Special visitor day at Davies PAR

Hi Everyone,

HARVEST TODAY 10 lbs.        YTD 141 lbs.

Today was a good day to work in the garden with Susan, G.A., Jamie, Karen, Martha, Cathy, John, Mary Elizabeth, Janet and myself. Harvest was smallish but varied...radishes, leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, peas, herbs, strawberries and mustard. We had three large boxes of the beautiful lettuce. Cathy delivered the produce to the women's shelter. As you can see in the pic below, the lettuce is overflowing the block holes. I think we found the best place to plant leaf lettuce, as it seems to thrive there.

Several varieties of leaf lettuce alongside the potatoes.

We got another nice harvest of strawberries with almost 3 lbs. I am really encouraged by this since last year we had very few berries that weren't eaten by something. The Lacinato kale is still putting out even as it heats up. I've read that this is one of the more heat tolerant of the kales. We will certainly plant more of this in the fall. 

We sprayed some small beetle looking bugs on the potatoes, but then wondered if they were small lady bugs after seeing adult lady bugs later. I hope we didn't kill the good bugs!! John checked the kale and cabbage for worms but didn't see any. Mary Elizabeth had time to spray a portion of the cabbage after she noticed the dreaded white butterflies making rounds. We will finish this up Saturday.

 Red cabbage with white butterfly.

The tomatoes had grown quite a bit. The voles are consuming fewer each week as the roots get tougher and less appealing. One of the trellised cherry tomatoes was replaced with a yellow pear-shaped cherry. The peas planted in the in-ground beds are not doing as well as last year, but the ones in the raised bed are doing nicely. A few cabbage could have been harvested today, but we decided to give them one more week to get a little larger. From then on we ought to be able to harvest cabbage for the next several weeks.

'Alaska' peas harvested from the trellised raised bed.

A row of Jade greens were planted and sweet potatoes were put in the spinach bed. Jamie and G.A. put up the fences down the middle of the two onion beds, but we didn't have time to plant anything. One bed will be Minnesota Midget Cantaloupe and the other Bubba's Black Beans...these will be planted Saturday.

We obtained a colorful sign to display which tells visitors exactly what we do. We got this from the Plant a Row for the Hungry organization, and we are now 'official.'

Sign is at the front gate.

We had a group of Master Gardeners from Fayette County visit us at noon today. Janet and I gave them a tour of our garden explaining what we are doing this season but also what we've done in the past--successes and failures, organic pest control and fertilizers, crops that we have grown and things that we have learned. They were very interested and spent an hour in the garden. Before they left, the group toured the Manor House.

Fayette County Master Gardeners.

We were so happy to have the opportunity to meet and share with the Fayette County folks and that we were able to learn from each other. Every garden is different, and we are always eager to learn new things. Every gardener I've ever met loves to share....their produce and gardening tips.

'Til later,

Dianne