The Battle Goes On...

We have harvested and eaten some beautiful, colorful salads. The above photo was taken last month. The salads are fresh and flavorful. And harvesting the vegetables is a fun activity.

In other news, the gopher is still eluding us. The rodent mind must be far more clever than I give it credit for. My mistake! I have fired our Ag Assistant several times now. But I keep re-hiring him back.

The latest attempt will be to surround the garden bed with a 1 1/2 foot trench, then sink in chicken wire. Gophers dig their feeding tunnels about 6-12 inches below the surface, but we are going to take the precaution of going deeper. For more information about gophers, see the UCCE Pest Note below. Their burrows may be almost 6 feet deep, so my hope is we will either exclude or trap him inside.
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7433.html

The project has been about half eaten so far, with complete annihilation of the broccoli, green cabbage, cauliflower and half of the Brussels sprouts and purple cabbage. So far the lettuce and carrots are safe, (excuse me while I go knock on wood) and only a few spinach and Swiss chard are missing. Hopefully there will be some colorful carrots to harvest, as I did plant yellow, purple, red and white.

This has definitely been a good exercise in how to deal with pests in a garden setting. I feel I will have plenty of advice for home and school gardeners that deal with sparrows and gophers!

Another Nemesis?

Photo by Jack Kelly Clark

Just when I thought the garden was doing well, happy the bird situation seemed under control...that was when tragedy struck. Sure, I had noticed a few gopher mounds back in June. But when he/she seemed to be ignoring the garden, I didn't see the need for a pre-emptive strike. I figured the gopher had snooped around, decided it didn't like cruciferous vegetables and left the area. Big mistake!

After 2 weeks of vacation, I came back to discover 2 cauliflower, 3 broccoli and 1 spinach were missing. As they are all covered in cages, the evidence points to the gopher. Steam began coming out of my ears. "I trusted you!" I shouted.

Then, I marched over to have a chat with our Ag Assistant. I informed him that if he did not capture the gopher by Friday he would be fired. He has three traps in position and we are waiting on the results. The saddest thing is the new gopher mounds plowed right through where I planted my colored carrots.

Garden Utopia

Photo by Jack Kelly Clark

When we decided to plant a garden here at my work site, I was under the impression that we would create a garden utopia. The plants would flourish, the birds would sing, and an excellent demonstration garden would be born.

I was right about one thing...the birds are definitely singing. The reason? I just planted a few snacks for them, and in their own backyard no less. Meet my new arch nemesis, the white crowned sparrow. Oh yes, aren't they darling? Flitting through the trees and shrubs, warbling away while I unknowlingly planted some of their favorite snacks. Two local nurseries had donated 6 packs of broccoli, spinach, lettuce, onions, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and peas.

I did have this odd feeling that the birds were watching me as I planted, which I shook off as ridiculous. But after lunch I discovered 3 spinach and 2 lettuce plants had been eaten down to practically nothing. The next day, the peas were positively leafless, and I knew something had to be done.

I got out the chicken wire and with a lot of help made cages to protect the plants. Now, instead of a garden utopia, the site looks more like a battle zone. Just this morning I found a new gopher hole underneath the lettuce bed. I couldn't help feeling thankful that my livelihood was not dependent on this garden!!!

Roots, Leaves, Stems, Flowers, Fruits and Seeds!

Photo by Suzanne Paisley

Did you know that the food you eat is comprised of these plant parts? For example, when you eat broccoli, you eat a flower. Peas are seeds and so are pomegranates. Strawberries are fruits covered with seeds, and potatoes are underground stems. Lettuce is made up of leaves, carrots and radishes are roots and onions and garlic are bulbs.

The demonstration garden’s main purpose is to display the plant parts that humans consume. All of the fruits and vegetables we eat are comprised of roots, leaves, stems, flowers, bulbs, fruits and seeds. The goal of the garden is to showcase at least one from each of these categories at all times. The garden will be a great place for 4-6th grade teachers to address several of the California State Standards for science.

The irrigation is nearly complete, and we will begin planting vegetables, herbs and flowers in the next two weeks. The garden is based on Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening principals. The front garden bed resembles a tic-tac-toe, and has nine sections that will be used for seasonal vegetables and flowers. The bed along the back part of the garden is bordered by a chain link fence where we will plant perennials like artichokes, asparagus and boysenberries (available in January as bare root plants) strawberries (in spring), as well as colorful fall flower bulbs. Both edible and sweet peas will be grown along the chain-link fence.

Grover Landscape, the Home Depot and Orchard Supply and Hardware donated compost and lumber. Scenic Nursery of Modesto donated seeds, and the Greenery in Turlock donated 6 packs of vegetables. Many thanks to all of these businesses. I’d also like to thank our intern Troy Webb, a student from CSU Stanislaus, who has been an integral part of planning the construction of the garden.

Community members are invited to drop by anytime to preview the progress of the garden, which is located behind the Stanislaus Building at our office on the corner of Crows Landing and Service Roads.

Gardening Tic-Tac-Toe

As you can see from the photo, our garden has made some progress! We have rototilled the garden (thanks dad!) and installed the beds. Isaiah and Troy played a game on the square foot gardening beds which made me LOL to see it.

It took about 3 mornings to get all the wood in place. We layed out the framing boards, staked them and drilled screws into the stakes and through the boards. The top part that looks like a tic-tac-toe will allow us to plant and weed without trampling the ground or the crops.

Our garden would not be what it is without the generous donation of soil and wood from local companies. I am hoping soon to fill it with celery, carrots, radishes, lettuce, sweet peas and other lovely green things. Stay tuned!

Gardening Snafus

The idea of starting a garden seems like a simple one. Add soil, seeds and water and PRESTO! You have a garden. That process in our case did not go as planned. Below is the best word I've found so far to describe our progress:

Snafu: a normal situation that has become foul.

Our garden project had created a buzz of excitement (ok, so maybe only in my ears, but excitement nonethess). Isaiah, the trusted Ag Assistant went with me to examine the rototiller I had spotted in our shop last week. While looking it over, it suddenly occured to me that assuming this dilapidated machine actually worked was a bit presumptious. It's origins where unknown, and it had come from a department store that has been defunct for over 10 years.

We filled the machine up with gas, and then tried to figure out how to start the thing. About 15 minutes into examining it, we realized the string hanging on the handle should be untied, and wrapped around a wheel on the front of the machine and pulled. On the 8th try (after much coughing) it actually started. Hooray! We were ready to till. We wheeled the machine out to the site and then tried to figure out how to get the tines into the ground...which was when we realized an essential part was missing: the belt connecting the motor to the tines. By this time it was 4:00 p.m. and we had to quit for the day.

The new plan is to have my father (who lives down the street and has been begged) come down with his rototiller and help till the bed tomorrow. If all goes well, we should be working on connecting the irrigation next week. Of course, this is assuming the irrigation parts in the shop are everything we need...maybe I should be planning for a spring garden?

Demo School Garden

I've been working with school gardens for about 5 years, and I'm often asked how to start one. These questions prompted me to begin the installation of a small garden at my work site. It's dimensions will total about 300 square feet. I will be blogging about it here as well as taking photo and video footage of the site.

I'm using the book Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew to design the garden. The book was was first published in 1981, and it's innovative methods have inspired many gardeners.

Often school and community gardens are created with great enthusiasm, only to fall into disrepair and weediness. Much of this has to do with overplanting, something Mr. Bartholomew's book discusses. Although a packet of carrot seeds contains over 1,500 seeds, don't be tempted to plant all of them at once. The work involved in thinning is eliminated using the square foot gardening method. Thinning your crops is the greatest chore in many gardens aside from weeding. In Square Foot Gardening, gardeners plant less seeds and enjoy their garden more.

You'll be able to watch the creation of the garden through the photos posted here. Please feel free to comment and share your experiences.