Success with cabbage

In spite of the challenges, a beautiful cabbage.

In spite of challenges from frost and pests, we had an excellent harvest of cabbage, and were able to donate many cabbages to the food pantry.

Our results are due to the care that has been taken to maintain our soil fertility while being observant of pests and applying control measures recommended by our Horticultural Advisers.

Soil is All: rationale for compost, cover crops and mulch

 On March 5^th I attended a workshop sponsored by the Carolina Botanical Garden: Soil is All. I share some information below that appears relevant to our garden.
Some of the practices discussed, such as soil testing and amending  already being applied to our garden. The presenters stressed the importance of humus/organic matter in soil, which provides space for air and improves water retention. Compost is the ideal way to add organic matter to soil because good quality compost improves the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of the soil. Other, more readily available, sources of organic mater, such as leaves and saw dust, improve primarily the physical characteristics of soil (see Building Soil with organic amendments.)

The complex components of soil ecosystems were explained briefly. Topsoil and soil that supports growth is alive with both visible (worms, larvae and insects) and invisible organisms. Micro-organisms, especially the fungi, mycorrhizae* are essential for healthy plant growth. The interaction between certain fungi, mycorrhizae, and plant roots benefits both (symbiosis) and helps the plants absorb nutrients and resist disease http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/faculty/davies/research/mycorrhizae.html.

Planting cover crops, especially legumes, helps maintain healthy mycorrhizal populations . Tilling and leaving soil bare disrupts this beneficial soil ecosystem.

In addition to cover crops, and intensive planting, the workshop demonstrated and recommended use of mulch to cover bare soil. Placing mulch over the soil protects against soil erosion, suppresses weeds, stabilizes soil temperature, reduces water loss from evaporation, and creates a barrier between plants and soil-borne diseases.

All mulches block sunlight, so prevent seeds already present in the soil below from sprouting. Compost can be used as a mulch, but allows wind-borne weeds to grow vigorously. In contrast, other mulches, such as landscape cloth, newspaper, or a thick layer of leaves, grass clippings, straw or wood chips, usually don’t provide the conditions that wind-borne seeds need to sprout.
 At the UNC Campus Community Garden a thick cover of leaves is used for mulch. Sometimes mulch is placed around small plants. Alternatively, existing mulch can be cut or moved aside to place transplants or seeds.

Many mulch materials decompose, adding organic mater to the soil, and must be replaced yearly. The book that is our primary gardening guide, Weedless Gardening, by Lee Reich, provides a mulch guide (page 24-25) and recommends adding mulch whenever bare soil is visible (page 48). Currently, some of our beds are mulched with decomposing cover crops, but bare soil abounds. In the future, we should consider how best to apply mulch to our garden.
  -- Kris Weigle

Spring garden progress is happening

Snow peas!

The spring has brought its share of challenges, beginning  with earlier than normal warm weather in February, drought, and killing frost in March.
 
 Lately we've been so busy in the garden we haven't had time to post.

 


Overall the weather enabled us to clean
up the garden and prepare the beds. We harvested  most of the winter onions as green, leaving some to mature along with garlic which we had also planted last fall.

The first spring crop to be planted was snow peas, and we built an improved pea support using bamboo. Working with bamboo was another challenge, but it did go up and is serving its purpose.

Snow peas support

Red and Green Kale

The drought slowed germination and growth of crops. Timely rains have finally arrived, and now that frost danger is past we'll have our irrigation on again. We have an abundance of greens and have begun harvesting lettuce, spinach, kale and snow peas. We are grateful for the abundance of early produce.

Our current challenge is cabbage loopers which are raising havoc with some cabbage, but we are working to limit the damage using BT a biological control.

                                                                   There is never a dull moment at Koinonia Community Garden.

Sometimes you have to improvise

Our garden is a work in progress.  This year warm spring weather arrived in February.  It has been quite dry, so we took advantage of those conditions to begin planting.  We have planted a variety of seeds to date.  So far only the snow peas, which were planted first during February, have germinated and started to grow.
The first week of March we harvested our winter onions and started planting more seeds as well as cabbage and broccoli transplants. The next week the weather changed, as a winter storm was forecast to hit on the next weekend.
On the following Saturday we went to the garden and found the cabbage and broccoli plants for most part getting established with some signs of scorching from frost.  We were concerned they would not be hardy enough to withstand the winter conditions in the forecast. We had not foreseen this possibility, and so didn't have any covers available to cover the beds.
So, we improvised by using plastic shopping bags to place over the individual plants, with dirt around the edges to prevent them from blowing away.  During the next five days, we were hit with winter cold and strong winds that dropped the temps into the low 20s.
Fortunately our plants survived under the bags. After we took bags off, we experimented with some home made cloches made from plastic bottles and covers.
The next day the plants under them seemed okay, but we took them off as we were concerned they might get too hot under the strong sun as temperatures were climbing into the upper 50s.
Lesson learned: improvisation is okay, but preparation is better.
Cloches need close monitoring and work better for a back yard garden. We will need to get proper covers to have on hand for the beds.

Inspiring examples: balancing individual plots and communal beds in one community garden

Community gardens share many common purposes, but achieve these using diverse approaches. At the Dig-In, I learned about three gardens that combine the best features of the two most common types of community gardens, plot garden and cooperative garden. In this way, they are building community while providing harvest for both gardeners and for those with limited food access.

The availability of individual plots is attractive to some gardeners, allowing diversity of methods, crops and working hours. The gardeners share methods, harvest and participate in group activities. Communal plots provide an important option for those who don’t want the responsibility of their own plots and/or want to garden alongside others. Both strategies can provide harvest for the needy. 

One of these hybrid gardens, the community garden of Asbury United Methodist Church has many features in common with Koinonia Garden. It is located on church property, which impacts appearance requirements and working hours. It is entirely volunteer run. Similar to Koinonia, their gardeners receive produce, but from their individual plots. In contrast to Koinonia, they harvest their donated produce from both the individual plots (50% of harvest) and 100% of common plots.

This garden began in 2011 with 37 5' x 20' raised beds constructed at the site of a former baseball field; all plots were leased the first year. The next year, they built additional raised beds (due to demand; there is a waiting list for beds) and communal beds. So the Asbury garden became a hybrid garden of both individual and common garden beds. The yearly lease contract requires that gardeners donate 50% of harvest, meet appearance requirements and provide their own seed, supplements, compost, etc. The leasing fee ($25/plot) pays the water bill. Those leasing individual beds participate, with other volunteers, in garden workdays and harvest teams.  These teams gather harvest for the needy twice weekly.
-- Kris Weigle

Relevant links:
Dig-In presentations
Asbury Community Garden
Hope Community Garden
Camden Street Garden

Opening Day

It was a bright, cold--32 degrees at 9:00am this past Saturday March 4, official opening day for KOINONIA. Winter trash lay against the deer fencing and flowering broccoli sheltered cabbage moths. Weeks earlier, in anticipation of this day, supplements had been added to the soil according to soil samples taken late last fall. Our little field had been tilled and composting will ramp up in the coming weeks.
 
With 7 participants on Saturday the trash was cleaned up, old cole plants composted, cabbage and broccoli transplants planted, kale seeded, onions harvested, mushrooms soaked and all was watered.  

We also harvested our winter onions, to make room for spring crops.

In coming weeks we will continue to plant cool weather seeds such as swiss chard, beets, lettuces and others.

--PAXPLH

Spring in the air

Hi,
Today was a great day to garden. Despite short notice, 5 gardeners came to the garden and got started preparing the soil for spring crops.
Cover crop of oats cut down, and snow peas were planted in Bed 16 (former pepper bed) and plans were made to build a support using bamboo so that peas can grow up strings.
The clover cover crop that had been planted in the former corn bed and our winter cover crop was mowed and plowed under and left to rot.
Lots of weeding and weed suppression (using paper and mulch). Broccoli harvested. 
--Kris