Belmont Victory Gardens

Skippy and I walked through a nearby community garden on Sunday with my camera.

communitygardening
Belmont Victory Garden

community garden tour

Skippy and I walked though the Rock Meadow Victory Garden yesterday. I just get overwhelmed with how beautiful vegetable gardens are! And to see so many together almost puts me over the edge.

The fall is a great time for gardens. Rich colors and the evidence of a full season of producing fruits. Birds and bees are in abundance - singing, buzzing, gathering.

This collection of 120 garden plots is very nicely maintained. A beautiful range of gardens: from all flowers to all vegetables - even some fruit trees and lots of berry bushes.

I was so enamored that I am looking into getting my own plot. I am realizing that the trees in my yard are not getting any smaller. The shade continues to advance. Some crops do very well there. Some just don't even compare with the plants in the Victory Garden plots, which receive full bright unfiltered sunlight.

So, I'm imagining what would go well at my plot next year. A topic that can keep me laying awake much too long at night. Potatoes, squashes, lettuce, fava beans .... We'll see.

In the meantime, you can see a slide show of more of my Victory Garden photos here on Flickr.

communitygardening
Belmont Victory Garden

Belmont Victory Gardens on longest day of the year

Our community gardens are beautiful right now. All of the 100-plus plots have been filled this year and there are so many active gardens. A lot of work has gone into these.

Yesterday Skippy and I wandered through the overgrown and rocky paths and took many photos of the plots. No sense in showing just my garden with so many other nice ones around! They look nice viewed as a slide show (June Victory Garden slide show).

By the way - tomorrow the local Boy Scout Troop will be doing work on our paths! They will remove rocks, bushes and debris from the paths so the mower can get through. I'll see if I can get some photos of the project.

Belmont Victory Garden

Belmont Victory Garden Seed Swap and Harvest Celebration

Terrible weather is predicted for tomorrow. Windy, thunder, lots of rain. :(

The Belmont Victory Garden Seed Swap and Harvest Celebration (scheduled for 2-4 tomorrow) will play it by ear. We prefer to go on as scheduled. We will hope for a miraculous 2 hours clearing. If this doesn't happen, we will post a sign at the garden and try again on Sunday.

Please stay home if there's thunder/lightening. If it's just raining, wear your best rain gear (and it'll be like a fashion show!). We have a big canopy.

Rain has been the theme this year. What's one more day of wet! Soon it will be snowflakes.

tomato check

These are photos of tomatoes today in other garden plots at the Rock Meadow Victory Garden.

I have no red tomatoes yet, but I'm really looking forward to one soon. I took a walk around the community gardens today to see if anyone has ripe tomatoes yet. I found lots of green ones and one garden that has one beautiful big red that looks very close to ripe.

Here are photos of my green tomatoes:





Looks to me like there are all sorts of issues with my community garden tomato plants: white spots and black spots and brown spots, shriveled leaves and fewer tomatoes than I expected. My home tomatoes look healthy, but the plants are smaller.

My dad was telling me that one of my problems may be rust or leaf spot, common tomato fungal diseases. Here's what he wrote:

About the yellowing of the tomato leaves (talking now about the yellowing that starts with the lowest leaves in spite of having sufficient sunlight and nutrients)– I thought that some of that might also be due to rust or leaf spot. Questions 28 and 34 of this link tells you a bit more about it: Texas A&M. I was considering using agricultural poly film next year – because the spores are in the ground from growing them in the same place year after year and from composting the leaves and then rototilling them in also year after year. Tom sprays with Manzate 75% several times a season, picks of the infected leaves and has a heavy salt marsh hay mulch to prevent rain splash-up infecting and spreading the problem.

Belmont Victory Garden
Solanum lycopersicum

community plot countdown

I'm getting excited about my upcoming Community garden plot assignment! My count down is into the single digits now! 9 more days! On April 12th I'm hoping for a big sunny new garden plot. I'm number 2 on the waiting list of new gardeners.

Someone from a neighboring town asked me how I got on the community plot waiting list. Last summer, I looked on the Belmont town website and found the garden information and emailed my request.

For Cambridge, you could check out this link: • How do I get a community garden plot in Cambridge MA? Their answer: "You may contact the Conservation Commission at (617) 349-4680. You likely will be placed on a waiting list."

My understanding is that community garden plots are in short supply around this area.

communitygardening
Belmont Victory Garden

late blight

I just got back from spraying my tomato plants. We had a little rain yesterday and I've been spraying with a copper fungicide after every rain to protect against late blight. My plants look really good this year, so I'm hoping for a good harvest before the blight comes in.

The latest info on tomato blight is at this site: http://extension.umass.edu/vegetable/alerts/late-blight-alert-update

Late blight was spotted early this year, July 3, in some commercial tomato fields near my garden and in other parts of the New England. But it seems that it isn't spreading very rapidly.

A couple weeks ago, I sent out this notice to gardeners in our Community Garden.

Gardeners,

Bad news – On July 3, Late Blight was confirmed on tomato plants near us (Middlesex County MA). This is a very aggressive pathogen that can kill an entire field of tomatoes or potatoes within a few days.

As you may remember, we had a terrible year at the Belmont Victory Gardens with Late Blight in 2009. It affected the whole garden and the entire NE region with devastating effects for commercial growers.

We would like to ask you to do the following:
-    Please read some of the links and information on the bulletin board (we will post photos and info soon) to learn about Late Blight and how to identify it.
-    Check your tomato and potato plants carefully for Late Blight and report it immediately to me if you find any (UMASS extension service like to follow locations of outbreaks and fellow gardeners will also like to know). If you find damage that looks like late blight it must be removed from the Gardens and disposed of at home in your trash. Do not compost it! Late Blight spreads very quickly and it is important to do what we can to contain spread of the pathogen.
-    To protect your plants from infection (especially important in shadier and low lying areas):
o    Remove leaves at the bottom of tomato plants to increase airflow
o    Increase airflow around potatoes and tomatoes by trimming nearby plants, removing weeds, removing vines from fences, and keeping the paths mowed
o    Spray tomatoes and potatoes before every rain with a fixed Copper fungicide spray that is organic approved.

I walked through the Belmont gardens today and checked tomatoes and potatoes in many plots. I did not see any Late Blight, but did not have time to check all gardens. Actually, I think the tomatoes and potatoes look really good this year. There is a bit of Septoria leaf spot around as usual, which is a less aggressive fungus that causes small brown spots and yellowing from the edges of the leaves on both tomatoes and potatoes, but not much.

In my garden, I removed the Septoria damaged tomato leaves and disposed of them in my trash at home. I will be spraying with a copper fungicide soon. This is available at Hillside Garden Center as a powder or spray. Geno recommends a spray combination of Rotenone (also organic) and copper that is available at Agway in Waltham.

Some helpful links:
http://extension.umass.edu/vegetable/alerts/late-blight-alert-update
http://seacoasteatlocal.org/2012/07/alert-late-blight-found-in-massachusetts/
http://extension.unh.edu/Agric/lateblight.htm
http://nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/
http://www.longislandhort.cornell.edu/vegpath/photos/lateblight_tomato.htm (lots of good photos here to learn how to identify Late Blight)

Our Yahoo and Facebook sites and are good places for conversations and advice. Also feel free to email me.

Kathy
Coordinator, Belmont Victory Community Gardens

lasagna gardening

OK. Time to start thinking about next year's garden. Here's a photo of a plot at the Belmont Victory Gardens where the gardener does "lasagna gardening". (That's a thick layer of horse manure and wood chips on the top.)

I'm starting to feel guilty about tilling my garden and this was a big discussion topic during my Thanksgiving travels.

Here's are highlights from my quick research on the topic.

"Lasagna gardening is method of layering organic materials and compost right in the garden and then planting directly in these layers. Its a time saving organic gardening method developed by gardener and writer, Patricia Lanza, which requires no digging." Lasagna Gardening by Colleen Vanderlinden. At Amazon.com: Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! by Patricia Lanza.

"A Japanese guy named Masanobu Fukuoka started the idea of no-til gardening/farming with his book One Straw Revolution. There was also an American woman called Ruth Stout and an Australian woman named Ester Deans who both promoted the idea in their day." (from a comment Patrick left me)

"To make a lasagna garden: stake out your garden site and begin building beds layer by layer. First layer is something heavy like thick newspaper or flattened cardboard to kill the existing grass. Next layer is 2-3 inches of water absorbent material like peat moss or coir. Next a 4-8 inch layer of compost. Another layer of coir or peat, and then yet another layer of organic material, like grass clippings on top of the coir, and on and on until the beds reach 18-24 inches high. Finally, the tops of the piles may be sprinkled lightly with bone meal and wood ash for added phosphorus and potassium. One of the greatest advantages to lasagna gardening is that you can layer your beds and plant your crops all in the same day. When you're planting a lasagna garden, no digging is required. For transplants, simply pull back the layers of mulch, drop in the plant and pull some mulching materials back over the roots. Sowing seeds is easy, too. Sprinkle a little finished compost over the area you want to plant, sow the seed, and cover it with a little more of the finished compost. Press down on the bed to secure the seeds and water thoroughly." An Introduction to Lasagna Gardening by Ellen Brown

I've always used old-fashioned cover-crop-and-till gardening methods, but was thinking of setting up a lasagna bed for comparison this year. My concerns are:

- Where do you get all that fresh organic material? I'm not going to go out and buy plastic bags full of peat.

- Why compost in my garden? I have a nice compost pile. I collect it all year and it'll be really nice this spring. Plus I have access to composted yard waste from the town.

- Why not grow a cover crop? Growing a legume crop a very efficient way to generate nitrogen. Cover crops require tilling in the spring and aren't compatible with no till methods.

- Why try to save time in the garden? Its only a small plot and some exercise is good.

- What if you don't have enough worms to mix the soil and poke holes in the layers? Layering is a perfect method of preventing water from reaching the lowers levels. Layered soil has the poorest drainage rate.

- And if its important that worms mix the soil, why not help them by turning it myself?

- Newspaper lying around the garden is not very attractive.....

- No-till methods may be important to prevent erosion in large fields, but for a tiny home plot on flat land, erosion is not an issue.

- How can you do a soil test on a lasagna plot? Which layer would you sample?

I seem to be talking myself out of this method here. Maybe I'll stay pro-till another year.





topic: soil

community gardening thoughts

I just took a look at just at the post and heated discussion on Community Gardens at Garden Rant recently (May 7). Guest Ranter Ed Bruske describes a whole different concept in community gardening. A new way to remove all individuality (and probably pleasure) from of the community gardening and increase efficiency. No thanks! I'd much prefer CSA shares. I'd even rather go to the supermarket ....

... Instead of assigning individual plots, why not form a co-op that would operate more like a farm? Food production would be so much greater, I argued.

... The problem with typical community gardens, as I see it, is that there is no control over what is planted in individual plots. Plot holders operate according to their own individual learning curves. They may be growing a great deal of food, or very little. They may be planting things appropriate for the site, or they may not. They may be putting in a great deal of effort, or they may not be doing much at all, in which case the garden manager at some point is forced to take back the plot and assign it to someone else. As far as overall production in concerned, community gardens are a terribly inefficient use of valuable urban property. (by Guest Ranter Ed Bruske)

I really do love all the different plots and garden styles at the Belmont Victory Gardens. And this year there are SO many active plots! I think about 130 now. Today I'm looking forward to mowing the grass in the paths between all the gardens. I'll bring my camera and photograph the fantastic variety and beauty of the vegetable plots!

click for a slide show of plots at the Belmont Victory Gardens

my community garden plot

I completed several tasks this weekend at my garden plot: I transplanted half of my broccoli plants from my shady home garden to the sunny plot and covered these with row cover. I planted pole beans (green and cranberry type shell) on the east fence, planted a few more zucchini, watermelon and winter squash seedlings, planted cilantro seeds that I saved from last year, filled in the soy bean row with a few more seeds, and added some purchased eggplant seedlings to the potato bed. I also weeded, cultivated and watered all the beds.

I have the feeling that the garden is pretty much planted now. (Only the cukes left to transplant sometime this week.) Time to watch and see how it grows. I wonder if I have overfilled it? I don't like empty spaces, but also not good to over plant. Everything is growing like crazy.

Belmont Victory Garden

weed wacking

My arms are sore from trimming weeds in the paths of our community garden. I used the Garden's super powerful weed whacker, which chewed up everything it came near and nearly vibrated by arms loose. Its absolutely amazing how big the weeds were! Nice to see freshly trimmed paths. Now I should go over it again with a mower. Wonderful how a garden can keep you busy.

Belmont Victory Garden

local community garden

Skippy and I visited the Belmont Community Gardens yesterday. What a beautiful place to walk through! All of the plots are so interesting. One of the first times I've been to a community garden and seen gardeners working. I learned several things:

1- My fava beans are WAY behind where they could be. There was one plot with tons of nearly ripe favas. Awesome! Two plots had favas; both were planted much closer together than mine. One had two foot tall flowering plants like mine, but the other's were 3-4 feet tall with nearly ripe beans. Maybe a different variety? I wonder if they started them indoors?

2- It seems like a good idea to focus on a few veggies that work well for a plot. I should try to be more selective next year.

3- Cabbages are beautiful!

4- There are very few honeybees around here this year. I saw many last year, but only ONE this year off in the choke cherry trees.

5- Beautiful patches of 6 foot tall peas. Like my 2 foot tall peas, they are just now ripening. I'll look for taller peas next year.

6- My tomatoes look as good as any, I think.

7- Several patches of very nicely hilled potatoes.

8- One plot used plastic around the cukes and squashes. They looked great.

9- I wonder if I could get a plot? I'd grow half potatoes, half carrots, and half squash. I'd grow the greens, peas, beans, tomatoes and herbs in my home plot. Just a thought..... These plots have a lot of sunlight. More than me. Hhhmmmm.

A slide show of all 22 photos I took at the Community Garden is here. (set it to fast in the lower left corner)

communitygardening
Belmont Victory Garden