Garnergrows's Blog

I’m hoping we generated some interest in the garden with the flyers and seeds we handed out tonight at the Town of Garner Trick-or-Treat the Trails event. Next time we will put the email address on them!

So how do you learn more about  Garner Grows? Just shoot me an email and I will add you to our email list. I send out reminders before our workdays. For most of the year we meet for a couple of hours on Thursday evenings and a longer workday on Saturday mornings. During late fall and winter, we only meet on Saturday mornings at 10 am. If it rains or is too cold, I’ll send an email letting people know if the workday is cancelled.

So there is an annual fee of $20 and we ask that you work at least 4 hours a month. Send me an email: mtubilleja@gmail.com for more information.

Hope to see you in the garden!

Maggie

When we ask ourselves what we need most at Garner Grows, the answer always seems to be the same. We need more bodies. More people who enter the garden for the first time and say “I want to see this whole thing planted,” as one new member did not long ago. Right now, our membership families are carrying too much of the burden and too much of the garden lies fallow.

So the next obvious question is “How do we get more people?” There is the necessity of getting the word out, but with added emphasis on getting the word out to the right people.

So let’s carry over a dialog into the comments and brainstorm some ways to increase membership. Events? Distributing flyers and business cards? Joining Chamber of Commerce? A weekly farmstand? What other organization in the community can we enlist to help spread the word? Talk to us, gardeners!

By the way, we now have a Twitter account for you to follow: @garnergrows

We can’t seem to get into the garden long enough to make a dent in the lo-o-ong list of spring tasks, things that need to get done before the heat comes (almost 90 degrees in April is frightening). Before the rain chased us away this afternoon, we did get carrots planted and cleared another bed of weeds. The chance of rain tomorrow and Friday is even greater, so it will be another soggy Saturday, but hopefully we can accomplish some of the non-sowing items on the list.

See you in the garden (I hope!)

Welcome back, Garner Growers!

We’ll have the first workday of the year this Saturday, beginning at 10am. Looking at the week’s weather forecast I expect it to be soggy, so don’t wear the new white sneakers you bought to celebrate the arrival of spring. If it is too wet, we may not be able to plant, but there is plenty of other work to be done.

Here’s what I have on my list:

- spread pine shavings over the mud in the chicken pen. We let that go a little too long.

- smother more weeds with newspaper, cardboard, and mulch (if you have any newspaper or cardboard you’d like to donate to the cause, please bring it!)

- cover the corn patch to solarize weeds and prevent new ones from growing

- clean out the storage side of the chicken coop – mice made a mess with feed and egg carton Styrofoam (bonus points if you knew Styrofoam was a trademark and has to be capitalized –  I didn’t!) Kristen has caught the mice, but I guess we need to assess what containers for food would prevent a similar invasion in the future.

- if we have enough muscle, I’d like to move the chicken tractor to a spot on our future flower garden site and throw as many chickens as we can catch in there to start cleaning and fertilizing that site.

- I have wooden letters for kids to paint to label our vegetable beds so that if I can’t make a workday in the future, I can write on the white board ‘Weed Row C’ and it will magically happen in my absence.

- I’d love to get someone to measure the beds and create a new garden template to track what we plant. I’ll bring grid paper.

- William is itching to turn the compost. He had that look last night.

Please send me an email if you have any suggestions for the list.

If we can plant, I have onion and leek seedlings that need to go in the ground. I started some cabbage seedlings. We can plant those or let them grow for another week. We need to replant the lettuce bed with new seed to fill in the holes. I have a few herbs we can plant – cilantro and fennel at least, although they don’t make good companions and shouldn’t be planted near each other.

If you can’t make it Saturday, we’ll be out again Tuesday afternoon at 5pm. Good news: we won’t have to water either time!

Hope to see you in the garden…

We got a few requests at the Dig In on Saturday to link to our presentation on starting community gardens. A few minutes of research on the web and I am a smarter person able to do this!

http://bit.ly/xhAjcQ

Many thanks for your positive feedback! 

As we wrap up our second year at the garden, we want to pause for a moment in appreciation of our members and our community supporters. Many thanks to Hudson’s Hardware, Chik-fil-A (for our green pickle buckets!), Carolina Yard Barns, Aversboro Coffee (for coffee grounds!), the Little Herb House (great place to buy herb plants!) and Dr. Raynor for his generous donation of land and water.

Here’s what we grew this year:
snow peas, corn, scarlet runner beans, watermelon, eggplant, onions, carrots, oregano, pumpkins, thyme, patty pan squash, zucchini, strawberries, blueberries, sweet peppers, basil, hot peppers, Swiss chard, sunflowers, leeks, mustard, spinach, lettuce, dill, and nasturtiums.

As always, what we need most are bodies in the garden, eager to work and enthusiastic about growing food and community. We would love to see you in the garden!

While we continue to experience both successes and challenges, we look forward to beginning our third year supporting and promoting local agriculture in the great Town of Garner.

Hello, Garner Growers
 
We are looking forward to getting back in the garden tomorrow morning after being rained out (or mudded out) for the last two workdays. The usual start time is 9am, but I know I won’t be there until 10 due to an 8:15 soccer game. Can you believe that? 8:15 on a Saturday morning to watch 9 year olds run around a soccer field! This is the time of year that we usually change back to 10am anyway, although I wasn’t planning to make the change until next week. Anyway, if you want to come at 9, feel free. If you get there before I do, I’d suggest weeding the herb garden, picking corn, or if you’re not squemish, squashing corn rootworms on the mustard which is the large leafy stuff that’s in either the second or third row from the front  (the adult corn rootworms  – AKA spotted cucumber beetle – are beetles that look a little like yellow and black lady bugs but are more oval than round).
 
There is lots of good stuff – fruits of our labors! – ready to pick: the peppers are looking loads better than they had been, radishes, mustard, chard, carrots, watermelon, corn, squash, mizuna that needs thinning so we should all take home some baby greens to add to our salads next week. We should check the herbs, too. I haven’t walked down that far this week. You’ll see mushrooms, but don’t eat those!
 
I think some of this year’s chickens have begun laying so the rest shouldn’t be too far behind. Our two little chicks are getting bigger and fluffier. If you are going into the chicken pens, be aware that the two little roosters aren’t as afraid of us as we might want them to be. Let them know you are bigger than they are — and we’ll boot them from the flock before they get much more mature.

 
Hope to see you in the garden!

If you are interested in joining a community garden and are in the vicinity of Garner, NC

WE WOULD LOVE TO HAVE YOU!!!

Contact Maggie at mtubilleja@gmail.com for more information.