a few stalwart souls ..

wish i'd taken my camera to the garden this morning .. it was pumpkin carving day .. and it was pouring down with rain .. i'd seen a notice on pro-isle that said 'rain or shine' there would be pumpkins to carve so i headed down to check it out ..

kevin and taryn were there by the time i arrived shortly after 10 .. the tent was up .. pumpkins and various pumpkin carving paraphernalia were on the tables .. the makings for hot chocolate were set up at the 'beverage window' of the shed .. all was ready and waiting .. to see .. who might brave the elements and come to carve pumpkins ..

and there were a few other stalwart souls who did .. first to come was maia (maya) on her bike .. shortly followed by chris, cora and brynn (sp?) .. cora said this particular experience .. of carving pumpkins in the rain .. was a first for her .. somehow zaya slipped in without my seeing her .. pretty soon krista, dexter, lola and ruby arrived .. the next time i looked julian and monique were sidled up to the carving table .. there was a delightful array of raingear .. and an equally delightful assortment of carvable pumpkins .. grown in the community garden .. not sure how many exactly .. but it looked like close to a dozen ..

i didn't stay too much longer .. it was, after all, pouring down with rain .. but those other stalwart souls stayed to create yet another pumpkiny face for hallowe'en ..

Saturday Oct. 20th & 27th

Attention Gardeners and Little Diggers

 There will be NO Little Diggers lesson this Saturday Oct. 20th (but everyone big and small is welcome to play, chat, dig, or hang around in the garden of course!)

Pumpkin Carving--last event off the season!

Saturday, October 27th at 10:30 am.(Note: this date is different from the one on the original schedule, which was in error)

Little diggers are reminded of this annual event at the community garden.
Jim can't be there, but he has arranged for the event to be carried on in his absence.
Parents of little diggers should come along to assist in carving.
Bring a container if you want to bring the seeds home for roasting.

There are about a dozen pumpkins, so if supply is short, we will limit one per family.
Feel free to bring along an extra pumpkin if you wish.

Special carving tools would help too, but spoons, marker pens and basic cutting tools will be made available.

Looking forward to seeing all the little diggers out for a great morning of fun.

Note: there is no little diggers session for Sat. Oct 20th.
Kevin.

Potatoes, Trees, Soups & Library

Dear garden and library loving islanders,
Here are some photos from the past two weekends:

- Little Diggers dismantle their potato tower and count their haul.
- Our new library opens at lighthouse (garden books are all moved there now.)
- Scenes from forestry day for little diggers.
- Soup recipes below for your harvest!

Enjoy!



To enlarge slideshow, click on photos above; choose fullscreen slideshow F11.

For those who have trouble viewing the slide show on the gardening blog, here's a direct link to the photos.

Harvesting information for this week: from the gardeners!

Tomatoes:

The last few dozen tomatoes are now being harvested at DIGS and elsewhere on the island.

To store over long periods and ripen gradually, place green tomatoes between layers of newspaper in cardboard box. Keep in cool room. Check for ripening as needed.

To ripen hastily: place in paper bag where ethylene gas from one ripening fruit (any kind) will ripen all tomatoes in the paper bag.

Kale:

New Kale plants doing well in our DIGS fall/winter garden.

Jane suggests:
Harvest outer leaves only (1-3 per plant, so only take one at a time) that are as large as your hand.
Leave others to ensure continuous supply.

Zucchini:

Gadzukes, zuke season is almost over; our straw bale plants were uprooted at DIGS today and their bales became well-composted soil.
If you're interested in trying out straw bale gardening in your yard, it works well for hot-root loving plants like squashes and pumpkins. Bales can be purchased for $20 delivered by contacting through our email group.
For baking or freezing you can grate and wring extra moisture out zucchini.
But try this new soup recipe below, and then freeze the finished soup!

_____________________
Harvest Soup Recipes:
_____________________

Tomato Soup (better than Campbell's, but it might be the cheese and butter!) ha! :

Take a mixture of golden and red tomatos, chop and put in saucepan.
Cook 30 minutes (doesn't need much cooking down at all) until soft.
Push through seive to remove skins and seeds.
Add milk and salt to taste.
The sweetness of the golden cherry tomatoes means you don't need any sugar or other ingredients.

Jen suggests:
pinch of dill weed
chunks of cheddar added at last minute so that they only slightly melt
big slathered buttered toast to dip into it (butter slides off into soup....ahhhhh).

More soup recipes from gardeners:
_________________
Coconut Curry Kale Soup

3 Ts olive oil or butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
1-4 garlic cloves (I probably didn't use that many)
5 pieces of ginger sliced or to taste
1 teaspoon yellow curry powder
1 C. chicken or vegetable stock
2 bunches kale, ribs removed, chopped
1 can Thai coconut milk
Salt and pepper

And you can puree it all at the end (says gardener who gave this recipe).

Then, if desired, you can add cooked chicken breasts cubed.
Vegetarians might enjoy added chickpeas!
__________________
Zucchini Soup

2 tablespoons butter
2 onions, chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
8 zucchinis, chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
4 cups chicken or veg broth
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup dry potato flakes or grated raw potato
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 tablespoons chopped fresh dill weed

Directions
1.In a large frying pan, melt butter; add onion and saute until translucent. Add diced potato, zucchini, thyme, rosemary, basil, and white pepper, and cook for 5 minutes.

2.In a medium-sized cooking pot, add broth and bring to boil. Add zucchini/potato mixture; reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes.

3.When cooked, puree in food processor or blender in batches. Return to cooking pot, add milk and bring just to boil, but do not boil. Add some salt to taste, or 1 Tbsp soy sauce and stir well.
Adjust seasoning. Garnish with dill weed. Soup may be served hot or chilled.
_________________________
More harvest veg recipes are certainly welcome! Just send 'em in by email and we'll keep them here on the blog for that vast amount of chard, pak choi, or whatnot, that you've got.

Best, Jen

Saturdays throughout Winter

ATTENTION GARDENERS AND LITTLE DIGGERS:

All are welcome to the DIGS garden each Saturday at 10 am for adults, and at 10:30 am for Little Diggers. (Note: No Little Diggers Oct. 6th.)

We often have coffee and cookies (YUM!) and we certainly don't work too hard. :>)
Come on by and have a laugh! Learn about lasagne and haybales!
We certainly do!

Best, Jen

Digs Fall Fair 2012

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here are some preparations for, and some scenes from the Fall Fair.
Enjoy!



(click on photos to enlarge, and play Full-Screen Slideshow, F11)

Best, Jen

.. experiments in winter salad gardening ..

well .. here's a couple of pictures of what the summer salad bed looked like a couple of weeks ago .. planning a year round salad bed has been a great learning curve for karen and me .. so far the bed has produced many salad bags throughout the late spring and summer months, and from all accounts people are pleased with the quality of produce that came from this lovely bed .. us, too .. although, i have to admit there is a part of me that is so looking forward to putting out five or ten times the amount of food onto ana's stand .. how wonderfull would that be .. ! ..

there was quite a bit of work done earlier on to make sure we would have salad throughout the summer .. and, for a first attempt at 'through the year' gardening, i think we've done pretty well up to this point .. although, that said, the lettuces are pretty much done for now .. we could have done at least one more plant/transplant of lettuces to keep going through the month of september .. so, live and learn .. we're already thinking of a different strategy for next summer ..

right now, though, we have our next flats of mesclun, spinach, lettuce (rouge d'hiver) and arugula growing in the greenhouse .. these ought to be ready for picking in the next week or so and the salad bags will start up again .. 

last saturday karen planted up the second succession of flats in the greenhouse .. there's quite a bit of thinking about how many flats will give us what we're looking for .. and how often these flats need to be planted to keep the harvest going through the winter months .. i daresay we'll be going through quite a few hundreds .. maybe thousands .. of seeds over the next months .. 

we also started fennel bulb seeds in the greenhouse again for transplanting outside later .. and cilantro .. which may live it's life in the greenhouse over the winter .. again, i think we could plant cilantro successively to see if it will grow throughout the winter months ..

out in salad bed #4 we have already planted peas .. little marvels which are doing very well went in three weeks ago .. and week before last mr big peas were planted, which are just starting to show themselves .. this time around they will be shelling peas .. so, here's hoping .. the peas we planted in the spring were a no show, basically .. don't know  why .. that's one of the things about gardening .. sometimes you just don't know the reasons why ..

two weeks ago we transplanted kale into one of the garden beds .. and then last week more kale was planted into a second bed .. that's a lot of kale .. it will be so great to have it, and the chard, to pick over the next while and into the spring .. there are purple sprouting broccolis planted in the salad garden, and in front of the apples .. brussel sprouts are growing beautifully for harvest later in the year .. maybe for christmas dinner .. 

this past saturday karen and i planted carrot seeds in this kale bed just to see what they might do .. they might disappear under the kales leaves, but there's nothing to lose by trying .. and, more lettuce seeds have been planted into the salad bed .. there's still lots more seeds to plant outside including spinach and asian veggies .. so, although we do have a bit of a wait until the next greens are ready, here's hoping that over the next few months we'll be able to continue eating fresh 'salad bags' from the garden .. 

keep your eyes on ana's stand! ..

Fall Fair Catagories

Fall Fair Catagories list is now archived. Just drop as an email here at the blog if you need to see it. Best, Jen

Now Saturdays at the Garden

ATTENTION GARDENERS AND LITTLE DIGGERS:

We gather in the DIGS garden on SATURDAYS now. Starting September, through to the late spring.
Saturdays at 10 am we talk and plan, then do stuff around the garden.
Coffee and baked goods seem to appear as if by magic.
It's so fun!

All are welcome!!



Post Fall-Fair Thankyou!:

Thanks to the fantastic musicans who played square dances for us on Sept. 15th at the lighthouse BARN DANCE! Yee haw! You guys are so good!! :>)




Best, Jen

Aug 12th, What's Up?

Dear Garden Lovers,

What's up on August 12th?


(to enlarge slidshow, click on photos and choose FULLSCREEN)

Today the Little Diggers toured around digging up things to eat.
Blueberries, Leeks, Zucchini,Swiss Chard, and some few first Tomatoes (very soon to be ripe enough) all good to eat now.

Garlic for DIGS members is in social shed in drying trays.
Take 3-5 heads of garlic each member.

New DIGS members also get to have garlic!
Fight vampires, make pesto! Join our community garden!! :>)
($10 per year or $15 whole family.)

Also: Tremendously inspiring Ted Talk on the Incredible Edible township gardening project. Check it out.

Also; Garlic Rust news from today's meeting:
Experts answer our questions:

- yes you can replant seeding garlic that has had rust. The spores are on the foliage but not on the bulbs.
- yes, rotate garlic beds (3 yr.) as usual.
- rust is caused by wind-bourne spores plus damp weather. It only overwinters if black spores are dropped onto soil.
- experts suggest that you plant widely spaced for better wind-drying in beds.
- rust affects all onion family members; basically stunts growth.
- when rust gets to the black spore stage foliage must be buried or burnt.

More on Garlic Rust (called Leek Rust in Europe).

Diluted Bleach for Secateur Sterilization at DIGS:

- there's now a glass jar of diluted 10:1 water/bleach solution in the social shed on fertilizer shelf upper left. It's for secateur dipping.
- It's suggested that we dip secateurs BEFORE we use them (in case last user forgot) and then AFTER cutting infected plants.
Plant infections we have currently: Septoria Leaf Spot on tomatoes; see pictures and more here. Garlic Rust on foliage of alliums.

_________________
What to plant now?
West Coast Seeds Newsletter says: mid August seeds to plant:

Plant spinach now for fall and spring harvest.

See all winter vegetables for overwintering.

maintenance at the community garden ..

hello, all .. i've been going to the garden on tuesday and thursday mornings to harvest salad bags with kathleen's help .. there are lots of other tasks that need to be done in that i have been methodically attending to on saturday mornings .. from time to time, two hands just aren't enough .. it would be great to have some assistance from any interested gardeners, or non gardeners .. there's lots we can do ..

i'll be down at the community garden on saturday morning about 9 a.m. .. the priority will be working with the tomatoes ..

thank you ..
jane

Incredible Edibles revisited

Dear Food Lovers,

Remember we posted on this blog about a town in England that grew free food for everyone?

Here's a great new video by one of the main gardeners on Ted Talks: youtube version of video.




Yes, it can be done and it can be wonderful!!!

Giving!!! Yay!

Best, Jen