First Cucumber Harvest
Month: July 2011
Donating to Local Food Bank
The Howard County Conservancy Community Garden donates a portion of its produce to the Howard County Food Bank every Tuesday and Thursday. Volunteers pick the produce contributions from a plot solely dedicated to the food bank and from individuals’ gardens with portions marked for the food bank. Often a gardener will mark their plot for the food bank when they are out of town for an extended period of time. The goal is to prevent waste in our gardens.
Yesterday, my son and I joined another gardener to pick the produce for donation. It was fun and I learned how to harvest cabbage. The cabbage head is cut from the thick stalk because a new cabbage head may grow from the old stalk. I will look for cabbage regrowth in the food bank plot.
We collected three bags of produce including tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, Malabar spinach, zucchini, and eggplant. It weighed in at 29 pounds at the food bank! The fresh organic produce was greatly appreciated.
Over 36 million Americans are hungry and rely on local food pantries to help sustain their families. For more information about how other gardeners are giving to food banks across Maryland and the United States visit Grow It Give It.
Toad in Our Tomato Bed
Saturday, while we worked in the garden fertilizing, weeding and securing our unruly tomato plants, we met a new garden friend. My husband met him first when he crawled underneath the tomato plants to clip off the discolored tomato sucker branches. He rested his hand on the black plastic below one tomato plant and felt the cool cover beat against his palm. Startled, he lifted one edge of the plastic and saw two eyes staring back at him. “We got a toad,” he announced.
My son and I rushed over to greet our critter friend. He did not move at all while I photographed him. His body looked moist and well fed. He had the perfect toad hideout in our garden – a shelter with water from the drip system and plenty of insects. We welcomed him to our garden plot, told him to bring friends, promised him we’d watch our step around the tomatoes, then covered him back up with the plastic. My son named him “Toady.”
Toads help rid the garden of pests, including insects, slugs and snails. They can eat over 10,000 insects in one summer! Have a feast in our garden, Toady!
Unexpected Sunflowers
Our compost bin sprouted a short and compact sunflower plant with small (for a sunflower) bright blooms. Those blooms attract a diverse group of bugs to our garden. Unlike the tall sunflowers we usually grow, these sunflowers are at eye level. We can see the bees, ants, beetles, stink bugs and assassin bugs inside each floret filled center.
Sunflowers are great in a vegetable garden because they attract beneficial bugs to the garden and divert pest bugs from vegetable crops.
Do you have any surprise plants growing out of your compost bin?
Drip System in Our Plot
My husband installed a drip system in our garden plot. The long black tubes looked too industrial for me at first. But when the drip system watered the plot while I planted seeds, weeded the beds, cut the swiss chard crops, removed tomato suckers, photographed garden flowers and bugs, and played with my son, I came to appreciate the contrast of black plastic stripes against green foliage and brown dirt. The drip system is awesome! It saves time and water.
After consulting with a local master gardener, my husband ordered drip system supplies from Robert Marvel. It took him about 2 hours to completely set up the system. The system has these basic parts: a removable assembly (consisting of a check valve, filter and pressure regulator), a distribution tube, drip tape and a garden hose.
To water the garden, all I do is hook up our hose to the community garden water spigot and the removable assembly attached to the distribution tube (thick tube seen in photo at edge of plot). Water flows out from the distribution tube to the drip tape between the plants. The drip tape has emitter holes every 8 inches and delivers .53 gallons of water/minute/100 feet of drip tape. Our garden plot needs one inch of water per week thus the drip system needs to run for a total of two hours a week.
The initial cost of installing a drip system is not cheap, but the benefits are worth it. Drip irrigation is the most efficient way to water plants. It delivers water directly to plant roots where the most water absorption takes place thus prevents water run off. It eliminates water on plant foliage thus reduces risk of diseases and water evaporation. The cost of all the parts for a drip system is around $100, but most of the parts last for many years. Drip tape costs 3 cents a foot and is the only part that needs to be purchased each season.
Thanks to my husband for the drip system! It allows me more creative free time in our garden plot!
It’s an Assassin Bug. A Good Bug!
My son shouted, “It’s a Stink bug! I am going to smash it!”
“Wait! Let mama look at it, it might be a good bug,” said my husband.
For a gardener, my husband has an unhealthy aversion to bugs. He lets me make the good bug or bad bug call. I put down my shovel to look at the bug. My son pointed to a leaf on the sunflower plant growing out of our compost bin and declared, “There it is!”
The insect had a colorful body and long antennae. It did not look like a Stink bug. Its legs were too long and graceful. It scuttled so fast around the leaves that I barely caught its image in my camera. We let it be. The next day, I sent its photo to the Home and Garden Center at the Maryland Agricultural Extension. Within a few hours, I received the bug’s identity. It is an Assassin bug nymph!
We are thrilled to have such a voracious predator in our garden plot. This bug will help rid our garden of: aphids, Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles, Japanese beetles, Mexican bean beetles, tomato hornworms and many more pests. I am glad we did not squash it!
Our Garden Plot 