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.