Growing Season Coming to an End….and New Beginnings!

Hi all,

We had a short but productive work day last week in the garden, due to an unexpected rainfall around 11:15. Fortunately, our young gardeners kept a quick pace, planting THREE ENTIRE TRAYS of cabages in about 30 minutes flat. Whoa. We also had a chance to harvest lettuce, talk about the virtues of various types of bugs–including the worm featured in the photo below, and check out some of the great stuff growing in our garden! Highlights include a GINORMOUS bok-choy and a very very tiny pumpkin that we’re hoping might be normal pumpkin size by Halloween (but none of us are holding our breath.) We also had a chance to finally meet Mike Gray, who runs a gardening project up the road as well as a very popular water-ice business. Mike’s garden is fabulous. His pumpkins are humongous (like bigger than 3 human heads) and put our little dinky pumpkinling to shame. He’s been doing this for a few years now, so I’m really hoping we can figure out a way to combine resources and experience so we can operate multiple gardens throughout the community (the neighborhood is large enough for two gardens–Mike’s garden is about a 4 minute drive from our garden but it feels like a completely different neighborhood.) Our big celebration event is coming up in late October, so hopefully he’ll be able to make it with some of his young gardeners!

Taevon gets a little silly with the worms....

our pumpkinling!

Introductions

It was the first day visiting the garden for me, so there were a lot of new things to look out for. A lot of progress was made with clearing up two plots and planting some garlic, collard greens, and kale. We interspersed the plants with the bulbs of garlic…apparently garlic is not attacked by pests and can protect the other plants from harmful insects as well, which is pretty cool. Hopefully they’ll grow easily and we can probably continue growing them year-round because of the mild climate. Actually getting to the garden and trying to figure out the technicalities of making things grow is a pretty eye-opening experience.

Meeting the kids is so much fun! I’m still getting to know their names and everything but they’re already really open and friendly about meeting me. One girl came up to me and told me I would be her “garden mom”. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m still flattered.

Until next week,

Nancy

Rain, rain, go away!!!

So after months of petitioning for access to water through the Chester Water authority, we found ourselves in a situation no one quite expected–3 inches underwater. Many of our plants were lost to flooding, while others miraculously made it through–including one very tenacious bok choy! In light of imminent thunderstorms, we decided to spend a day engineering. We dug trenches about 2-3 inches deep to form a gutter around the perimeter of the garden, and used small channels to drain the water out. While it didn’t get rid of all of the water, our makeshift moats definitely helped drain most of the plots and will probably help salvage a number of our plants.

Today was also our first sunflower seed harvest!! Yaeir worked with our young gardeners to open up a few of our sunflower heads and pull the seeds out to roast. We also harvested lettuce and tomatoes, and enjoyed a peach snack to celebrate the end of summer.

A great work day, by all accounts! pictures to come!

Jenny

Rain rain go away…

The forecast for Chester on Saturday was 100% chance of precipitation all day. Surprisingly, it wasn’t raining when we got to the garden, but our gardners were not adventurous enough to come out. We had planned all sorts of arts and crafts for them, but it will just have to wait until next week. Jesse and I spent an hour “weeding” the beds instead, which was actually more like fishing. All our beds had at least an 1″ of water standing in them–one was even sporting algae. Hopefully our bok choy, brussel sprouts and cabbage are hardy. We should very seriously consider constructing some raised beds this winter and potentially planting berry bushes along the new fence to block all the water coming down the hill onto the garden…

In brighter news, we harvested our first tomatos on Saturday! We left two red beauties (the bottom of a third was covered in a black rot) by Ms. Louise’s door–hopefully she finds them! Our lettuce also looks about ready to eat, maybe we’ll make salads for snack next week?

Kavi

A day full of surprises!

Hi all,

Last Saturday was another awesome awesome day of gardening–complete with lots of wonderful surprises!

First of all, our sunflowers have finally opened and are full of wonderful pollinators! They look BEAUTIFUL and are helping our garden to boot. Pictures are on their way.

Also, thanks to the calcium-enriching materials that Lisa brought us last week, our tomatoes are finally turning red. We can’t wait for them to ripen so everyone can enjoy fresh tomatoes (though some of our young gardeners remain unconvinced that tomatoes are the source of treats like pizza, spaghetti, and ketchup.)

Another surprise–turns out that melons and pumpkins flower, just like any other plant. Our melons have beautiful pink flowers on them, and our pumpkins have funny orange flowers. They are really fantastic to watch growing. The pumpkins, in particular, are really taking off!

But the biggest surprise of all, of course, was that it was Kavita’s 22nd birthday! We celebrated by eating delicious chocolate cupcakes that Kavita made–with a secret ingredient, to boot. After much guessing the gardening club (with help from Ms. Louise) finally figured out what the mysterious ingredient was: two fresh zucchinis! After they found that out, everyone was eager to take home a zucchini to snack on (I believe Fayana got to take home the zucchini, which she was excited to cook at home with her mother.) The rest of us enjoyed our second DELICIOUS cupcakes and spent the last minutes of the work day coloring beautiful pictures of our garden and birthday cards for Kavita.

Looking forward to tying up our tomatoes and planting some shade plants next week.

J

this is one of the outrageous flowers on the melon plants!

if you look really REALLY closely you might see our pollinators!

we all enjoy zucchini cupcakes–and just plain zucchini! happy birthday kavita!

We’re Blooming!

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay–here’s an update on our garden workday last week.

First of all–we’re in bloom! Our first sunflowers have started to open and our tomatoes are getting a little orange–normal considering how much rain we got this year.

Thanks to some help from our friends, gardening went beautifully this saturday. First, Jamie from Teens4Good came out to the garden with some of her high school gardeners and opened up FIVE new plots. Also, Philadelphia Green employee and friend of the Chester Garden Lisa Mosca came to meet with us and delivered a ton of new vegetable seedlings for the garden, including collard greens, brocolli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts. We planted about half of what she delivered last week in just under two hours, to give you a sense of the quantity. This week, we plan to plant the rest in a second new plot.

After all our hard work planting, we were ready for a break. As a surprise, the garden club got a chance to eat some of its own produce–the delicious basil we’ve been growing for over a month now–with some fresh tomatoes! It was a hit–even among the doubters–and everyone felt a sense of pride at reaping the benefits of what we had grown.

This week it has rained almost every day in philadelphia (proof that it isn’t really always sunny here) which I’m hoping will be good for our new transplants.

Looking forward to Saturday!

J

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water!!

Hey all,

I received a call from Steve Fischer of the Chester Housing Authority (a great supporter of the Chester Garden Project) to let us know that the Chester Water Authority has approved us to use the fire hydrant on our site for watering. No more walking back and forth all day with water jugs! Hooray!

Thanks to Steve and the Water Authority for making this happen!

Just another awesome day at the garden

We’ve been very fortunate with the weather this summer. After a torrential rain storm on Friday we arrived on a beautifully sunny morning with the garden already well watered.

Our two incredible adult gardeners, Louise and Dolores, unfortunately could not make it out but we were immediately greeted by garden regulars (Laniya, Javar, Lavar) and some faces we hadn’t seen in a few weeks (Hakim, Hakeira, Derrin, Jamil).

We started off the day with an icebreaker. We went around in a circle and said our name and favorite food. As we went around, each person had to say, not only their own name and favorite food, but what everyone before them said as well. This prompted most of the kids to race to the front of the line but Derrin bravely volunteered to go last. Here’s what we learned: Jenny likes peaches (Derrin’s immediate response was “that’s not a food!”, I think we’ll be having a peach snack break soon), Michelle like strawberries, Rebecca likes pizza, Laniya likes chicken, Hakim likes fries, Jamil likes cornbread, Hakeira likes spaghetti, Eric likes blueberries, Kavi likes raspberries, and Derrin likes burgers.

We’ll be keeping this in mind as we plan our harvest dinner in September. Looks like we’ll be making good use of our tomatoes (and we will have A LOT of tomatoes).

The water issue is still in progress. Everyone involved is working hard and we are waiting for word from the Water Authority. We are thinking of installing a water catchment system with rain barrels and we would welcome any ideas on cost-effective ways of implementing that or other thoughts on getting water to the garden.

In the meantime, we collected empty containers to use as watering jugs and the kids decorated their own.

After a delicious cantaloupe break, at which time more kids filtered in, the kids planted radish seeds in cups to take home and care for. In two weeks, they’ll transplant their hopefully successful radishes into one of the beds. My own attempt at radish germination did not work this week but the kids probably have greener thumbs than me.

Jenny, our team-building expert, concluded the morning by gathering all the kids in a “hands-in” circle and led them in a pledge about taking care of their garden (it began with “I solemnly swear…”). I think she came up with it on the spot and it was amazing.

Michelle and I will be heading home next week to North Carolina and California respectively and be back in September, but with Jenny, Kavita, Louise, Dolores, and all the kids, the garden is in more than capable hands.

By the way, here are the harvest dates for our current crop:

Mesclun Lettuce: Aug 25
Spinach, Radishes: Aug 29
Spinach: Sept 5
Tomatoes, Peppers, Sunflowers: Sept 10
Butterhead Lettuce: Sept 14
Cantaloupe: Oct 1
Pumpkin: Oct 19

If you have any favorite recipes or activity ideas involving these plants (or ideas about our water situation), leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you!

-Eric

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink

The poem of the ancient mariner most accurately describes our situation.

We actually have a fire hydrant right next to our garden, but still no answer from the city of Chester for the ability to access the water for our garden. This week, EJ met with the Ruth L. Bennett Tenant’s Association, and both groups agreed that water is our most pressing issue.

However, all of us– EJ, Steve Fischer (Chester Housing Authority), and the residents, have been pushing for water access from the city in one way or another.
I’ve been looking at different types of hoses for our garden — essentially pining for water. None of us want to burden, Louise, the awesome resident that has taken ownership of the garden and watering it during the weekdays, any further than we already have with this water situation. She has to bring pots full of water to water the garden. Thus, if we don’t get the access from the city to use the water, we’ll try to design a rain catcher system (one of our members, Alice, just put one up in a garden on campus).

As water is an essential part of life, it is also an integral part of our gardening experience. Every Saturday workday the kids and one of the EJ members will run water back and forth from their houses. Today, I went into the house of some of the newest members of EJ, some children from above the hill behind the garden. We filled four jugs of water at each run. At least from the water runs, I get to meet the parents of the children working at the garden, and spread get to spread the word of our garden. Every single resident that I have meet have been extremely supportive.

On an even brighter note, Jamie, from Teens4Good, came to the garden this Saturday. She brought along her rototiller and we opened up two more plots. Our five plots that we opened in the summer are all already full of plants that are sprouting (the sunflowers are tall, cantaloupes are sprouting, tomatoes are blooming, etc…). Jamie also thinks that she might swing by during the week and bring some of her workers to open more plots.

Furthermore, I think we’ve been reaching out to more kids by going very consistently to the garden. Today, we actually had Dolores, another resident, Louise, and two children waiting for us before we arrived (though we did get there a bit late). Even so, at the end about 12-14 kids joined our work-day, and most of these kids have been consistently coming. So in official garden business, our group watered the garden, planted some spinach, and opened up new plots. In none official business, we also had a blast having snack time (watermelon for summer), and also doing some arts and crafts (labels for the plants).

Thus, summer has been a very booming time for our garden. Hopefully we will have a conclusive plan for the water issue by next week.

We, unlike the ancient mariner, are full faith that our albatross will help our garden prosper. Carol, the president of the tenant’s council, relayed again her full faith in EJ and the community garden.

Until next week,
Michelle

High Hopes for Canteloupes!

Hi all,

This is Jenny writing after a very successful day in the garden. While we had a little bit of a slow start, assistance from resident’s council representative Ms. Carol and Bennett Homes resident and volunteer extraodinaire Ms. Dolores helped us get rolling.

Today was CANTELOUPE day as you can see from the pictures. We planted two canteloupes in the fourth plot as well as 2 rows of spinach in our 5th (and last, for now) plot. Then, during our snack break, our young volunteers got to try some canteloupe as well–for some of our youngest volunteers, this was the very first time they had had canteloupe. Believe us (and the pictures) when we say that it caught on quickly.

When Tahkeel, one of our most frequent garden volunteers, noticed that there were leftover seeds from the canteloupe, he decided to experiment with planting them in the ground, to see what happens. So, with any luck, we will have three canteloupes this harvest! If not, Tahkeel owes me a chocolate chip cookie .

All in all, a very great day. We had two new kids join the gardening club–welcome to Joe-Joe and Jermaine! And even better, we had lots of great efforts from everyone all day, from weeding to tilling to watering plants (making several trips back and forth between the house and the garden) to cleaning up litter (two bicycle wheels, a baseball bat, and a very very wet t-shirt.)

We are also starting to see our first vegetables appearing–check out the tomato in the picture (which Lavar is still convinced is an apple.)

Until next week,

CGP

our first tomato sprout!

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Adam and Dolores Hang the Garden Sign!