Yikes! Where does the time go?

June 27, 2011

Well, here we are facing the 4^th of July and, no, our crops aren’t knee high! This whirlwind of a month took me to Denver, Colorado, with a promise to the staff I would make time to update this blog, but, between conference meetings and visiting with my RT peers, I was pooped! Blame it on the lack of oxygen, but every time I sat down to write, I fell asleep.

So here it is, the last Monday of the month and I am making another promise. I will write a short blog every day this week to catch up before I take a nice, quiet “staycation”. During that week, I will send you a quick update about another gardening project we are taking on at home.

This week’s updates will be about:

·         Another method for “Topsy Turvey” growing

·         An update on our plantings

·         A little bit about square foot gardening

·         Why we made some significant changes to our plans

At home, the garden is growing well. The tomatoes are in bloom, the peppers have little about the diameter of a quarter and if the eggplants produce according to bloom, we will have plenty to share. One note of disappointment- after losing the “Battle of the Beans” to the neighborhood rabbits, my husband gave up and plowed down what was left. It was probably for the best, as what was left was a row of bare stems! Rascally rabbits!!!

KeyBank volunteers help RTCO Make a Difference

It finally quit raining! We are so glad that we are not even complaining about the extreme heat, or that fact that this is the second year in a row Ohio has decided to skip having any pleasant spring days and gone right from yucky, cold, wet days to yucky, hot, humid days. At least, we are not complaining much.

Rob Zelina, Pete Schmitt, Eleanor Scott and John Welcome from

 KeyBank

The best thing about the dryer weather so far, is that KeyBank employees, Rob Zelina, Pete Schmitt, Eleanor Scott and John Welcome, came to share their time and talents to build our first raised bed and install the pole for our hanging garden.

What is a raised bed? So glad you asked! Because we are building our garden in an industrial park, we need to amend the soil to avoid pollutants and make it is well balanced. We know the here is heavy clay and not very welcoming to our plants.  The Ohio Farm Bureau explains the need for testing soil in home gardens on an annual basis in this article http://ourohio.org/home-gardens/gardening-basics/year-round/all-the-dirt-on-soil/

We built this bed with cement block our property manager donated- many thanks to Don and his terrific staff!!  When the City Challenge team was here, they lugged about 80 blocks from the back to our complex to our warehouse and started digging the footer and leveling the bed.

Rob, Pete and John hit the ground and really made our first bed a reality. They put in the rest of the block and then dug the holes for the hanging tomato plants (more on this later) and for a small tabled bed that will demonstrate gardening for those unable to get down on their knees to work.

Eleanor prepared the hanging tomato plants in commercial “Topsy Turvy” planters our staff member, Alec brought in from home. This is a great alternative for those who don’t have much room for gardening, and it makes a fun family project. If Alec hadn’t donated the hangers, we would have created our own- here are some simple instructions for using 2 liter bottles http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/04/make-your-own-upside-down-tomato.html

P.s. Have to let you all know, I am feeling pretty proud of myself with this post- I got the photos where I actually wanted them, figured out how to add a caption and how to get the links to work! If you have any ideas, or suggestions, please send them my way. We are also looking for guest bloggers, so if you garden and have want to contribute, send me a note. Thanks!

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!