Irresistable. Seriously. Chocolate cake AND pudding; together! Vunderbarrrr! :>D

Slide Show Thankyou!

Dear Diggers, both big and little,

Here is a slide show from three Sundays in the garden.
Update: 2022 Google discontinued photo albums in Blogger. Sorry.


If you want to make it full screen, just double click right on the photos.
That will take you to Picasa Web Albums, and you can click on the name of the album, and then the word: "Slideshow" - Full Screen - F11.
It really looks good full screen. Sorry about the number of steps. Doh!
And yes, I did saturate the colours, just a bit.
Love to bring out the bright colours in the rain.
The photos are from three consecutive Sundays, I think.
We had a plant sale, and bake sale, and it's so incredibly fun.

Okay, yes, the birds ate the peas as they sprouted again!
Eeek.
These birds, who crowd the creekbed just a few yards away are all travelling gourmet Californian health-food types. I can just tell.
They think our island is a spa-spot on their northward migration.
They probably like alfalfa sprouts too. And wheat grass.
Anyway, they took our peas, (again!).

Sigh.
Anyway, don't look at the peas. Just send prayer.
Or hey, tiny postage-stamp-sized prayer flags on little strings could be hung about the existing peas. Follow your own inner-guru on this one. :>)

On the other hand, go down to the garden this week (map below; click on it to make it bigger) and take a big tall look at the raspberries this year! (on the farthest left when you go in the front gate. Bed 11) Holy giant raspberries, batman!




Anyway, thanks to everyone, and that includes the gardeners who appear and disappear silently, like mist on a rainy day.
The garden is just so phantasmagorical, once again.
Thankyou to everyone who makes it so amazingly great.


(click on the above picture of Jim's award celebration to enlarge collage).

a bed in the park .. the last layer before planting ..

here's our bed in the park .. it looks pretty bare at the moment .. but not for long .. this is the big planting weekend/week coming up ..

frank went down the other day with two wheelbarrows full of compost from our yard .. he laid the compost on top of the existing leaves and seaweed that have been decomposing for the last few months, and then dug everything under .. now the bed is ready to accept our tomato plants .. we have 'polish paste' we grew from seed, two 'early girls' and three 'san marzana' plants that we bought at local garden sales, and five mystery tomatoes we acquired earlier in the year .. along with these, we'll plant basil and marigolds as companion plants ..

and then we watch .. and see what happens .. in no time at all this bed will be full to overflowing ..

May 22nd Sunday, Plants & Baked Goods at DIGS!

PLANT SWAP AND SALE
An extra bonus plant swap and bake sale will take place at 10am on Sunday May 22nd, at the community garden.

DIGS FUNDRAISER - 2nd time round -
PLANT SWAP/SALE and BAKE SALE
AT THE COMMUNITY GARDEN

Attention Gardeners: For those who missed our plant sale last Sunday we will have plants for sale this Sunday as well, May 22, starting at 10:00 am. We still have tomatoes, peppers, perennials and other vegetables for your garden. Some baking will also be for sale. In addition, we will still have our regular work party and the Little Diggers will meet at 10:30 to plant their "colour garden".See you there! Margaret Harris