Starlings

Just some starlings fighting over an apple this winter.  Thanks for stopping by!

Boone Gardens 2014

There are rumblings that seedlings will be started soon.  Stay tuned for more details.

Winter Blues

Thanks for stopping by!  We are almost in the dead of winter around here with about 3" of snow on top of the garden.  Since there is not a lot we can do right now I thought I would share a gardening video that I made with you to help pass some of those long winter nights away.  Enjoy!

Getting back to work!

Well the spring season has finally struck, and I'm ready to hope that no more cold nights lay ahead of us, so it's time to start laying everything out. Truth be told, there's a lot going on at the garden already: asparagus has come and been picked, lettuce thrives in the front boxes, kale and spinach have come and gone, and now we've got cabbage and onions going strong and a strawberry patch that will hopefully come back from the brink of a vicious (rabbit? / deer?) attack. And I just put in some potatoes tonight. Today was a good day because there are more people than ever before working hard to make the garden a better place. There's Linda who knows how to manage and plant the flowers around the borders of our veggie patches. There's Jim and Bill who are keeping the lawn at a military-grade crew cut--to boot, Jim has tilled us additional acreage this year and we're certain to have a bigger harvest than last year. Soon there will be corn, squash and beans to plant along with the ever growing parade of tomatoes. What's more is that we've seen lots of additional color around the garden this year, most recently with the addition of marigolds and yarrow. Furthermore, Val planted some lavender. Some have been asking which flowers are good to bring up and plant, and the easy answer is that any flowers will do. However, flowers like calendula, yarrow, marigolds, petunias, purple coneflowers and bronze fennel are all good bets because they bring in beneficial insects into the garden. Also, our garden has been invited to participate at a farmers / craft market in historic Rabbit Hash, KY this June. We can sell plant starts, any harvest, and any arts and crafts that anyone should wish to donate. If you have a creative idea for selling stuff at this even, please share your thoughts. We may be able to raise some significant money for future projects if we apply ourselves. Anyhow, I'm going to save anything else a later post, but in the meantime, it is my hope to bring some new voices to the blog if they'll contribute. Look for that soon! To tide you over, here is a recent picture of the garden and a tree that we planted in honor of Ruby Goderweis. There will be a ceremony to remember her at the garden on May 19th. We've got a bit of cleaning up to do before then! It should be fun!

Musings on the New Year

Greetings everyone! Even though it's only ten days into January and we've yet to have a hard snow, who can help but turn with a hopeful eye toward Spring with this unseasonable warm weather we've been having? I say take advantage of those extra rays of sun while we can!

I know at the start of every year, there's a lot of talk of resolutions. One of my resolutions is to stop treating the blogs I co-author like neglected stepchildren. This post, I say, is a small step in the right direction.

There hasn't been much going on up at the garden lately except continuing compost. Oh! I almost forgot! With the help of my dad, I planted a tree for the Boondocks Redhatters Society in memory of Ruby Goterwis, a resident of Boone Lake who passed away. The tree is a Sunset Red Maple, about twelve feet tall, and will ultimately reach 35' in height and span an area 35' in diameter. It is my sincere hope to lobby the community to put a bench out under that tree once it begins to spread out. One thing I hope to do this year is to put the "community" aspect back in the garden. I think the whole area is a social reclamation project waiting to happen.

Furthermore, I was elected President of Boone Lake Club this year by our board! Hopefully this will make it easier to get increased participation during the growing season.

Stay tuned for more blog posts! I've got a great one right around the corner for making seed starting containers that you can set outside and forget about!

Brian

New Management

Nathan here, and I would like to inform the lake community that I have moved away to the big city and will no longer be as active in the garden club.  I will still be around the lake from time to time but please refer all questions to Brian Maurer from here on out.  Please check back soon for updates!

So Sorry

We in the garden club would like to apologize for the extreme lack of posts here on the blog.  It is not that we are  lazy, far from it, just regular life has thrown some curves and things needed to be done outside of the garden project.  But, through it all, the garden has been producing and going through its natural life cycle.  The sunflowers have all been broken down and are composting, and the tomatoes will be ripped out of the ground today and hung up in a shed for ripening.  If you need any more tomatoes, please come stop by Brian's house anytime and there will be some available for at least the next week.  There is plenty of lettuce that is taking off near the front of the garden - if you take some scissors and a kroger bag up there just give the leaf lettuce a haircut and it will grow back twice as big for your salad next week.  There is also kale, carrots, and chard coming up - all super-foods that will increase your wellness and vitality. 

After a load of scrap is taken off, the garden club will be able to buy some plastic to cover the hoop houses that have been built for the fall/spring garden.  Then it will just be a matter of some clean up for the winter and preparing for a garden that we plan on being at least 3x as prosperous next year.  But, please, come on up and help harvest the fall greens that are coming up now; most is just going to waste from lack of harvest or the deer are getting to it before we can.  Again, we apologize for the lack of posts and hope to be more vigilant in the future.  Keep on growin' y'all...........

P.S.  NEW PAGE ALERT:  The Eco-Nati Radio Show page is up and running.  Why?  Because we are taking this gardening project to the airwaves starting in November!

P.P.S.  The Local NKY / Cincinnati Page is also in the process of being updated so check it out as well!

The Fall Dispatch

For the next letter in TOPICS:

Hey Boone Lake! The Boone Gardens Crew would like to extend a warm thanks to all those who helped make the spring and summer gardens such a succes this year. We truly couldn't have gotten by without so many great people pitching in their support, time, and contributions. You may have noticed the recent addition of a picnic table to the grounds. Consider the table an open invitation for anyone who wishes to come sit a spell and have a friendly chat!

Even though the summer season is at an end, that doesn't mean that the work is done. We are now working towards planting a fall harvest garden to be picked from September through November. The lettuce will be ready in about a week. Feel free to come and pick it! Any interested parties who would like to join our efforts in this fall garden are welcome to contact us through our website at http://boonegardens.blogspot.com. We will be planting chard, kale, winter greens, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts and a whole plethora of other stuff, so come by and check it out.

We also have a constant need for organic compost and mulch to build the soil for next year. We have built a few wire-bin composts around the garden so you can dump your vegetable trimmings or yard waste there at any time. Please also remember that while leaves make an excellent mulch and rebuild the soil, we need to keep them separated from other compost operations for the time being, until they are broken down. You can leave bags of leaves by the picnic table at any time. It helps if the leaves are chopped so they break down faster, but if you can't do that, we will! Your leaves and composted materials will be put to good use!

Also being put to good use are your aluminum can contributions. We will never stop collecting cans for the garden, and so far this year we have collected several batches of cans that have helped us buy things like the PVC pipes we will use to protect winter crops, the gas we use to mow the garden, and the seeds that we will plant for next spring. Please dump the cans in the “Al Can” by the garage up front or feel free to leave them by the picnic table up at the garden and we'll see to them ourselves.

Next year, we plan to offer individual plots to those in the BLC community who wish to grow their own vegetables or flowers. We will help you clear a space, we will give you the seeds, and we will help you grow what you want. All you have to do is show up with a willingness to get your hands a little dirty! There will also be a “you-pick-it” garden incorporated into next year's layout. If you would like to have a say in what happens at Boone Gardens, you are welcome to join the informal committee at any time. Just see Ty, Nathan, or Brian for additional details.

Thanks a lot, Boone Lake!

--The Boone Gardens Crew

A Modest Two Days' Harvest

Hey, everyone! Here's a picture of everything we've picked the last few days, minus what we've already thrown on pizzas or the basil we've turned into fresh pesto. In this picture, you will see cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash along with freshly picked Dragon (burgundy) and Scarlet Nantes (orange) carrots, red potatoes, and the first of the All-Blue potatoes we've picked from the four boxes up front! We got them from Seed Savers' Exchange. Did you know there are over 4,000 types of potatoes?

Garden Cooking

I got an email from a visitor that had helped out in the garden this past week which happened to include a picture and a recipe of what she had made from the produce picked straight out of the garden earlier that day!  So, if you are wondering what to do with all of that squash, zucchini and chard that is up there right now, take a look at the email recipe below, and feel free to email in your own creations as well:

Started with melting my butter, added diced onions until it smells good in the kitchen, then added the squash.  Let that brown a bit, while chopping the chard up in bite sized pieces.  I added that and let them saute, and added a clove of crushed garlic.  After I took it off the heat, I added just a smidge of balsamic vinaigrette to it and tossed it in and added a bit of pepper.  Muah.  Amazing.

Community Gardening

I was having a conversation about community gardening with the city commissioner of Frankfort (Sellus Wilder) last night and thought it a good idea to share a video he has on his website with all of you.  It has some great info about how a community garden helps with lowering energy cost / consumption as well as bringing folks together!

Interesting

I stumbled upon a very useful website today while looking up nutrition facts on a cucumber that I was munching on. The site, Nutrition and You .com, lets you look up almost every fruit and vegetable that you might be growing in your garden and gives you a rundown on the origin of the plant, its health benefits, a nutrition fact label, and cooking suggestions.  Did you know that raw cucumber has an established role in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients by limiting neuronal damage in their brain because of its high vitamin K content?  

Also, the summer squash (around the sunflower ring) and lettuce (in the tomato box) are coming in like wildfire and and needs to be harvested almost daily... so wander on up and pick you some!

Progress

The rain threatened all day, but it never ended up coming, and this provided us a perfect day for transplanting more veggies.  We put out about 25 new tomatoes into a patch we had tilled about a week ago.  Most of these tomatoes were clones that we had cut off our main plants and were now ready to go into the ground.  We had some very high quality mulch donated earlier today and it was put straight to good use protecting these new seedlings once in the ground.  They all got a lot of care going into the ground so I think they will all go to fruit at some point and we will have our fall crop tomatoes no problem.  Along with these tomatoes we planted a few more basil plants that had been hanging around waiting for a home, and one lone oregano plant.  I was very pleased with the clones that we had procured, they all had healthy roots and looked extremely healthy.  We worked pretty hard to make sure of this by keeping them watered and keeping them in partial shade during the afternoon hours. 

There are not too many seedlings left that need to get into the ground.  The goal is to get rid of all of the rest and consolidate the leftover dirt from dead plants in the next few days.  Its getting pretty late in the season for planting from early transplants anymore and we have done a descent job overall of getting things into the ground overall.  I know next year will be even more productive because we have had plenty of mistakes to learn from this year about seed starting and transplanting.  This is not bad thing at all, its all just part a giant learning experience / process that is ever evolving.  But, we still have the fall harvest season to look forward too which means it is time to plant more carrots, more lettuce and possibly more basil to bring indoors for the winter.  I want to plant even more basil next year for one main reason:  pesto.  

We  had plenty of visitors to the garden today which is always a welcome sight.  The more the better, exchanging ideas, picking veggies and enjoying the summer weather!  I hope to one day have a shade structure of some sort built up there for everyone to enjoy....along with an apple orchard / walnut trees for shade and more edibles. The place has so much potential it is unreal, I can't wait for the future. 

Milpa

We emptied quite a few packets of seeds up at the garden today.  Among the seeds we planted today were:  bird's nest gourds, KY wonder beans, scarlet runner beans, calypso beans, dragon's tongue beans, diva cucumbers, Cherokee trail of tears beans, golden wax beans, roam II green beans, yellow squash, and a couple of watermelons.  Most of these will be ready in 60-70 days, which puts the harvest dates right around the end of August and through September.  Everything was planted along with the corn to keep the three sister's method going strong.  I cannot wait to see how all of this comes up and how many pounds of produce we will actually will end up with.  The weather has been quite favorable and the plants are loving every second of it.

Outdoor planting is going to come to a screeching near halt here in a week or two....possibly three (with exception to planting leafy greens, carrots, fall crops) ... with the amount of frost free days declining more every day (I know it is only almost officially summer but that fall frost will come eventually!).  But this does not mean we do not have a big and beautiful harvest to look forward to in the coming months before summer is over.  The sunflowers seems to grow more and more every day - some varieties will reach over ten feet before they are though!  The lettuce is just waiting to be harvested by anyone who comes up with some scissors and a bowl.  There is lettuce in three separate beds all waiting to be eaten by anyone.  I have so much lettuce in my own garden that this lettuce will just end up going to compost if not eaten soon!

The weather forecast is great for the next week or so and the agenda has been roughly set as to what needs to be done next.  If anyone feels the need to get outdoors we could always use the help - everyone is always welcome and there is always something to do!

I would like to thank all of the people involved in this project. Unfortunately I will no longer be a part of the gardening club. My schedule has gotten to be to much and feel that I can turn it over to the others and it will be in good hands. This has been discussed in the past and we have worked towards this point. It's not that I'm gonna disappear but all questions and comments can now be given to Brian or Nathan. Thank you for everything once again and I hope that the garden prospers vibatiously.

Update

The three sister's method of gardening was put into practice in the garden yesterday.  This method involves the inter-cropping of corn, beans, and squash variety plants.  This method first originated in the Native American culture and has been applied in gardens around the globe since its discovery.    The corn is about knee high now, so it was time to plant the beans and the squash.  The beans end up using the stalks of corn for support and to vine around.  At the same time as they are climbing the stalk, they are injecting nitrogen back into the soil.  Beans are the perfect companion plant for corn, since the corn is sucking the nitrogen straight out of the soil, the beans can put it right back!  The squash or cucumbers or any type of plant like that, will create a ground cover holding more moisture in and keeping more bugs and weeds out.  We are not done with the whole corn field, but the process is in the works. 

Photos!

Please check out the photo page to see some new pics of the garden's progress!

.....and it looks like it is going to rain again finally in about two hours!

Lack of Posts

Hello to all of those who visit the Boone Gardens Blog!  We would like to apologize for the lack of posting in the past few weeks, but sometimes, while in the throws of planting and watering, it becomes a bit much to blog about it all while at the same time trying keeping it alive; (its a lot of work!).  But, be assured, progress is taking place, and eventually a more sustainable way of life through the production of our own food will be accomplished. 

A main staple crop of this garden has become the potato.  We are guesstimating that a total of 300lbs of potatoes will be produced by the end of the season.  We plan to store the potatoes by digging out holes in the ground big enough for five gallon buckets to rest in, covering the potatoes with straw, and closing them up for future use.  It is fair to say that whether the potato plant is in a tire or in a raised bed, they are doing equally as well as each other.  They have exploded with the recent wet weather which has made soil addition a top priority.  I have even seen the beginnings of flowers on one plant, which means fresh baby potatoes might only be a month away!  I do fear though the first drought of the year may be upon us this week, and water collection will become all the more important for the survival of every plant in the garden.

The sunflowers are starting to all come up and establish themselves throughout the tilled ring around the perimeter of the garden.  The sunflowers are separated by squash, watermelons. cucumbers, and pumpkins, which I believe will become a majestic sight to see in the coming months with the rolling vegetation creeping down the hillside.  I can only imagine what this will all be like to try and mow around later this summer.  It is going to be a wild, delicious mess! 

If you have stopped by the garden recently you  would have also noticed that the tomato box is finally starting to take off.  I was worried there for a bit that we would not get a good crop, but it seems that they are finally becoming established and we will have a wide array of heirlooms to choose from for canning and salsa purposes here in the next month or so.  If the tomatoes can grow fast enough, they can also provide some shade for the lettuce that was planted in the box along side of them.  There are also plenty of tomato transplants still up there just waiting for a home, if anyone is interested.....feel free to pick some up!

On the agenda for tomorrow is to get the first pepper box up to the garden (an 8x4 = 32 square feet of gardening space), collect and water the plants, scrap some metal and hopefully get some more bagged compost for the potatoes and the boxes.

Please visit this flickr account for 178 semi-recent photos of the garden!

The garden has been flourishing the past two weeks. It's hasn't been easy with the weather and the lack of bodies, but as always nature will press on and overcome. I hope the next few weeks will produce better weather and bring more people back up to the garden, and as always don't worry about those white legs! The only way to get a tan is to play outside!

Potato Boxes

The pile of scrap wood continues to diminish bit by bit with each new box we put together.  Today, under the protection of the trees from the continuing rain, we put together four more 4x4 boxes, as well as two 2x2 flower boxes.  The 4x4's boxes have already been placed on top of the four original potato boxes to form a second vertical level.  We will add in more soil and mulch once the potato plants have grown a bit more.  All we need now is our second layer of tires for the 11 we have already planted. 

A bird house was also made today, an eastern bluebird variety.  But, whatever bird gets there first, thats what type of house it will end up being, right?  This one birdhouse will be offered at our seedling give-away this Sunday, and if we feel ambitious, maybe a few more will be there as well!

Stay tuned for more rain and wet clothes......