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." 

The Day I Learned About Garden Pests

Green abounds at Greenwich Community
Gardens' Bible Street branch

Hi, community gardeners! It's Saturday, June 23, and the Bible Street Community Garden, part of Greenwich Community Gardens, is lush and green. Lettuces flourish, tomato plants grow taller, sunflowers reach for their zenith and spring veggies head for salad bowls and dinner plates. Tonight we have a community garden potluck dinner. I arrive at 4:30pm, and other community gardeners trickle in over the next hour. Potluck at the community garden means more than buying food, it means making or baking dishes others can enjoy, preferably with organic vegetables.

Terri Browne Kutzen (right) welcomes
Steve Conaway from Greenwich Land Trust

Terri Brown Kutzen, co-director of the Bible Street Garden, welcomes our guest speaker, Steve Conaway, a conservationist at Greenwich Land Trust. Steve walks through the garden, pointing out good bugs (ladybugs), bad bugs (miner beetles) and other pests. All of them want to eat our veggies as much as we do. In some plots, the bugs have done serious damage to chard, broccoli and eggplant. Miner beetles burrow through the leaves of chard, aphids appear on tomato leaves, wasps lay eggs inside other aphids (can you say Alien), and ladybug larvae make their appearance. Ladybugs are good insects. They eat the bad insects. 

Steve Conaway finds aphids on tomatoes
as Jay and Gary look on

Steve walks from bed to bed, examining what's working, what needs thinning, what's being eaten and what's kaput. One gardener has a giant broccoli plant that has been shredded by bugs. The verdict? Get rid of the plant at the roots. Another gardener has a bed filled with luscious pea vines, but when you look at the pods, they all have been scalloped with bite marks from chipmunks.

Steve graciously agrees to visit my garden. Healthy and dense, he says. He suggests that my tomatoes (growing profusely, thank you) may be stealing sun from the bell peppers and jalapeño peppers. I reorient the tomatoes to open up  sunlight over the peppers. As for tomatoes, I thin out lower branches and leaves so the plant's energy goes to the fruit.

This week I plan to bring my husband, PJ Morello, to see the community garden. He hasn't seen it since mid-April. What a transformation he will see! 

The Day I Begin to Turn Over Early Plants at the Community Garden

The full community garden flourishes,
as do my tomatoes in the foreground 

Early Saturday, June 16, sun shines brilliantly on the Bible Street arm of Greenwich Community Gardens. Four or five people kneel by their garden beds, three or four more than I usually see during my early morning visits on weekdays. Looking at the weather forecast, I see sun, sun, sun. Good for the plants. Sun is not my friend, however, so I visit the garden early or late and I wear pants, hats and heavy layers of SPF skin protection.

I scan the whole community garden, and all the beds are flourishing. One gardener grows lettuces in parade-like rows, another cultivates sunflowers, another trains her beans to climb string ladders, and still another plants a tangle of tomatoes and nothing else. When our rain-delayed community social finally unfolds next week, I will wander the garden and take note of things to try next year.  

Progress is rapid in garden bed A6. 

• The tomatoes are heightening. One cherry tomato plant puts out yellow flowers, and small tomato globes form on another. The runt cherry is healthy, short but thriving. 

Bell peppers form flowers

• Bell and jalapeño peppers flower (grow, grow, I whisper). I notice that the tomato plants block the peppers' light in the morning. If I visit in the late afternoon or evening, I suspect the peppers will be drenched in sunlight. Worth watching for next year: Leafy tomato plants impinge on the growth of other vegetables.

• Four patty-pan squash mounds, planted in late May, take off. Soon I must stake them. Patty-pans normally spread outward. The density of my garden bed suggests that I must train them to grow upward. Good luck with that.

A small yellow flower peeks out
between the cucumber bushes 

• My string beans and cucumbers are flourishing. The beans do not yet twine around the wire frame, but soon. The cucumber bush hybrids are healthy. I place a wire frame around them so they grow upward.

As I admire the healthy vegetables, I take stock of the vegetables and plants that fare poorly. 

• The carrots are cramped and overgrown. Green fronds abound, but when I pull out a few carrots to thin out the crowd, I find skinny, anemic wannabes. Lesson learned: Don't overcrowd, and thin out aggressively.

• Of the half-dozen beet seedlings I planted in April, only one grows. What will I do with one beet? No matter. The beet is a bust -- leaf, but no beet. I could use some tips for beet success.

• I plant three basils from Garden Education Center of Greenwich. I volunteer in the GEC greenhouse on Friday, where I help cultivate the basils as they grow from seeds to seedlings to plants. Between the new basils and the basil seeds I planted in May, maybe I will get too much basil. Nah. Never too much basil.

• Weeds are doing well, sorry to say. I kneel on the perimeter and yank three-leaf clover-like weeds, delicate and prolific, they grow intertwined with carrots, lettuces and radishes. Is this a symbiotic arrangement or a parasitic arrangement? Anyone know? 

Diane Tunick Morello
near Steamboat Basin geysers and gurglers
on the northeast shore of Lake Yellowstone

Until next time, what flourishes in your community garden? What do you discover is a bust? What will you do differently next year? 

Ciao for now --

Diane Tunick Morello

The Day I Return to a Riot of Growth in My First Community Garden

I stand before the Snake River
at Oxbow Bend in Jackson Hole, WY

In full sun on Friday, June 8, I visit the Bible Street Community Garden after taking a soul-inspiring trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in Wyoming. The scale and majesty of the two national parks are humbling, with breathtaking beauty around every corner. The wide open spaces differ dramatically from the tree-lined perspectives, dense development and heavy traffic in Connecticut. People from the west say they get claustrophobic in the east. I feel that way, too. When I go west, I feel as if I can breathe. 

My first view of the riot of growth

After two weeks away, my garden bed at Bible Street Community Garden is a lush riot of greens, tomato flowers and weeds. I am thrilled -- more accurately, shocked -- to see the overflowing garden bed. Everyone should leave for two weeks and come back to this! All the plants were tame when I left for my trip on May 25. When I visit on June 8, they are out of control -- and I mean that in a good way. 

• Huge radish greens rise in my first row, a tangle of immature carrot greens surrounding them. 
• Hybrid bush cucumbers grow healthily in the second row. 
• Four patty-pan squash mounds in the third and fourth rows are sprouting. I must train them to grow up rather than spread out. 
• Green beans are growing. I can't wait to see the pods.
• My four tomatoes are growing and starting to flower! We can never have too many tomatoes, as my husband reminds me.
• The basil seeds I planted before my trip have not yet sprouted. I will grow the seeds at home next year, then transplant them to the garden.
• Three giant unknowns I did not plant are starting to act like umbrellas in the garden, blocking the sun for plants I do want. Out they go. (Community gardeners, can you identify the tall greens in the lower left and top right of my garden bed in the photo above?)

Trimmed and thinned a bit

Leaning on my knee pad, I move block by block along the edge. I trim the delicious arugula and pledge to plant more next year, lots more. I try to figure out why the full block of beet seedlings I planted in April now yields only one rose-colored beet. I thin out the radish greens, admiring the gorgeous red globes and wincing at the ones sacrificed to critters. (Note to self: Plant radishes deeper next year.) I snip my vibrant parsley. Then I liberate three healthy scallions I started on my windowsill, transplanted in the garden and will reroot on my windowsill in the next few days.

I bring a big bowl from home to collect my bounty and quickly discover the fresh greens overwhelm the bowl. (Gotta say, I'm loving this!) I grab a large box from my trunk and head back to the garden bed. I now have ample room to collect scallions, which I will cut into pieces and put on salads and chili; radishes, which I will clean, trim and leave on the counter for munching; parsley, which I will wash, trim and chop for chimichurri; and arugula, which I will wash and rewash before mixing with EVOO and balsamic for a peppery home-grown salad. (How does arugula get so sandy in topsoil?)

The garden manifests on my counter 

I feel like a schoolgirl coming home with her report card and wanting everyone to see. Look, mom, I got an A+ on my garden! I wash the greens in the kitchen sink and then lay them out -- so fresh, so colorful. Very exciting! To fellow newbie community gardeners, this is the thrill we wanted, right? To experienced community gardeners, I get it!

Final note: I've been meeting new people through this blog. So glad to know you, and pleased to have you join the conversation of community gardening! Give me a shout out in the blog. Let me know who you are and where you live in the community garden.

Until next time, I leave you with two photographs of Yellowstone National Park, both shot within the past week. Scroll down. Blow up the snaps on your screen to get the detail. I also add a reflection of the grandest Grand Teton mountain as my new blog background. Enjoy! 

-- Ciao, Diane Tunick Morello

Rainbow shines over Yellowstone National Park's
northern entrance in Gardiner, MT, June 1, 2018 

Minutes past sunset on the northern shore of Lake Yellowstone, June 5, 2018

The Day I Filled Out My Garden Bed and Began a List of Lessons Learned

It's Tuesday, May 22, and the temperature is in the high 60s in southwest Connecticut. Waterlogged plants have a few hours to dry out before rain starts again. During the past few days rain was persistent enough to postpone and then cancel the Greenwich Community Gardens social I had been hoping to enjoy. I'll develop other ways to meet neighboring gardeners.

Blogger Diane Morello

On Friday I stop by the garden, which is looking semi lush. Radishes are filling out, arugula -- which I have waited for weeks to see -- is growing (and tasting delicious), string beans are starting to pop up and curl, and the bell peppers are doing well. The tomatoes stand straight, even the runt I worried about last week. Kneeling on my knee pad, I place a poblano pepper in block 2-1, two cucumber bush seedlings in block 2-2 and several mounds of patty-pan squash seeds in blocks 3-3 and 4-3. As the sun peeps out, it will warm the soil and encourage the patty-pan seeds to sprout.

Dick and Pauline
at Bible Street Community Gardens

Two community gardeners, Dick and Pauline, have worked the Bible Street branch of Greenwich Community Gardens before. We discuss which plants do well where and when. Pauline's radishes flourish, and she is in the process of thinning them. Notably, she plants radishes along the edge of the plot, making them easy to pluck and to surround with other leafy vegetables. Her experience with patty-pan squash, however, was not promising. Gulp. 

After every visit to the community garden, I imagine what I will do differently next year. The list is short but growing, and it will help newbies like me:

• Use compost and topsoil early in the game. I was so eager to get started this year, I leapt over key steps that experienced gardeners use, such as composting.
• Plant herbs and lettuces along the rim. I planted large parsley in the middle of the bed, and I have a devil of a time reaching it without squashing other plants. Note to self: Stick to the edges.
• Add fish- and lobster-based material to the tomatoes. Experienced gardeners say the material fuels organic tomatoes. Community gardeners, have you tried the fish and shellfish material for tomatoes? What do you think? 
• Lay out the garden bed differently. Recall that I laid out my plot in twelve blocks of 24 by 16 inches. As I walk through the community garden, I see many garden beds laid out in rows. Another gardener's plot is laid out concisely in square-foot blocks. I need to think more methodically.

I leave shortly to visit Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in Wyoming. Amid the hiking and animal watching and picture taking, I will keep my eyes open for spring plantings, fresh vegetables and farm-to-table menus that I can share with you. Meanwhile, I depend on the kindness of community gardeners to water my garden bed while I am out west. Ciao for now!  

The Day I Harvest the First Greens from My Community Garden

On an overcast Wednesday in southwest Connecticut, May 16, I head to my garden plot in Greenwich Community Gardens in the woods of Cos Cob, Greenwich. It's 9:30 in the morning, and I am alone at the garden. 

Rain drops fall as I kneel by the garden bed. The vegetables look green and healthy. The honey drop cherry tomato, which I wrote off as dead last week, appears this week to have revived and grown (see "The Day I Learn That Some Vegetables Thrive, Others Wither -- Don't Take It Personally”). 

As I look around, I realize I have enough greens here to start harvesting. 

• Carefully I pick my first vegetables from the garden -- young radishes, arugula, fresh parsley, scallions.
• I twist off the still-tasty leaves from my "bolted" bok choy, toss the leaves into my bag of mixed greens, then toss the leggy stalk in the compost bin.
• At home I rinse the bitter greens, including the radish tops, and put them in a bowl with balsamic vinegar and EVOO. A tasty treat. 
• When I launched my community garden experiment two months ago, I could not imagine how happy I would feel harvesting my first crops. What a thrill!

I re-examine the other plants. Out of the twelve blocks I laid out, three blocks have room for new vegetables. Patty-pan squash is destined for one block, but it's too early. The weather continues to swing twenty to thirty degrees in a day. The seed packet suggests placing the patty-pans in the ground two weeks or more after the last frost date. I'll plant the seeds a couple days before Memorial Day. 

In other news, I got my assignment for community garden service this morning. I am now a member of the beautification team. During the season the team keeps the common areas free of weeds and vines, maintains and organizes the tool shed, spreads wood chips to prevent weeds and keeps the Welcome Garden in shape. We also plan to launch a garden project to complement the new shade structure being planned (mmmm, shade ... yes, please). Teams across the community garden keep things working properly, and the time we put into the teams count for our community service hours (eight hours to go for me).

I'll be back with more after I meet the beautification team at the community garden social this weekend. Ciao for now! 

The Day I Learn That Some Vegetables Thrive, Others Wither -- Don't Take It Personally

On a sunny Friday, May 11, I stop by my garden plot at the Bible Street community garden in the woods of Cos Cob, Greenwich, in southwest Connecticut. It's a stunning day, in the mid-70s.

I am the only human being at the community garden. The area is quiet, only the wind and the sound of critters scurrying in the leaves. Suddenly I hear a shriek. My head whips around as I try to identify the frightening sound. I hear it again: A wild turkey loudly gobbling in the woods, letting the females know its intentions.  

From the garden's front gate I see my garden plot, my peacock ornament sparkling from afar (see "The Day I Saw Green in My Community Garden Plot"). I snap a few pictures so you can see the garden I see (that's my hat shadow at the bottom). 

• Radishes pop, arugula clusters emerge, beets slowly peek out, and green beans take hold. Only one cucumber climbs out of the dirt among several I planted.
• Bok choy grows and flowers. (Is the flowering good or bad, anyone know?)
• An early Jalapeño plant in block 2-1 shows signs of illness. I remove it from the garden and place it in a container at home.
• When I check my tomato plants, three plants thrive, but the fourth, a honey drop cherry tomato in block 3-3, shrivels. I mourn the little red tomato that will never pop into my mouth. But I learn a valuable lesson: Plants thrive or wither. Don't take it personally! Try again, plant something new. 

With my honey drop tomato literally dying on the vine, I plan to use the space to plant cucumbers and patty-pan squash, both of which I will train to grow vertically. I will enjoy their sweetness during the late summer and fall.

A final note: The social spirit of the community garden begins this month. Saturday, May 19, marks our first community garden social. We introduce ourselves to other community gardeners and share beverages and snacks. We even have an opportunity to adopt plants that have been grown in the community garden greenhouses and now are ready for a plot of their own. 

The lessons I learn and the community spirit I see are the chief reasons I decided to participate in community gardening at Greenwich Community Gardens. I am a "yes" for the social spirit. In fact, I can't wait. More to come this week.

The Day I Saw Green in My Community Garden Plot

Finally! The community garden is greening! On an overcast Sunday, May 6, I head over to the Bible Street branch of Greenwich Community Gardens in the woodsy neighborhood of Cos Cob in Greenwich, CT. I visited the garden last Thursday, and I quickly learned that visiting in full sun in the middle of the day is a no-no for me. (D'oh!) Today I do things differently. Spurred by the overcast sky, I pack coffee, cold water and my new camera, then go check on the plot.

As soon as I get to the garden, I know my whispers of "grow, little ones, grow" were heard. When I look around, I see green sprouting all over. My spirit rises. Seven gardeners (a first) rest on their knees using trowels, planting seeds and pushing soil. I introduce myself, chat and wander. Some people build trellises for beans, others plant basil, a few lay out arugula and others pick beautiful flowers from their plots.

I pull a carton from the trunk of my car. Inside it are Tavera bush bean seedlings from home, four tomato plants from Garden Education Center of Greenwich and a six-pack of sweet peppers and parsley greens acquired at the Armstrong Court plant sale. My job is to plant everything today.

My garden plot when
I arrive today

In my 8x4-foot plot, green is popping across three columns and four rows. In block 1-2 (foreground, center), the radishes thrive. In blocks 2-2 and 2-3 (second row, center and right), vegetable cuttings grown at home -- celery, bok choy, endive and scallions -- are getting taller. In block 4-2 (back row, center), Blue Lake bush beans are peeping out, looking strong. (For more on my garden layout, see "The Day I Checked the Progress of My Community Garden.") 


Let's talk tomatoes for a moment. Some people say it's too early to plant tomatoes. I check the weather through the last frost date (i.e., May 15) and see overnight temps of 50s and 60s, and only  one night possibly at 48 degrees. I think I am safe. I dig four deep holes at the back of the plot for four tomatoes -- Rutgers, Mortgage Lifter, Super Sweet Cherry and Honey Drop Cherry. I'll check them this week to determine whether I need to bury them more deeply. As an aside, my husband, PJ, is planting the same set of tomatoes in our yard at home, and through the season we plan to compare the progress of the tomatoes -- mine grown in full sun, his grown in our sun-dappled yard. We figure, with twice the plants, we can have twice the BLTs.

The back end of the plot (row 4) is in the foreground

In front of the tomatoes (blocks 3-1 through 3-3), I plant sweet peppers, Tavera bush beans and parsley. I borrow some wire contraptions for the tomatoes and the beans, replace the shovel and head back home -- a productive visit on a perfect overcast day. In an hour, the garden looks green. 

How is your community garden going? What are you planting? 

  

The Day I Learned About Composting at the Community Garden

On a sunny Sunday, April 29, Greenwich Community Gardens teaches the secrets of composting. I admit that I was leery: I stayed away from the composting bins for weeks … big, smelly, strange. During the class I learned why composted soil is so valuable and why gardeners call it black gold. 

Simply put, composting transforms vegetable scraps and garden waste into nutrient-rich soil. The dark, rich, productive soil enriches tired soil and creates a foundational building block of a sustainable planet. 

Anitra gets us on board!
Photo source:
Miranda DeSantis 

The Sunday composting session, taught by Anitra Brooks Kocyba, makes the composting process straightforward.

Step 1. Bring kitchen and garden scraps to the community garden and deposit them in the appropriate compost bin. (In our community garden, that's bin 1, where the decomposition process begins.) What scraps are allowed? Egg shells, lettuce leaves, vegetable parings, cauliflower stems, coffee grounds, fruit rinds, garden trimmings, summer plants and fall leaves. No dyes, labels, meats, dairy or avocado pits.

Step 2. Once the kitchen and garden scraps are deposited in the bin, grab a pitchfork and turn over the ingredients. As Anitra turns over the ingredients in the bin, steam rises. Anitra plunges a large thermometer into the pile, and within seconds we see the temperature gauge rise 20-plus degrees over the surrounding air temperature.

Step 3. If the scraps include sweet fruit and thick rinds (e.g., cantaloupe, bananas, avocado), cut them into smaller pieces to make the turning-over easier. As summer arrives, take an extra step and layer the sweet scraps with leaves to discourage yellow jackets.

Black gold!
Photo source:
Creative Commons

Step 4. By the time the material reaches bin 3, it is a fine mulch-like soil. It's this fully composted soil that generates the nutrient-rich soil, the black gold that fuels sustainable gardens. It smells earthy, not spoiled or rotten. Anitra suggests we filter the material through a grate to separate items that have broken down from those that have not. We want the former.

Step 5. What about bin 2? Magic happens in bin 2. The composting team determines whether ingredients are decomposed enough to move from bin 1 to bin 2 or from bin 2 to bin 3. 

Being a convert to composting means I need to switch my kitchen habits. Instead of tossing away scraps, I need to save them (preferably in an odor-suppressing container). If the scraps I bring to the community garden can help produce black gold, increase my success with vegetables and help to build a sustainable planet, I'm all in. 

Still wondering whether soil and compost matter to our planet? Check out the April 18 cover story in the New York Times Magazine, "Can Dirt Save the Earth?"

The Day I Checked the Progress of My Community Garden Plot

On April 28 the sun shines in the Bible Street branch of Greenwich Community Gardens in southwest Connecticut. It's getting warmer here, warm enough to visit the garden without a jacket. I head over in the morning to see how the garden fared during a week of cold and minimal sun (enough, I say). Kneeling on the wood chips, I look closely at the plot to see what's growing.

• Beets and radishes start to peek out in the lower left, far fewer than I remember sowing. Heavy rains cause radish and beet seeds to migrate into other sections.
• Three types of carrots -- Danvers, Nantes, blends -- show no sign of growth (heavy sigh). I will assume they are busy stoking their fires beneath the surface.
• Leafy greens I sprouted at home -- celery, bok choy, arugula, endive, scallions -- are gaining strength but not necessarily growing taller.  The scallions and celery are the same height they were when I transplanted them.
• An experienced gardener warns me not to walk over the plot's soil, even in areas not planted. Doing so compacts the soil and prevents it from breathing. Got it. 

On this last Saturday in April, more than half the community garden plots are being cultivated, and green is starting to appear. When I visit, I see one, at most two people. In early May -- as temperatures warm, trees blossom and green markets launch -- I expect to see more people coming more regularly.   

The progress of my plot is a mystery, lots happening below the surface -- or not. I am convinced the garden is an experiment, and I have no problems trying this seed here, those sprouts there, these transplants over there.

I have converted my mental map of the garden plot to a layout -- twelve blocks, each 16 inches wide and 24 inches long. Rows 1 and 2 reflect what is in the soil now (give or take some playing around). Rows 3 and 4 will fill in as the soil warms. 


What do you think of this layout? Will it work? If not, why not? What would you do differently?