The Peas, the garlic, the strawberries oh my! 

The 200' Garden is off to a great start! Thanks to all who helped plant the peas and garlic (Pat, Roberta, Laura, LuraLee, Ryan, Cedar, Hudson, and Noah). We picked up a few herbs from the BNAN perennial swap and also planted some unconventional veggies, aka fruit. The nice folks from 20 Webster (Nancy and Kim) have planted a plethora of goodies down at the south end and Bountiful Brookline has some chives and raspberries coming our way. Yvonne reports that the tomatoes are doing great! We'll plant those next on June 2nd... Hope to see you there! Simone & Jenny

Spring has sprung!

The 2012 Season is Officially Here

Welcome to the 2012 growing season for the 200’ Garden. The 200' garden this year is being coordinated by Simone Smith and Jenny Molina. Our FIRST GARDEN PLANTING (and prior weeding) will be taking place this Sunday, April 15th at 2 pm. Please feel free to bring your favorite garden gloves and trowels. 

We are excited to be coordinating the garden this year and look forward to seeing you there. As always, volunteering your time and/or ideas is always welcome.

A bit about this year's coordinators:

• My name is Simone and I am excited to be a part of the 200’ garden this year. We are new to Brookline and are recent neighbors to Pat and Tracy. My husband Ryan, and I moved here last September from Kitchener (Ontario, Canada) with our 2 boys (Cedar and Hudson). We have many years’ experience gardening in our 200’ backyard. Previously, our biggest challenges were the squirrels. The boys learned at a very young age to chase them out of the garden. But as soon as they started attending school, the squirrels took notice, and most of our seeds.
• My name is Jenny Molina and I am stoked to be a part of the 200’ garden this year. I have been involved with various farming initiatives through the Boston Natural Areas Network Master Urban Gardener (MUG) Program. Still, most of my gardening takes place in containers on my front porch. I am currently doing a Master’s in Urban Planning and my focus is on food systems and environmental health. I grew up close to Boston but I’ve been away for 8 years, busy seeing the world while playing soccer for Mexico.

p.s. If you’re missing Pat’s eloquent words, this summer you’ll find him at the Pen and Pepper Farm.

We look forward to meeting you on Sunday!

Looking for a New Garden Coordinator

Tracy and I are going to be farming a 1/4 acre incubator plot with the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project in Lowell this season.  As a result, we won't have the time to run the 200 Foot Garden this year.  We're actively searching for a new garden coordinator.  (Just to be clear--there's no pay--the whole garden operates on a volunteer basis.)

The coordinator would:

• decide what gets planted
• buy seeds/seedlings or arrange volunteers to grow seedlings
• lay out the planting plan (in terms of placement and timing)
• deal with fertility issues (order compost or get bagged fertilizer)
• set up planting and work days (for watering and weeding)
• communicate with volunteers for the planting and watering schedule
• oversee the signage
• update the blog  (VERY easy)
• communicate with the management company that owns the property.

This sounds like a lot, but it's not super complicated because the garden is small and quite self-contained.  In the past, we've ordered a couple yards of compost, but it might be all right without that this year, just put in some bags of composted manure.  The planting is usually done over only a few short sessions.  (Lots of hands make it go quickly.)   The signs are already up, though some will needed updating. 

The position doesn't require a huge amount of gardening experience--just someone who is energetic, organized, and a good people person.

Having done this for the past three years, I can say it's a tremendously rewarding project.  I'm going to miss it.  I've done a lot of work that generates public feedback (I'm a playwright for my day job), and I have to say this is one of the projects that comes with the most positive response.  Every day we work in the garden, people come up and tell us how grateful they are for the garden, not just for the vegetables to eat (though they do like to eat them), but also for its beauty and for the way it adds a bit of vitality to the neighborhood. 

If you're interested, I hope you'll send me an e-mail at pat@gabridge.com.  If you know someone who might be a good fit, I hope you'll pass along the info.

Thanks!

Garden to Bed

I was just looking at the blog and realized that I never posted that we did indeed put the garden to bed for the season.  Tracy, Hannah, Yvonne, Noah, Keff, and I all worked to pull up the last few plants, scoop up the leaves, and close up shop for the year.  We had a great season and very much appreciate all the help.

There are some big questions about the garden for next year.  I'll be in a farm training program in Lowell, MA, over the summer, growing a small 1/4 acre farm and selling to a cooperative CSA and at some farmer's markets.  So I'll be looking for someone else to take over management of the project.  With any luck, it will continue over this next season and for many years after that.

Winding Down (not quite)

We didn't have our regular Tuesday work day last night, because we just don't have enough daylight left at 6:30 anymore.  Plus, the fall is so busy with back to school, it's hard for anyone to find the time.  However, Keff and I did hit the garden yesterday around lunch time.  It was such a gorgeous day, I couldn't stand to be at my basement desk for one more minute.

This late in the season, we don't worry much about watering anymore.  Instead, we spent time weeding and pulling down the old cucumber vines and fallen leaves that are starting to collect.  The series of 40-degree nights we had a couple weeks ago put a definite end to most of the cucumber and watermelon action.  The tomatoes are actually doing better than I would have thought.  I did find a cucumber buried in the leaves, and it was still lovely.  Here's neighbor and 200 Foot Garden supporter, Pearl, with the cucumber.

Though we planted a lot more tomatoes this season, it seems like we never got to see many red ones on the vines.  I've gotten reports (from Pearl and others) that people have come to the garden to pick green tomatoes by the bag full.  I'm not entirely pleased about this.  Though the garden is meant for everyone, it's also meant for everyone to share.  And I really, really want to see red tomatoes on the vines.  I'd hoped that planting more tomatoes would make it so no one person would take too many.  (That said, the late season weather was also kind of weird for tomatoes.)  Maybe the solution is to plant more cherry tomatoes.  We tried putting up signs encouraging people to not pick the fruit until it was ripe, but I don't think it helped. 

The good news is that there are still some tomatoes on the vines, and some might ripen.  But I noticed about a week or two ago, that all the big fruit had been stripped from the vines in just one or two days.

The tomatillos are producing, but having a hard time due to damage from Hurricane Irene.  Still, I picked a couple pounds yesterday and plan to make some green salsa this weekend.

(Tomatillos.  The actual fruit is inside the paper shells.)




Being out at lunch gave us lots of chance to talk to passersby, who had many questions about tomatillos, peppers ("Did that big plant come from just one seed?").  For me, half the fun of this garden is getting to talk with people about the garden and how vegetables grow.

For now, we've got the garden cleaned up a little bit, so it looks nicer.  And we've still got a month left of veggies to harvest.  The greens--chard, collards, dinosaur kale, and mustard--are all still going strong.  There are peppers yet to come, along with a few tomatoes and tomatillos.

It even looks good

The other day, Keff and I were harvesting from the 200 Foot Garden, and he put together this basket from what we picked, to give to the folks who own and manage the property that we use, as a way of saying thanks (and to show them that we really do produce veggies from little speck of land).

Now the tatume squash are all about done, but cucumbers are still producing, and the tomatoes are teasing us.  There are hundreds of them, waiting to turn red.  We just need a little bit more patience.  (Though there are some ripe yellow perfection tomatoes in there, if you hunt a little.)  The Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes are turning red, but getting picked so fast, I almost never even see them orange.

The watermelon vines are longer than we've ever seen, but no fruit yet.  I don't know if we'll see any or not.  Maybe next year.

The basil and chard and kale seems to be getting picked regularly, which is good.  They like it.

harvesting and working (and those darn SVBs)

We lost yet another work day to thunderstorms last week, but Keff, Noah, and I did get some work time in on the garden on Wednesday.  We weeded, trimmed yellow leaves off tomatoes, cut off leaves with powdery mildew, tied up drooping tomato stems with twine.  I also discovered that our tatume squash have squash vine borers (SVBs), which are one of my least favorite pests.  The SVB moth lays her eggs on the young plants, and when they hatch, the larvae promptly burrow into the stems and grow there.  You can cut them out, but the cure often kills the plant anyway.  We lost about half our squash plants to SVBs.  We'll have to try harder next year to keep them away (it's not easy).

The good news is that we did manage to harvest a bunch of squash and cucumbers.

Here's a photo of the cukes:

The lemon cucumbers are simply fantastic--crisp and light.

The tomatoes are just starting to turn red this week, and I think this rain we're getting with both the tomatoes and the cucumbers (and keep people away from the tomatoes long enough to let more of them turn red).  I picked a lovely red tomato on Thursday from the garden, and it was delicious.  The tomatillos are also starting to set fruit--I love their little paper lantern husks.

Tomorrow is our regular Tuesday workday (maybe the storms won't rain us out), and we'll put up some new signs and keep tying up tomato plants to give them some more support as they sag from all the fruit.