Old posts from SCCG

10/2/09
LOTS of beans to pick! Fall is DEFINITELY bean season. So next year, be sure to plant your green beans on Pioneer Day (July 24th) or very close to it!

8/19/09 The beans have come up BEAUTIFULLY!! Doing lots of thinning. . . that's better than having to replant!

8/16/09 Remind your son (or daughter) to WEAR GLOVES when shoveling 1.25 tons of compost out of the truck in the heat!! Blisters form very quickly!

8/10/09 Got another load of compost from the Washington County Landfill...the corn is going to LOVE it!!

The beans haven't done so well. We re-planted Slenderette Bush Beans, [53 day mat.] today without soaking them, so we'll see how they do. As we dug up the soil that had previously been planted, we didn't see ONE bean seed. I wonder if something ate them, or if they just dissolved into the soil. Weird!

8/3/09 The corn started coming up on Saturday...three days after planting. The Bodacious Corn in the three north beds has come up quicker than the Silver King in the three south beds. It will be interesting to see how both varieties perform. The beans are a bit slower. I noticed a couple of them had actually poked through this morning. Hopefully they'll take off now.

Sidenote: The Peanuts (the really bright green crop behind Celeste in some of the pictures) is really thriving in the heat! The plant itself is really a beautiful addition to the garden, even if it doesn't produce a thing. But the peanuts under the ground will be a BONUS!

7-29-09 Planted BODACIOUS CORN (75 day mat.), SILVER KING CORN (82 day mat.) and SLENDERETTE BUSH BEAN (63 day mat.) We pre-soaked and sprouted the seed, so it will take nearly two weeks off their maturation process. We should be picking beans mid-Sept, and corn by the end of Sept. PRE-SOAKING really speeds up the growing process!

-- we're getting ready to plant our fall corn. TRUST US, it works really well this time of year!! We'll soak the corn seeds for a couple of hours, then place them on wet paper towels for a day, then plant the barely sprouting seeds, 3 per hole, on July 27th...planting is usually done as close to July 24th as possible. We'll probably plant Silver Queen this year. It's a beautiful white kernel corn. AND Sweet!!

-- Second planting of Squash went in early June...we've cut the first new squash this week (July 12, 2009)

-- A knife makes short work of weeds that pop up in cracks of the sidewalk, as well as cutting off puncture burr weeds before they know what hit them! EASY!!

-- Planted Thompsen Seedless grape starts. Hopefully they will do well!! If not this year, we'll put them in earlier next year.

5-30-09 Consolidated two peanut beds into one since the germination was somewhat sporadic. Planted zucchini and yellow squash in the empty bed.

Pulled all the remaining peas and plants, then put on a layer of compost.

Squash bugs HAVE BEEN SIGHTED in the community garden, but only on the bed that we didn't use Sevin on as young plants. Hopefully the application put on around the base of the plants today will ward off a complete infiltration of the pests!!

5-26-09 Tilled our beautiful lettuce into the beds today. Too much heat has made the lettuce very bitter. Oh well, it was good while it lasted! We'll be prepping the bed for what we plant next...maybe another planting of squash, or wait 'til July when we put in corn...


5-25-09 Watering valves, turned on manually and forgotten for 18 hours, tends to create a POND where there used to be a garden. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise...the tomatoes don't seem worse for the wear.

5-9-09 Onions and carrots that look "ready to pick" by looking at their tops, aren't always the way they appear! Some of the first carrots we've pulled looked like aliens with five fingers rather than a main root! We'll work at making the soil better!!