On dogs

If you have ever visited the RTCO Warehouse, chances are you have met Lindy and Dot, our Canine Patrol Corps. Lindy is the lovely, long legged Standard Poodle, and Lieutenant of the Corps- and the brains of the outfit. Dot is her lovable sidekick and comic relief for the team. Dot is a tubby little rescue who thinks she is a long legged Standard Poodle. They sleep at my house and I am their personal chauffeur and valet.

What is the Canine Patrol Corps responsible for? Oh, well… the list is fairly short:

• Crumb cleanup in the kitchen and break room 
• Warehouse cat supervision (more about Maulie in her own post)
• Squirrel Patrol 
• Doorstop (Strategic Napping Patrol)

And, most recently, Dot took on the role of determining the soil moisture level in the garden at my house.

Last Sunday, my husband, Steve, challenged the weather and raced through tilling and planting our new, smaller garden plot. Earlier in the week we had lamented our old garden spot which was 14’ x 40’ and produced 100’s of bushels of produce in rich, loamy soil for over 20 years. We had tended and enriched it while our family and the sapling trees our neighbors all planted around it grew up. A couple of years ago, it didn’t produce nearly as well and when we stopped and thought about it, it was in part because our once sunny plot is now nearly all shade!

Dot  and Lindy on Squirrel Patrol

Since we are now empty nested, it made sense to start a new plot in a sunnier part of the yard and while we loved our big garden, we don’t need quite that much to care for any more. We are working on the soil in our new 14' x14' plot and it tilled up nice and loose this year. It looked healthy and happy Sunday evening, with all of our plants in. And then, of course, it rained. Lots. Lots and lots and lots of rain. Several inches of rain on our nice, loose soil.

And so, back to Dot’s new role of garden soil soup monitor. I was on one side of the garden when our neighbor, Bob, came over to take a gander at the havoc the rain played on our baby plants. He has a vested interest in our garden because we are his orange tomato source every summer.

Dot was on the other side of the garden. Dot likes Bob. Dot took the shortest route to get to Bob- straight through the garden. It was a good thing Dot had some momentum going, because Dot’s short legs were no match for our garden soil soup. She landed on all four smack dab in the center of the tomatoes and was instantly up to her brisket in mud. Immediate reaction- PANIC!!! You could see her limited intellect responding “Feet don’t fail me now”!!! According to the Dot Garden Soil Soup Monitor, we have good soil moisture- probably about 8 inches deep.

They met the CITY CHALLENGE!

Last Thursday, I stayed home to hide out and work on writing a grant- staying focused in the office can be a bit of a challenge for me, so I sometimes hide out! While I was out, some wonderful people showed up and started making our garden a reality.

They manned the tillers and dug in to lay out the first bed. This one is 4’x12’ and bordered with concrete stone donated by our property managers here at Warehouse Services. Thanks millions to Isaac, Aaron, Jay, Samantha, Grant, Ellie and Toby for their hard work.  

We will add new soil (Thanks to The City of Columbus and Franklin County Community Gardens Grant, In cooperation with the Foundation for Active Living of The Columbus Foundation and our friends at Scotts) and cross our fingers that we get just the right amount of sunshine and showers to get our seedlings off to the right start.

We are all really anxious to get to that ripe tomato.

What does our Garden Grow?

Lunchtime got a lot more interesting once we had a common mission for the garden. Once we established that money doesn’t grow in gardens, we got down to tacks and discussed strategies and goals. What would most home gardeners be interested in growing? Since we are getting a really late start, cold weather crops are out until next year, but you can expect greens, peas and radishes on next year’s list. For this year, we are focusing on basics:

·         Tomatoes of a number of varieties

·         Cucumbers

·         Eggplant (the staff really likes eggplant!)

·         Zucchini

·         Jalapeño peppers (thanks, Hank J)

·         Basil

·         Cilantro

·         Beans

We will be tracking our successes with various strains and invite your comments and suggestions

The Plan

With our mission in place, we started brainstorming our next steps. As eager, amateur gardeners ourselves, what would we want to learn from the tool library? It was easy from there. We would install a variety of simple home gardening ideas that should appeal to new and more experienced folks like us- who want to enjoy a home grown tomato and maybe have a few to put back for winter. Oh, and since it isn’t in the garden, we need to reclaim, barter or beg as many materials as possible!

Our garden will include:

·         Raised beds

·         Square bed gardening

·         A hanging garden feature

·         Rain barrels

·         Composting

So, with a plan in hand, we started working on gathering our stuff! Barrels, and pallets and tires, ohm my!! Our friend, Hank, brought over the tomato, pepper and basil plants. We have allof the garden staked out and the OUPs report came back giving us the OK to dig.

In the meantime, we wrote and received a grant from Scott’s through the Columbus Foundation and we are eager to hear what that will mean. With the help of Brian and Jesse, our intrepid Thursday team, we have accumulated the things gardens of built of. The guys are bringing a group of enthusiastic volunteers with them this Thursday to break ground and get us started.

Now- if only the weather will cooperate!

A garden?

So, it started like this. It was another cold and claustrophobic day in the warehouse. The staff had been working their tails off getting ready for our National Rebuild Day, scheduled for April 30. This always gives us cabin fever because we know the end of winter is within grasp. But this year, it didn’t seem to be in reach. Enter the rain--cold, grey, wet, cranky days on endless days of rain, following a cold, grey, seemingly endless winter.

What else would a group of eternal optimists dream about over lunch? Tomatoes. Perfect, sun warmed, juicy, red tomatoes, grown in our home gardens.  “Man, I cannot wait for a REAL tomato- this one tastes like sawdust.” “Well, I am going to have to have some more eggplants in mine this year. It’s my favorite.” “Hey, I’ll grow the zucchini this year, so no one else needs to- I’ll be more than glad to share!”  And on and on…

Pretty soon, David and Alec came into my office, grinning and obviously teaming up on something.  Could we have a garden at the warehouse? I felt like the mom being asked for a kitten—“please?? We’ll feed it and weed it and take good care of it-you won’t have to do anything!” Yeah, right. My daughter used that line for the last cat we adopted while she was at home, and ten years after she’s moved out, I am still feeding the cat.

My initial response was tentative. We do support and promote community gardening, so why not? Well- it wasn’t in the budget and it isn’t exactly our mission, so if they could present a strong enough case, AND figure out how to fund it, we would consider it. They would also need to get permission from our property manager and come up with a plan to sustain the garden for the future.

And so we begin…The RTCO Demonstration Garden has a mission to share economical, safe and healthy ideas for home gardeners. We will be sharing our efforts with our Tool Library friends and asking for their suggestions and support. We are all amateur home gardeners who love to get our hands dirty and we hope we will have some ideas of our own to share with you.

Keep an eye out here for our progress. Now we just need for the sun to stay shining!