Check out Suzi on The Patch!

http://bedford.patch.com/articles/garden-tour-and-expo-a-success#video-751207

Summer Harvest... Friday July 30th 6 – 8pm

What have you been harvesting this month? Come celebrate the early harvest of your garden, celebrate new friendships, and thank all of those who helped create the Marsh Sanctuary Community Garden.  We have extended an invitation to the Board of InterGenerate and the Rusticus Garden Club - all who have helped raise the funds to make this Community Garden come to life.  Enjoy a walk through our gardens and celebrate with us. 

Please bring a summer dish to share (4 – 6 people) and something to drink. If you have folding chairs and tables those would be helpful as well.  Biodegradable utensils, cups and paper goods will be supplied.   We will be meeting at the Garden where parking is limited so please consider car pooling. 

Garden Eyes Update 7-14-2010

Many vegies are ready to harvest.  Cukes, zucchini, some eggplants, lettuce, and greens are ready for picking.  The peppers and tomatoes are are growing rapidly and deserve careful watching.  If cukes and zucchs get too big, you can still use them, although you may want to slice them lengthwise and scrape out the large, tough, bitter seeds with a spoon before eating them.

This month’s “Garden Eyes,”  Jody B and Marion H, will periodically running through the garden and observing what is ready to be harvested in which plots, which plots are in need of tending etc.  You could also email Jody or Marion to let us know if you are away, that way, we can arrange for tending and harvests to be donated to the food pantry.

Basil, dill, greens, lettuces are also starting to flower.  Once these greens begin to flower, it begins to become bitter.  You can pinch the flowers off the basil and cut it back a bit, that way you can harvest it a bit longer.  Dill, lettuce, and greens should be harvested fully.

Jody B

Veg Out Success!

What a fantastic response we got from all of the visitor who saw the garden for the first time today on the Bedford Garden Clubs vegetable tour!  One excited visitor eloquently commented that "the good energy is palpable and the healthy crops speak for themselves!".

July- It’s all about Weed Control

Contributed by Jody Bortone, July’s “Garden Eyes”

 Source:

Bellinder, R.R., Kline, R.A., & Warholic, D.T. (n.d.).  Weed control for the home vegetable garden.  Cornell Cooperative Extension.

 Along with our beginning July harvest, come lots of weeds.  In addition to hoeing and hand        weeding, here are some tips to keep the weeds down:

·          Keep the perimeter of your garden weed free to prevent invasion into your plot.

·          Use mulch.  Some natural suggestions:

o   1” - 2” of grass clippings FREE of HERBESIDES, PESTESIDES, & FERTELIZER

o   4” – 6” salt hay or straw.  Water well before putting this down.

o   4 sheet thickness of newspaper, weighted down with rocks to prevent it from blowing all over the garden.

·           Successive planting; as soon as you harvest, plant another type of flower or vegetable.  Crowd out the weeds with plants you want to harvest or admire

·          Plant a grassy cover crop between rows and areas you are not going to re-plant.  Some suggestions include

o   Chewing fescue; Kentucky bluegrass, red fescue, tall fescue, dwarf white clover, wild white clover

·          Water only at the base of the plant—not leaves, ground, or between rows.  Water the plants you want to grow—not the weeds

See you in the garden!

Lets all get our plots ready...we're on the tour!

http://bedford.patch.com/articles/get-ready-to-get-your-veggie-on

Some watering tips to remember

It is not the leaves that need water, it is the plants roots. The leaves collect sunlight and can actually be damaged by watering during the middle of the day. The roots gather water and nutrients from the soil. It is a waste of water to "spray" plants because water evaporates quicker on the leaves, and water droplets take longer to get to the base of the plant and to the roots.

It is easier, takes less time, and uses less water to water just around the base of the plant so that the roots are getting the water. This is harder to do with a spray nozzle, so a "shower" nozzle is much better, or just an open-ended hose that can be placed at the bottom of the plant for a few seconds.

Doug

It's not too late to plant!

Up to mid-July sow chard, beets, peas, & bush bean seeds directly into the soil. 
You can also set out cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage plants that were started indoors back in May.  Make sure all these little plants are protected from the heat.
Looking forward to the first week of August, sow directly into the soil lettuce, radish, & spinach seeds.
Re-seeding is a great way to use the space vacated by your harvest, grow more food for longer and prevent converting that empty space into a weed patch. 
See you in the garden!
Jody B-with the hat :)

Summer Program at The Bedford Audubon

Tomorrow starts our second season of summer programming in the beautiful gardens at the ByLane Farm Bedford Audubon in Katonah.  We are still accepting both children and adults into the program which runs from 9-12 on Tuesdays in July.  It is a great opportunity to grow vegetables and new friendships in the garden.  For more information and registration forms please visit www.intergenerateny.org (click on the summer programs tab) or email me at beckysimkhai@aol.com

A few reminders...

Please keep the mulch path next to the fencing clear...gardeners need this section free of plants in order to get the hoses to their plots without injuring their neighbors garden.  This means no planting on the fence.  Also please remember to use only the front gate near the shed, the back gate does not have access steps and the hill is very steep and dangerous.

On behalf of all the InterGenerate members, we wish you all a very safe and fun 4th!

No water yet this morning

Again today gardeners are finding the tank empty in the morning.  With all the new plants going in we have been using more water than in days past.  As soon as the sun hits the solar panels the tank will begin to fill and we will again have water available (yesterday we had water by 10).  Unfortunately this is one of the downsides of having a solar system and a full garden, but we are working on solutions that will solve this issue.
Thanks for your patience in this matter!

Mulching the communal plots

We have almost completed planting our communal plots!  Salt hay has been placed by the gate...If you have extra time please mulch all communal plots.  We have 2 trays of tomatoes left over and no more room to plant them.  If anyone has room in their bed and would like to be a "foster family" for the plants, please feel free to take them (they are sitting in the shade near the compost pile).

Our MVP, Most Valuable Planter!

A huge thank you goes out to Danny who worked all day long getting our plants into the communal plots!

A great day for the communal plot!

What a perfect day we had for our communal plot planting party!  Thanks to the generous donations  from many local nurseries we were able to add hundreds of new plants to our communal plots.  We worked tirelessly for more than 10 hours and we still have dozens of plants to get in the ground.  New signs have been placed throughout the garden to identify which plots are now communal.  Back by Alberto's field we added 2 new plots of peppers.  We also planted hundreds of tomato plants, butternut squash, cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and lots of herbs.  If you have any extra time tomorrow to help, we still have more planting to do!
Several sprinklers were brought into the garden today...please feel free to use them to water the communal plots while you work in your own garden.
Thanks to all who have worked so hard over the past few days to get all the communal plots completed!

Late blight management Webinar from eOrganic on July 1st

Subject: eOrganic Updates: Reminder: Late blight management Webinar from eOrganic on July 1st

Late Blight Management on Organic Farms 2010
July 1, 2010 at 8 PM Eastern Time (7 PM Central, 6 PM Mountain, 5 PM Pacific)

Space is limited.

Click here to register
http://www.extension.org/article/28346

Late blight reached epidemic proportions on U.S. farms in 2009. Join eOrganic presenters Dr. Sally Miller of Ohio State University and Dr. Meg McGrath of Cornell University for a free Webinar to hear an update on late blight in 2010. Learn about the late blight disease cycle, how to scout and diagnose the disease, and how to manage late blight on organic farms.