May 25, 2008 Part 2

We are starting to notice some real change at the Sumner Community Garden. Many people's plots are greening up nicely (mine excluded but thats a story for another day) and the grass is growing into the paths. I'm not sure the latter is all that desirable, and am keeping the pathways alongside my plots relatively grass free.

After recently requesting another 6 x 12 plot (for my maters, y'all) we were assigned #48...

...and suddenly finding myself with something to do besides weeding and watering I threw myself into the task with my usual reckless abandon. After mixing a bale of compost into the soil along with a couple of gallons of homemade organic fertilizer (Steve Solomon's book) I planted 9 Romas, 3 Yellow Pear, and 3 Cherry tomato, all seedlings as opposed to seed seeing as how the summers here are neither long nor hot and bringing the fruit to a ripe harvest can be difficult. I went with a majority of cooking tomatoes in hopes of harvesting enough to can some sauce for the winter, thereby avoiding the use of Ragu, etc.

After getting everything planted I gathered the hose in order to water and found it had sprung a leak significant enough to warrant the purchase of a replacement so off to Fred Meyer I went. After a half hour or more I was back and spraying a soft shower of water over my newly transplanted vines. About this time the sun was setting so I called it a day and headed home to fire up the grill.

Fresh Alaskan Salmon was calling my name. "Yoo-hoooooo!"

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

May 25, 2008

Here are the minutes from the Sumner Community Garden Dessert Social and Meeting of the Gardening Minds, as promised. The location of the other garden has been purposely munged in a attempt to keep it secret from would be vandals, chicken thieves, and Wile E. Coyotes (carnivorum lowselfesteemus).

Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 8:05 PM
Subject: Garden Social Mtng. Minutes
The first Garden Social was a great success! Thanks to all who attended and brought their desserts and ideas. Below is a summary of some of the issues covered in no particular order of importance.

The Master Gardeners hot line is # 253-798-7170. They are available from 9am-3pm to answer any and all of your gardening questions.

The shed will be cleaned out and available for gardeners to keep their tools and such. It is on the 'list of things to do' so it will likely be a couple weeks. Thanks Bruce.

Randy will be giving tours of the community corn, potato, bean, and pumpkin patches at the other community garden site (by the cemetery).
The first tour will be Wed. May 28th at 7pm
The second tour will be Sat. May 31st at 10am.
The site is located next to the someplace (over by that other place)
Randy will meet anyone who is unfamiliar with the area in the parking lot of a store you aren't familiar with fifteen minutes prior to both tours. Then you can follow him to the site.

Randy and Don talked about the different community crops that are being prepared.
Beans, Peas, Potato's, Corn, and Pumpkins. It was decided that if you were interested in taking some of the harvest of these crops that you would offer an hour or so of time per month to taking care of them IE: watering, weeding, stringing etc... Many people have shown an interest so it should be fun. If more time is needed to meet their growing needs, we'll let you know. I will send out periodic e-mails regarding different tasks that need to be done at different times. Thank you to Don, Eileen, and Randy for all of their time in setting up these garden crops.

I ran into a couple of gardeners who were uncertain about our pesticide/herbicide guidelines. I thank them for their questions because it let me know that perhaps we had not made it clear in our guidelines. So, clarification... NO PESTICIDES OR HERBICIDES!! We are an organic community garden. Other community gardens have said this is a real make or break issue as it directly impacts all gardeners. If you need help with some organic suggestions ask our Master Gardeners, they have all kinds of ideas.

A wish list was presented and added to: Wheel Barrow (Cindi offered one) , Picnic Table (Lori is working on that) Bench, Tools (Jim had some extras) Lost and Found box (Cindi), Short Hose, Hose Guides (Kathy is checking out Craig's List) Herb Garden (Bette has volunteered to plant one) THANK YOU ALL!! If anyone else can help, let me know.

Liquid fence was suggested as a way to deter rabbits.

It was suggested that we give extra harvest to The Sumner Food Bank!! Fabulous Idea!

Winter gardening was discussed. It was agreed that winter crops were fine to grow and that we would revisit cover crops at a later meeting.

And we can't forget THE GREAT CHICKEN DEBATE OF 2008!!
Randy brought up the idea of keeping some chickens at one of the garden sites for their eggs. After much debate several people did sign up to be on the 'Chicken Team' to discuss the issue further. If you are interested, contact Randy. We will keep you updated.

The Great Chicken Debate of 2008! Now thats some funny stuff.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

May 22, 2008

Ok boys and girls, I'm gonna do a bit of rambling here so try to keep up.

This Sumner Community Garden thing has turned out to be far more than I had ever understood it to be. I must admit that I imagined this as being little more than a city having some unused land and deciding to make a few dollars by renting plots out so those of the gardening ilk could spend a summer digging in the dirt and producing small batches of fresh veggies for their own families. I had heard rumblings through emails about sharing extra with each other etc. You know, if I have an abundance of beans and my neighbor has extra zuchinni we would naturally help each other out and stuff. Then on another occasion I spoke with Answer Man and he mentioned something about another field where they were doing some gardening, but I thought little of it and went about my business in my tiny little gardening world over at Plot 68.

Then came The Meeting. The big Sumner Community Garden Dessert Social Meeting of the Gardening Minds.


All I can say is wow. Turns out this thing is much much larger in scope than I had ever imagined. Answer Man (leaning on the table in the back of the picture)turns out to be a Sumner City Councilman with a vision. A vision of an ever growing group of gardeners coming together to produce not only vegetables for themselves and their families but for the community as a whole. Turns out the "other field" is actually really a pasture of sorts which Answer Man and his team of answer men are busily transforming into something of a community farm where the idea is to have large plantings of vegetables which would not be sensible or convenient as small garden crops. Rows and rows or corn, potatoes, pole beans, pumpkins, and I don't even know what else, have been or are soon to be planted. Concrete reinforced bean poles are being constructed to be placed in the proper locations at the ends of said rows. Hopes were voiced that we may end up with 3000 ears of corn or more. We might end up with 100 lbs of potatoes per person. Halloween and Thanksgiving pumpkins might come from our own patch. I can only imagine the numbers of peas and beans we may have on our hands as the summer progresses, and the only requirement for participating in this grand harvest is that one participates in the work beforehand. Hell, there is even talk of building a coop and buying chicks and beginning the production of our own organic egg supply. All we would do, says Answer Man, is decide how many eggs we would want a week and buy the proper number of chicks, then help in the caretaking, etc. There was an objection (based moral grounds) to the raising of chickens in this fashion, and this visibly raised Answer Man's hackles. The body language at this point in the meeting was unmistakeable, and I'm telling you now that Answer Man is not going to be deterred on this point. He is hell bent on having fresh organic cruelty free eggs every morning for breakfast and I would put my money on there being a coop full of cackling hens before the month of June has passed.

I AM IN!

An email containing the minutes from the Sumner Community Garden Dessert Social and Meeting of the Gardening Minds has been promised and I will post them as soon as I have them in my possession.

Also, the "Steering Commitee" (thats Answer man and his band of Merry answer men) has decided to open the gardens up for year long gardening. Plot #68 is mine not just for the summer but for as long as I care to keep it. I may now plant winter crops or just a cover crop, if I so desire.

This is so cool.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

May 18, 2008

Made my daily irrigation visit to the garden today. Its been a pretty good week. Just look...

My taters are poking through...


Beets are up...


Carrots have made their first appearance...


Spinach too...


And the peas.


The radishes are looking healthy. That a confidence booster.


And with a view like this...


...who can complain?

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

Saturday May 10, 2008

After a week of chomping at the bit and feeling content to satisfy my need to work in the garden with evening watering visits, I am excited to report that Saturday finally arrived along with my opportunity to finish planting.

Finally!

And as I dropped my first man-burro load of gardening tools onto the path alongside Plot 68 and started to turn for my trip back for a second load I noticed something different in my 288 sq ft rectangle of clumpy brown dirt. I was sure I had seen a small drip of color against that overwhelmingly large backdrop of brown, but where? Oh hey! Over there in Radish Territory is something....green. Holy crap! Grabbing my camera and diving headlong into the dirt adjacent to my newly spotted strip of verde, I was incredibly proud to learn....it had actually worked! If you place tiny seeds from little paper packages a half inch below the surface of the earth then water them....they grow.And now, my radishes had sprouted and my life as a successful gardener had quite possibly begun.

Suddenly feeling invigorated and filled with a new sense of purpose I grabbed my hoe and started working the soil in other parts of the garden. The weather was cooperating. The sky was overcast and the temperature was in the low 60's so the work required few instances of pose striking, and daydreams of ice water were almost entirely non existent. There were few people at the community garden today so everything was reasonably quiet. Having turned on the Ipod at a low volume I was able to listen to the low murmer of other gardeners discussing the planting of their own vegetables while enjoying the redneck sounds of The Flatlanders as well as the lilting strains of alternative country's angelic Kimmie Rhodes. So there I was, working my hoe through the earth and listening to music backed by the muted scratch thwack scratch thwack of my garden implement percussion section, and after about 30 minutes or so of this, I am happy to say, gardening made an incredible transformation from being a frustrating pain in the ass to being an incredibly relaxing and fullfilling way to spend an afternoon. With every pull of the hoe I felt rewarded as the dry gray top layer of dirt was replaced by the moist dark earth below, and what I figured to be a 30 minute attack on a small piece of the garden soon became hours of satisfying communion with Mother Nature herself. After marking out a section for my Blue Lake Pole Beans at the NW corner of the garden I grabbed my hoe and started working. I added a cup of organic fertilizer to the soil and began turning it over with the primary goal of finishing as soon as possible, but as I went along I really began to enjoy myself and before long I had worked myself into some sort of a zone. In fact, I was startled more than once by one of the neighbor gardeners as he walked by on his way to and from his plot. I was focused. After I don't know how long I was able to deem the pole bean territory as ready for planting and I unfolded and placed my premade collpsible bamboo teepee in the center of of my newly prepped square of moist brown soil. The teepee has three sides so I hoed a shallow furrow along the base of each of these sides and unhurriedly layed my seeds along the bottom and covered them lovingly with dirt.

Next I prepped another section and created Summer Squash Territory and then moved along to create both Cucumber Land and Potato Nation. I hade not brought enough fertilizer from the car and made repeated trips back in order to get more, but even these long walks across the Sumner Community Pea Patch became welcome and relaxing events in my day. I was having some sort of a gardening zen thing happening and I was loving it, and before I knew what had happened 3 and a half hours had passed and my garden was planted. Only one problem came to mind as I stood and proudly viewed my handiwork. There were no tomatoes. Not a single plant. What had I done? Tomatoes were my main focus when beginning this project, and now, as I experienced my zen moment gardening epiphany, I had forgotten to save room. Oh damn.

I'm gonna need another plot.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

Sunday May 4, 2008

Today was different. Beautiful day. Blue sky. Short pants weather to be sure and I, as well as the Smeltzer family, decided to make the best of it. The peat moss was still loaded in the van after yesterday's washout so I headed down to scenic Sumner with my bale, my seeds and my various implements of garden construction to make an afternoon of possibly creating something worthwhile.

Upon arrival, no one was in sight and I lugged all my gardening crap out to the lower forty, otherwise known as Plot 68, in relative silence. As I headed back to the van for my second load I ran into the Smeltzers as they loaded each others arms as well as the arms of their children with their own implements and crap. I was pretty happy to find them there since I don't know what the hell I'm doing and need others to help toss ideas around.

Back at plot 68 I opened my bag of peat and spread it evenly as I could over the garden and with the vim, vigor and determination of a 20 year old I began turning the soil with my shovel in earnest. Again and again I dug up shovel fulls of dirt only to dump it right back on the ground and move over a step to do it again. I worked. I sweated. I grunted and complained. I told everyone within earshot how I was too old for this stuff. I struck poses and once again dreamed of kiddie pools full of water. Before I knew it I had turned approximately 36 square feet of garden earth and as I turned, leaning on my shovel of course, to survey the remaining 252 square feet, Mrs. Smeltzer spoke,

"Hey. There's Answer Man over by the rototiller. Maybe he could till your plot again."

Well, that was enough for me. Dropping my shovel, I headed over to Answer Man and the rototiller at what must have been nearly a full sprint, and between gasps I asked him if he was planning on starting it up.

"Yup", answered Answer Man (because answers are what he's all about) "Do you want your garden tilled one more time?"

Now, I'm assuming he asked me this question in an effort of some sort to teach me to be an answer man myself, so in my most authoritative and confident voice I replied,

"Please? Would you mind?"

I guess I failed the answer man pop quiz seeing as how I answered with a question. No matter. I have all summer to learn this skill. I'll get it eventually. Answer Man did have pity on me, however, and after a bit of rope tugging and choke adjusting and rope tugging and whatever engaging and more rope tugging along with some gas pouring we were able to get that damned tiller going and good ol' Answer Man steered it to plot 68 where he did a bang up and mighty fine job of tilling the rest of that peat into the soil...


...and within minutes I was ready to begin planting some seeds.

Now during all this Mr. and Mrs. Smeltzer had added lime and fertilizer to their soil, Mr. Smeltzer had then divided his garden into four even sections by raking or hoeing a big cross through the middle of the plot, and Mrs. smeltzer and her two boys, Matthew and Jeremy, had begun the planting. Boy, things were moving along quite nicely over there.



Now do you remember me mentioning my new best friend at Agri-Shop? Well, she sold me this lovely cast iron dealy with a spike connected to the end of some twine. At the other end of this twine is another spike, but with a wide section in the middle for rolling up the twine. The idea is to stick the first spike in the ground where you want the end of your planting row to be, then unrolling the twine from the other spike, carry it to the spot you want the other end of your row and stick it into the ground. If this is done correctly you then have a beautiful guide to follow when hoeing out a place for your seeds. It was as I was studiously following these directions that Mr. Smeltzer dubbed me "the anal retentive gardener". I suppose this may be true, (though I highly doubt it) but at least my rows are straight.

Anyway...half the garden is now planted. Nearest to you in the picture, starting from the right I planted radishes, spinach, carrots, two kids of beets and brocolli. On the far side I planted both green peas and sugar snap peas.

Now screw the rest, Mr. Self Starter. I'll get it next week.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

Saturday May 3,2008

Went by the garden this afternoon to work on turning that bale of peat moss into the soil in order to loosen up some of the clay. Funny thing, though, about springtime in the northwest: occasionally, it rains. The downpour today was sudden and unexpected, and as I pulled into the parking lot with the windshield wipers on high speed I was still considering working. As I saw our neighbors Mr and Mrs Smeltzer and their two sons come sloshing around the corner of the shed, soaked to the proverbial bone, I changed my mind.

Went home.


--It's Fosco, Dammit!

5/02/2008

As you recall from my last post, an email was sent out asking us to sign up for rototiller time on Saturday, the third. After juggling my schedule a bit I was able to get to the garden and sign up for an hour with the tiller. I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to add a bale of peat moss to the soil.

Today I heard it through the email grapevine that Answer Man had actually taken it upon himself (possibly with a certain neighbors friendly encouragement) to rototill my garden again for me, along with the garden of Mr. and Mrs. Smeltzer. Now while I was actually quite glad to learn of this development, I also realized my plans to loosen up the clay in my plot had been thwarted.

Drat!

The email follows....and it appears there's a gardeners social coming up. what's more, dessert will be involved.

Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 5:27 PM
Subject: Garden info. and update
Hello All,

The steering committee met last night and this is what came up.

There was a plan for people to use a rototiller on Saturday if they wanted to do their own plots. But Randy and Don have graciously done most every body's plot already and plan to finish up this weekend. (These guys don't sit idly very well...lucky us)!

This Saturday we will be selling lime to add to your soil for a dollar a scoop. Our master gardeners suggest that each 6x12 plot use one scoop to enhance their soil. (We'll provide the scooper). Your choice but it will be there if you want it.

Our Master Gardeners will be at the garden on Sat. May 17th to offer one-on-one help to those who would like a few questions answered. ie: How should I plant this? When should I plant this? How deep should I plant this? It looks like we have about an even split between really experienced gardeners and first timers at the garden. So feel free to ask around.

A few people have offered to share extra seeds, seedlings, small plants that they have. We thought we would try making Saturday 'Share Day'! If you've got something to share put it by the bulletin board with a little sign. We're hoping to get a little bench or a secure box at some point but in the meantime... improvise!! This might be a good idea as harvesting starts for people to give away extra zuchs and such too!

The water is up and running...pardon the pun. Bruce, our friendly neighborhood church liaison, plot staker, and get things done guy, just wants to remind folks to turn off the water when you're done. The spigot is located at the back of the church.

Finally, we're planning an 'All Garden Members (that's you) Social / Idea Exchange" on
Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm. It will be at blah blah blah Church so you can just pop on in after checking your new sprouts. We'd like to just check in with everyone and get some feedback, share ideas, and eat some dessert!! Speaking of which BRING A DESSERT TO SHARE!! A package of oreo's or homemade apple pie would be equally welcome. Bring the kids, they love dessert! Mark your calendars now!!

I think that's it!
Thanks, Denise

I did get a chance to swing by this evening to check out my now twice tilled garden. I still have plans to go by on Saturday and add that bale of peat moss, but the amount of work involved has suddenly grown exponentially. The soil, however, does appear as though it will be a bit more cooperative this next time around.

But it still looks like dirt.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!