Celebrate Earth Day at the garden on April 22

Garden Orientation on Earth Day, April 22 at 10 am

Everyone is invited to come to the garden to celebrate with us. We will share a bit about what we do, and how. This is for everyone, whether you're curious, experinced, or anyone who might be considering joining the garden, and wants to learn more. Come out and see what we're doing. No experience necessary. All ages welcome.

The garden is located at Evergreen United Methodist Church, 11098 Hwy 15-501, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

  

Summer storm

A recent storm took down a large limb from the tall sweet gum tree at the garden, dropping it on the top bar of our swing. Though we enjoyed the swing, which sadly may not be repairable, we were grateful the limb didn't land on our shed, rain barrels for deer fence, which would have been a worse outcome for the garden.
 

Broccoli Challenges

Growing broccoli has been a challenge. We've grown it with varying degrees of success. It can do well as a fall and winter crop, but wither season presents its own problems. 

Planted as a spring crop, broccoli has yielded mixed results. The soil in the early spring is too cold, and transplants grow slowly with unpredictable rainfall in early spring. Our plantlys have been damaged by spring frosts even when grown under row cover. Sudden the weather turns, only to be blasted with intense sunlight and too much heat just as they are starting to make heads. Some times broccoli has been a lot of work and little to show for it.

This year we had more success when we tried a variety that is less bothered by heat. We received a donation pkt of Pakman broccoli seed which, which gave us much better results. The plants grew very uniform, and most produced nice heads at the same time. We have been very please with Pakman and will definitely grow it again next spring and leave the Green Magic for fall-winter

Spring Thoughts

 At this time our spring planting is well under way, and some of our crops are making progress.  With some good rains recently the garden is beginning to recover from the devastating effects of prolonged drought from last fall an into the winter. It goes without saying that much depends upon weather. Many of our fall plants were severely damaged by long lasting aphid attacks due to the prolonged warm season and no frost to kill them. 

So far this spring our snow peas, spinach, and potatoes are doing well. Our fall planted onions are showing stress from drought over the winter. Two plantings of carrots failed, due to a hard frost, and the replanted seed didn't come up. While the rain barrels help, rain is still the best. We are grateful for the recent rains, which have helped considerably.

Community Gardening in the time of Covid 19- part 2

 

Nov. 3, 2020

This is an update to the previous post written last spring during Shelter in Place. 

Initially, none of us could have imagined this situation would last as long as it has. In the spring we thought it might only be for several weeks. As noted in the previous post, the garden was in maintenance mode for a time, but in May we reopened under phase 1 guidelines which allowed up to ten persons to gather in an outdoor space while maintaining social distance. Basically that continued all summer until the fall, as we never really opened to the public. About fifteen gardeners have contributed in some way to the effort, with a core group of eight or so who have been most active. This was about half as many gardeners as we had in 2019.

In spite of everything that happened we have managed to continue through the year and had some good crop yields which allowed us to continue donating produce to the food pantry almost every week. And it has been on a week-by-week basis, of just staying focused and doing what needed to be done at the garden.  The garden is large enough that it is easy to work while maintaining social distance. 

We have the reward of being outdoors in a pleasant environment and also the satisfaction of doing something productive to help others by donating many pounds of fresh produce. For that opportunity we are grateful. All of us miss being able to move about freely and spend time with friends and family, and activities that we were involved in and perhaps took for granted prior to covid 19. Working together in the garden also provides the benefits of some social interaction with others in person that we otherwise might not have.

Community Gardens: Nourishing the Body and Soul

 

COMMUNITY GARDENS:  

 Nourishing the Body and the Soul 

Thursday, December 3, 2020 

7:00PM - 8:30PM 

Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88667421907  

Learn WHY Community Gardens are important and HOW to manage them. 

Mary Ellen McGuire, pastoral associate at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Chapel  Hill, will discuss why community gardens are an important part of creation care. 

Managers of three local gardens will talk about how to manage and maintain  community gardens. 

 

• Paul & Pat Kelly, Franciscan Community Garden in Raleigh 

• Bob Weickert, San Isidro Labrador Garden in Chapel Hill 

• Deborah Gorman, Koinonia Garden in Chatham County 

Matt Jones of the NC Cooperative Extension Service will explain the services and  resources available through this agency. 

This event is co-sponsored by Orange-Chatham Interfaith Care for Creation  and Interfaith Creation Care of the Triangle.

Sweet Potato Time

This year's sweet potato harvest was a smashing success. Sweet potatoes are one plant that seem to thrive in hot weather, so they were not phased by the intense heat this summer.  Nevertheless, we weren't sure how the flash drought that came in September would affect them. We watered them as much as we could, and then when a cooler day came we tried a few hills with a fork to see if they were ready.  

We are very pleased and thankful for the results of our effort.

Changing Seasons

In gardening, one always has to keep a wary eye on the weather. 
We started our spring planting season in February with onions, snap peas, mustard greens and turnips.
The spring came slowly as much of February was rainy with below normal temperatures after the first week, which had seemed promising. So our spring crops took hold slowly and some weeks showed little progress. Onion plants grew slowly, and onion seed failed to germinate until nearly the end of March.  On the weekend of March 15, we planted our blueberries, as noted in the last post.
The blueberries remained dormant for the first few weeks as the soil temperature was still cold. That didn't matter, as winter conditions are recommended for planting them. They seemed to benefit from this slow start and gradually warming soil during April.  We did not lose a single one of our plants; all of them took hold.
We having our soil tested, we followed recommendations for amendments for the blueberries and other areas of the garden.

Sweet peppers planted among green onion and beets

What's new for us this year is a change of style from solid monoculture of plants per bed to interplanting of different crops within a bed. Along the same lines we're doing more succession planting. Instead of planting all of a type of plant at once, say for example cucumbers and beans, we are doing additional successive plantings at a later date. We'll have to see how this works out.
So far this has had mixed success.  Some times rain prevented us from getting back to plant when we wanted, so our second planting of peas went in late and they were affected by hot weather in May, which diminished their yield.  We had put row cover on the broccoli to protect from cabbage moth, but the sudden very warm temperatures caused them to mature rapidly under the covers and bolt.
In the bed pictured above, green onions were planted by seed in March, beets were planted in April, and peppers in May. As onions and beets are harvested, more space is created for growing sweet pepper plants.
There is always something new to learn in the garden.

Blueberries are in

Celebrating our successful planting of 14 blueberry plants to the garden.
After getting our soil tested, which thankfully revealed the soil in our patch to be acidic enough to plant without requiring the  addition of sulfur, we hacked and dug a planting space in the clay, and amended the soil with pine chip soil conditioner and fertilizer.
Then we planted the blueberries this weekend.
We're very excited to get them in, even though it will be a couple of years before we will actually be picking any berries.

Spring Ahead

This past weekend was the annual time to set the clocks ahead one hour, or "spring ahead" for daylight savings time.
As always in gardening, we've had to keep a wary eye toward the weather forecast. The weather in Feb. stayed cool and rainy for the most part, but in spite of it we managed to make progress.
Starting the first Saturday in February, we had to cancel twice on cold rainy days.  The second time a couple of us went out to the garden on Sunday afternoon.
Since the ninth of February, the garden has been springing ahead slowly, as we cleared mulch from the beds, weeded, planted some early seeds, and some onion plants.
This week we'll be adding some blueberry plants.  That project involves some digging into the clay soil, and adding pine chip soil conditioner, which we started last weekend.

Spring Dreams

It's been a while since we posted.
Much has happened, including a couple of major hurricanes passing through the region, though not so directly impacting our area of the Piedmont, except for some flooding here and there.
But our garden is still alive, and we're making plans to get started.
Checking our conditions at present-- the weather has been mild, but with a lot of rain.
Our garden is located on high ground, so we have fairly good drainage. Checking the beds this weekend they seem to be fairly wet, perhaps too wet to begin planting just yet.
We're making plans and getting ready though. First up is some maintenance needing to be done after the winter storms. We'll first be planting some snow peas and onions next month. Possibly putting in blueberry plants on our slope, which has been a long-term goal.
Starting in February we're resuming our work times, which will be Saturday afternoon from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Stop by for a visit if you're in the neighborhood. 

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.

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.

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

Got okra?

What's so great about okra!

 First it's from the north east of Africa and fits in perfect with our hot humid southern summers, having not problem producing it's green lady finger pods right up to the first heavy frost. The plant easily grows over your head no matter if you are 5 foot or 7 foot! Once the green pods start to form they literally grow over night!  Optimum picking size would be that of your little finger. When sliced a mucus like liquid is produced. This mucus combined with the fiber of the pod make great digestives. Okra is also high in folic acid, vitamins A and B with healthful minerals zinc, and calcium.

Favorite preparations are to slice into coins or spears for gumbo, soups, and fritters or leave whole for your best pickle recipe. I like to cut up the pods, soak in sour milk, batter in cornmeal/flour/salt/pepper and fry in oil. I can't eat this way all the time, it's a real splurge! So while the okra's fresh we indulge!

 --Pat H

One year ago, we planted our first seeds

 

 "Be joyful in God, all you lands; sing the glory of his name; sing the glory of his praise.
"Say to God, 'How awesome are your deeds! All the earth bows down before you, sings to you, sings out your Name.'" --Ps. 66:1-3

We have much to celebrate this week.  It was just about a year ago that we made our first plantings at Koinonia Garden.  Much has transpired in the past year, and God has blessed us richly in this endeavor. Countless volunteer hours and gifts have already been contributed to Koinonia before we picked our first greens last fall.  It came about by faith, love, and hard work combined.

We are thankful that our garden shed is nearly complete. It looks great!
At this time we have an overabundance of produce including peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and even sweet corn that we didn't have a year ago.  We have so much harvest now and work to do, that we could actually use some help.  So if you've been away or haven't had time to get out to the garden recently, your help would be greatly appreciated.
As you can see from the picture above, we did have some storm damage to the sweet corn this week, that we had to attend to, and we also picked sweet corn from the downed plants that was ready.
We have shared much produce to the pantry at Evergreen and the Benevolence at Christ Church.
This month we will begin planting some crops for the fall season.
We welcome you to join us and look forward to seeing you soon at the garden.
-- D

Pruning, planting and summer tomatoes

Recently the garden has been blessed with timely rains, and our crops are responding with rapid growth.

We've been pruning and supporting our lanky tomato vines every week, and today we harvested the first of the regular tomatoes.  Cherry tomatoes have been ripening for a couple of weeks now.  We're trying to control fungus by cutting off lower branches that touch the ground.  It seems every time we come back there are more branches in need of cutting.  Behind the lower branches is where we've discovered ripening tomatoes we couldn't see from other angles. Our efforts are bearing fruit.

The first planting of sweet corn is now higher than our knees, and the second and third plantings are coming along.  The first beans are up, and more will be added once the ground dries a bit.  Cucumbers are growing, okra is just starting to come up.

Peas & lettuce out, cucumbers & beans in

This week brought the end of lettuce for our spring garden.  We harvested the last of the first planting of peas, and took out the plants.  We planted cucumbers and our first planting of green beans.  Next come the second planting of sweet corn and okra, as the last peas go out, probably the end of this week.
Little of our abundance goes to waste. Most of the lettuce and lots of peas went to the local food pantry, along with a large bag of Swiss chard picked this morning. The carrots are coming in, and more beets too.
We're seeing our first challenges from pests.  We lost two tomato plants to a disease that is spread by thrips.
And, we've destroyed Japanese Beetles that attacked the basil, eggplant and tomatoes.
It's all good.