Gardening around town

These are the grapes of my childhood. The smell and the way the grape flesh pulls away from the skin. When I pop the grape in my mouth I get a happy feeling remembering my grandparent's garden, orchard, and vineyard.

The Gleaner Garden. We got a donation of un- applied for garden plots and planted them with peppers, lettuce, cabbage, kale, cucumbers. .

While I can't find the photos at this time. We put straw right about this time all around the beds and didn't have to weed. And the weeds and grasses grew quick without the straw as a mulch/ barrier.

More Gleaner Garden Photos below.

Love this tool. My new toy called the Mamma digger.

Artichoke rescue on Artichoke Hill. I am starting a mound in the front in which neighbors getting rid of old sod and dirt have deposited. I hate mowing lawns. I rescued these artichoke plants from the Giving Gardens and my hope is for this hill to be full of Artichokes and artichoke babies I can share plants and artichokes for the Gleaners. I think artichokes are yum yum.

Now that is a weird colored cucumber!

I volunteered and learned double dig method of raised bed, we did it in the fall. Double dig the bed, add lime, granite dust, newspaper, straw, manure, straw, water and in spring it will be weed free, full of worms and ready for planting.

Finally grew a great radish. They were huge and fantastic due to double digging. So were beets, turnips, and rutabagas.

Yay....

Dinner in the summer is always easy. Just slap whatever is ready on the grill with olive oil, garlic salt some times lemon.

Love peppers on the grill which is a new experience since I started gardening.

Delish!

Fairly Tale Eggplant ~ a hybrid but so lovely I have to grow them.

Gerdies Gold~ I changed name to a Gerdie with a d for my mom who was Gerdie. My favorite flavor of tomato, considering I don't eat them raw much. Isn't that pattern lovely? The taste has a hint and texture of mango and cantaloupe. I grow them every year.

My 1st harvest.

My neighbors lush tomato plants. They had the best tomatoes of the all the gardens I have seen in 2009. They used straw at the bottom and drip irrigation. The tomatoes were spectacular and the vines were over 10 feet high. In a hot wet summer full of blight in many other garden spaces last year.

The straw mulch is also a method in the world record tomato. I will be trying this 2010 season and I bought alfalfa meal for under the straw as well.

A photo of the food banks hoop house. Now those melons are gonna be happy! Melons are notoriously slow here without a little cover.

My giving gardens planted. You can still see the cardboard oh well.

One garden at a time. Here is a home garden we helped with starts.

Picking up donated black gold ~ worm castings.

We love worm poop!

Staking the baby tomatoes at the Gleaner Garden.

Tomato starts hardening off before planting.