Fall Fair Sept 16th & 17th!!

Digs Fall Fun Fair and Barn Dance


Plans for the upcoming DIGS Fall Fair (Sept. 16, 17 at the Beacon House) are well underway.

Eight experienced judges have agreed to judge the various categories. All the ribbons have been designed and printed. It's time now to think about your entries.

1. Visual Arts: - best painting/sketch - best photograph
2. Horticulture:-3 vegetables of same size and type - biggest zucchini - 3 fruits
-most unusual vegetable - mixed vase of garden flowers
3. Baking/Preserves: - best pie - best bread - best sweet loaf - best pickle - best jam/jelly/chutney
4. Wines: -best homemade white wine - best homemade red wine
5. Junior Category: - best scarecrow
6. Giant Onions: – single heaviest onion

You may enter as many categories as you wish. Each entry must be accompanied by a $1.00 fee and must be presented at the Beacon House Friday night (Sept. 16) or Saturday (Sept. 17) before 10 am. Judging will take place Saturday morning between 10 am and noon by a panel of highly qualified local judges and ribbons awarded in all categories. The doors of the Beacon House will be open to the general public to view all the entries at 12:00 noon (after the judges have finished evaluating the entries).

The exhibits will remain open Saturday afternoon for viewing by the public. Other activities will take place outside. Also at 12:00 several island vendors will be selling their wares on the back lawn of the Beacon House. Jim H. will be pressing apples and making juice on the back lawn as well. Bring a container and you can take home some fresh apple juice.

On the lower field Veronica, Josephine and Guy will be organizing different races for the kids – sack race, egg and spoon race and three legged race. Outdoor events will start at 2:00pm. On Saturday evening (7 pm)the fall fair “wraps up” with a “barn dance” in the Beacon House featuring a live band complete with a fiddler and a square dance caller. Entry fee is a plate of appetizers for the food table.


Dates:
Friday, Sept. 16 for submission of entries and Saturday, Sept.17 for the public to view entries (from 12:00 noon on), fun and games outside, apple pressing, local crafters selling their wares and a "barn dance" in the evening - all taking place at the Beacon House

As a finale there will be a Barn Dance on Saturday evening starting at 7 pm. (Yee-Haw!)
Admission is a plate of appetizers.
Dress is somewhat farmer-like.
Now is the time to start planning your entry so that you can join in the fun.
Good Luck!

What's up at Digs this week?

Dear Garden Lovers,

Just a quick look at "What's Up?" in the garden.


If you click on the slideshow you can get it to play full screen.

What a lovely place, even in the (welcome) rain! Enjoy!
P.S. Is it just me, or have we got some really good looking veggies?!
Jen

Aug.14th beach minerals

Here is a slide show from August 2010:



What we did today:

This Sunday, Aug.14th at Digs:

Little Diggeroos - Anne M. led the Little Diggers on a geological tour of the beach looking for and identifying various minerals. Totally excellentay!

Weird item of day - Yes, some birds can pierce right through bird-netting with their jet-propelled sharp long beaks. Reports of more birds zooming through like misiles, breaking into the netting, in order to eat berries. Don't doubt it; there have been a number of sightings/witnesses. :>)

Gardener's meet - At this morning's meeting we discussed possible new signage we might need to try and communicate to visitors which beds are NOT TO BE PICKED, because they are family allotments, and belong to the families who work on them

(ie: Please please don't pick family's tomatoes or little digger's giant-onion-contest onions please please!)

Vegetables and fruits that are for people to take will always be put out on the table outside the fence.

New to the Garden? If you need a tour to know where "tasting is encouraged" and where not to pick by accident, come down any Sunday at 10 am or meet with Jane afer 4:30 on M-W-F, and someone will be happy to give you a garden tour.

Harvested some of these today - Bush beans (green/yellow), carrots, (some had split from too much delicious water!) kohlrabi, cucumber, leeks, small onions, dill, and misc. lettuces.

Planted today - Cauliflour and cabbage transplanted into bed no. 1, and winter rye was planted (keep moist) in the x-garlic beds, which are now fallow.
The option still exists to put remay white cloth over the sprouting rye to stop the birds from whooping it up and having a party.....it's the best kind of bird-party-pooper choice, mayhaps. :>)

Other chores - Brussel sprouts got new, doubly attractive stakes, and were tied up to them; tomatoes received some small pruning, and kale and winter lettuce plants were potted up a size.

A fine day for gardening. Thanks to all who come out and get diggy!

Best, Jen

garden maintenance and harvesting ..

for any who are interested .. i will be at the garden monday, wednesday, and friday afternoons, from about 4:30 to 5:30-6:00 .. (just in time for dinner) .. if you would like to join me in maintaining the garden, and checking what's to harvest, please do ..

jane

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)