The Dog Days Arrive at My First Community Garden

Morning, everyone!
Diane Tunick Morello here

The dog days of summer arrive. With temperatures forecast to climb over 90 degrees today, I pack my coffee, garden stakes, water and rooted scallions and head to the Bible Street community garden first thing in the morning. 

Seven o'clock is the perfect time to visit the garden. I am curious to see whether Thursday's torrential downpours caused damage. Glad to say, no. I want to wrap up by eight o'clock -- before the heat takes over and before I head to the Families Belong Together rally at Greenwich Town Hall on June 30.

Here's what's happening in the garden: 

• Tomatoes thrive, with strong stalks, lots of yellow flowers and small and midsize fruit popping. Thinning out the stalks on Tuesday helped. Two "volunteer" tomato plants -- remnants of the previous gardener -- display flowers and produce fruit. My husband, PJ, was so impressed with the tomatoes throughout the community garden he now looks forward to getting his own plot new year.

Green bell pepper emerges

• The jalapeño pepper seems to have grown six to eight inches in five days, thanks to reorienting the tomato plants and opening the pepper to sun. I see no fruit yet on the jalapeño, but two big fruit emerge on the bell peppers.

• Oh, the carrot fronds, what to do, what to do. The fronds tower over plants and herbs, cutting off their light and air. Chop-chop go the fronds, yank go the wandering carrots. The plants and herbs now get sun.

• Cucumber and patty-pan squash flourish as they reach to the sun. Tiny basils, planted as seeds in mid-May, are starting to emerge from the soil. Meanwhile, basil seedlings I got from Garden Education Center of Greenwich fare well, strengthening and growing taller.

• Only one plant fares poorly, my green beans. A week ago a gardener suggested I remove the wire frame from the bush beans. When I did, the beans came up with the frame. I tried to replant and reattach, but I fear I caused irreparable damage to the fragile beans.  

Before I leave the garden, I water my plot and Maud's plot. I met Maud on my first day and I have enjoyed seeing her garden flourish, filled with plants so different from mine.   

Early morning sun illuminates the green
at the Bible Street branch
of Greenwich Community Gardens

The 92 plots in the community garden are lush and healthy. A treat of being a community gardener is wandering around and seeing plants in other plots. Early sun glints off hundreds of tomato plants throughout the community, the sunflowers rise, the lettuces grow a foot or so and the peas and beans climb hand-made ladders. I expect to visit the garden possibly three or four times a week in these dog days of summer, watering, thinning and harvesting. I look forward to meeting other gardeners, admiring their plants and maybe sharing tips and tastes of what they have grown. 

As I head to Families Belong Together in Greenwich during the same week we honor Independence Day, I thank my grandparents for having the courage roughly one hundred years ago to emigrate from Poland, Russia and Austria and build their futures -- and my parents' future and my future -- in America. We all yearn to breathe free. 

Our Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled massesyearning to breathe free."