Hope for Spring

In this bitter cold, I am thinking more about my garden, counting the days until the ground will thaw and I can play in the dirt once again. In the meantime, I am consoling myself with seed catalogues, which offer hope for spring.

Every year, the catalogues begin arriving in my mailbox before Thanksgiving.  Somehow they know that I’m an avid gardener, and that the coming winter cold will have me hoping for and dreaming of spring. The seed sellers know that I need a diversion from the holiday festivities, and that my green thumb will start itching in January.  

I must admit that I have great fun leafing through the catalogues and my leisure, looking at the new varieties and contemplating which old favorites I will grow again this year.  Jimmy Nardello and Yummy peppers are on my list, as are Juliette and Golden Jubilee tomatoes. I’m trying a new tomato variety this year – Genuwine – a cross between Brandywine and Costoluto Genovese - from Totally Tomatoes.  I will grow Ping Tung Long Asian eggplants, and Bride, a white variety I grew some time ago.  After growing Tokyo Cross turnips last fall, I will try Shogoin turnips this spring. These are two lovely Asian turnips, producing plump, tender white roots, ranging from the size of large marbles to golf balls. I also plan to grow a variety of spring greens – Swiss chard in many colors, red mustard, and two types of kale.  

My order from Pinetree Garden Seeds arrived last week, keeping hope alive. In the next week or two, I will start my winter greens indoors, in a special spot in my basement.  That’s a topic for another blog.

    

It’s time to order seeds, if you haven’t already done so. You can grow vegetables by seed that you could never purchase in a garden center or plant sale - unless you plan to spend all of your gardening time running from sale to sale. You may discover some favorite varieties.  If you are a seasoned gardener, please let us know what you like to grow...   

Third Time's the Charm

This is my third attempt at resuming my blog posts for my beloved Mamie D. Lee Community Garden.  This year, for me, blogging has been a lot like gardening.  It takes a little while to figure things out and get it right.  Here's hoping that the third time's the charm!

Summer is officially here- the summer solstice was yesterday, June 21, 2013, the longest day of the year.  Lots of extra daylight for gardening.  It's not too late to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beans, cucumbers, and squash.  These are all "hot weather plants" and love the summer weather that is descending upon us.  Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant must be started from transplants, if you can still find any this late. Beans and squash can be started from seed.

Those of you whose garden plots were flooded with ample spring rains still have time to plant a nice summer garden.  Don't delay .... after July 4, you are running the risk of diminishing returns for heat loving crops.  More on that later.

Happy gardening!

Christina Scheltema

In the Weeds - Alien Invaders

Rock Creek Park is home to many wonderful flora and fauna. Sadly, it is also home to a number of alien invaders. A few of these have crept into our garden.  Here are the invasive exotic plants that I have found in the Mamie D. Lee Community Garden, one of two community gardens in the park.

One hot spot for alien invaders is the fence adjacent to the Mamie D. Lee School. Clearing this fence was the project for a special work day. Ana Chuquin, a ranger from the US National Park Service, came out to help us identify invasive weeds growing along the fence. She showed us the difference between native and exotic vines - we have both growing.  Natives include poison ivy and trumpet creeper - whereas porcelain berry, pictured below, is the exotic invasive.  She also told us about the Rock Creek Park weed warrior program that trains volunteers in invasive weed species. This training, which she teaches, is 5 hours, half in the classroom, half in the field.  Once trained, weed warriors are asked adopt a piece of parkland - such as our fence or meadow - for a year.  The next weed warrior training session is September 16 and 19, 2015.  Please click on the link to register.

Porcelain berry vine with berries

The fence is covered with porcelain berry, which looks a little bit like a grape vine, except that the berries, which start green, turn a bright turquoise/blue color. This vine can take over an area.  The fence line is also home to some Japanese bush honeysuckle. Both spread readily by berries, eaten by birds and other wildlife. Remove the flowers and berries and you limit the spread.

Young shoot of  porcelain berry 

Porcelain berry pops up all over the garden, but it can be pulled as it emerges. The young shoots have a reddish brown tinge,  I find it growing near the hose bib in my plot.  This vine should not be neglected for long or it will cover anything and everything nearby.  

Porcelain berry wine with flower and green berries

 Japanese bush honeysuckle has lovely flowers that look just like honeysuckle vines but are not as fragrant.  The plant is a bush, with pinnate leaves.  The berries are a beautiful bright red; sadly, they are not nutritious for wildlife. I've heard them called "junk food" for birds.  This weed should be cut back and pulled. If you catch it before bloom, it can be composted. The blooms and berries should be bagged and discarded in the trash.

Japanese bush honeysuckle in bloom  

Japanese bush honeysuckle with berries

I've also see n mile-a-minute vine growing near that fence, but not this year.  This weed is a minute is a prickly green vine with triangular leaves that grows a mile a minute, hence its name.  This needs to be hand pulled as soon as it emerges.  The larger it gets, the pricklier it gets, and the harder it is to pull. Like porcelain berry, it also has turquoise blue berries.  This should be pulled as soon as it is soon.  If it is blooming, or has berries, it should be bagged and discarded in the trash.    

English ivy climbing tree along the fence

Another alien invader along the fence is English ivy.  This often escapes from yards and gardens.  It may be deliberately dumped in parkland by unscrupulous fly-by-night landscapers who want to dispose of it quickly and easily. The ivy takes root, climbs trees, and eventually kills them. It also destroys native habitat. Any English ivy in our garden should be pulled, bagged, and discarded in the trash. This weed should not be composted - it roots too easily.

Star of Bethlehem 

Scattered throughout the garden is a seasonal perennial weed that flowers in the spring - Star of Bethlehem.  I pulled lots of  this out of my plot this year - it has long and narrow green leaves, with a white stripe down the center, similar to a crocus - with green and white flowers blooming in later spring.  It is a late spring flowering bulb that goes dormant after flowering. These bulbs should be dug out, bagged, and discarded in the trash.

A few of our gardeners grow shiso, or Perilla, as an annual herb. This is a reddish Asian herb that is grown in many gardens - unfortunately it also escapes to the wild.  It looks like purple ruffled basil but with larger leaves and a very mild herbal fragrance. This can become invasive if allowed to go to seed.

Perilla, also known as Shiso  

There is a large healthy patch of Japanese Knotweed growing across the footpath from the garden. This is an incredibly invasive shrub that can take over an entire natural area, outcompeting native plants.  They say, however, that you can eat its shoots in the early spring.

Wineberry leaves and fuzzy stem

Wineberries grow along the Gallatin Street parking lot and footpath, at the edge of the woods to the south of the garden. These are my favorite alien invader - the berries are really tasty.  Wineberries are briar bushes, like raspberries, with small reddish fuzzy spines all over the stems.  The berries ripen in June, to become food for foragers - like me- and wildlife. I not-so-secretly hope that the Park Service is too busy to clear these.

Tree of Heaven Seedling

Last, but far from least, we have Tree of Heaven growing in the woods outside the garden, near the tool shed and compost. This is a dreadful invasive - when you cut down one tree, it sprouts shoots from the stump, like a hydra. It can form small thickets. I've heard forestry managers call it the "tree from hell," for this reason.  Tree of Heaven also reproduces by seed - I've pulled a few seedlings from the area near the compost, and suggest that you do the same. The National Park Service will be treating the parent trees with herbicide sometime this fall or winter.  

As I conclude this post, I'd like to share the National Park Service Publication on invasive weeds of the mid Atlantic.  It's a great reference book that I'm always giving away.  Learn to identify alien invaders, and remover them by any means necessary, even if that means you must ear them.  

http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/pubs/midatlantic/midatlantic.pdf
  
Happy gardening!

Christina

Some Like it Hot!


If you're anything like me, you've suffered during the horrible heat wave of 2012. You've sweated profusely, drinking water or gator aid constantly, and hibernating in the great air conditioned indoors as much as possible. The garden, however, didn't have a choice.  It had to take the heat.

I'm happy to report that some plants like it hot.  Beans, eggplants, okra, squash, tomatoes, and peppers thrive in the heat, as long as they receive adequate water. These are all short season, hot weather vegetables.  In fact, some of these veggies won't thrive until the temperature starts to rise.  Squash and melon seeds will not germinate if the soil is too cool, and can be planted as late as the fourth of July.

I managed to plant most of my summer garden and am watching the tomatoes, peppers, and beans grow by leaps and bounds. The weeds are also growing like -well - weeds and sometimes getting ahead of me.  (More on that in my next post.)  I'm watering and fertilizing often, eagerly anticipating the taste of my first ripe tomato, which I intend to eat in the garden, with the juice dribbling down my chin.  Sigh...I'm glad that some vegetables like it hot.

-Christina Scheltema, aka Brookland Garden Lady        

Gardeners enjoy beautiful weather for the June cleanup!

After an evening of torrential downpours Friday night, the skies parted on Saturday and the sun came out for a perfect-weather cleanup workday!  Lots of gardeners came out to work together on:

* maintaining our community compost bins
* building the 9th (and final!!) raised bed
* weeding our new rain garden
* weedwhacking & general maintenance
* rebuilding the woodchip pathways
* inventorying our communal tools

and then joined with the Neighborhood Farm Initiative to share a garden-themed potluck!

Thanks everyone who came out to work

Travis Jones Leads Troop 524 in Installing a Demonstration Garden at Mamie Lee!

When the Mamie Lee Garden was granted funds from the National Park Foundation in order to improve our garden infrastructure, the goal was always to simultaneously enhance community relations, resulting in a high-visibility model community garden in the nation’s capital, offering interpretive educational and outreach opportunities, and encouraging interaction with the park from both adult and youth members of the ethnically diverse and vibrant community living adjacent to our garden.

 

     The Garden in October 2008,                                               Same view May 2012 after
         before any improvements                                            installation of fence & planter beds

Last summer, Suzanne Richardson of Abbey Gardens landscape design and garden installation services began designing us a beautiful series of raised beds and a beautiful garden entryway, which included a fruit tree espalier, banana tree, and 3 whimsical animal topiary forms to welcome everyone into the garden.  However, one of the challenges of gardening on public land is of course getting the proper permits and approvals for every aspect of every project, and unfortunately most of the design was returned to us as being non-compliant with Park regulations. Suzanne was brilliant to work with, and she back to the drawing board and returned a new design featuring a variety of perennial non-woody native flowers and grasses, herbs, and annual flowers.

About the same time as we felt the specific varieties of proposed plants had been shown to so many employees that approval must be imminent, I was contacted by Rock Creek Park's Volunteer Program Coordinator, Scott, who had received a phone call from Ms Anita Jordan about her son who wanted to do his Eagle Scout project with Rock Creek Park, but near Fort Totten.  Her son, Travis Jones, is a member of Boy Scout Troop 524 under direction of scoutmaster Mr. Jamil Smart, and he was hoping to finish his project in time to achieve Eagle Scout honor at the next court of honor later this summer.  It seemed like a perfect match, so I met with Travis after our first garden cleanup back at the beginning of March to discuss the project.  He was eager to get started as soon as possible, but we were still waiting on the permit for construction of the raised beds. As time went on, we were both grew worried about meeting our deadlines, but thankfully the Rock Creek Park employees worked with us to expedite the permitting process (thank you all again!)


We worked for 11 hours on Saturday and finished up with a 4-hour workday on Sunday, with many Boy Scout moms and dads joining in to work alongside their sons.  



The final product is something we are all really proud of, and have gotten a lot of compliments already from many passersby on the pedestrian pathway.

 

June 2011 saw the first fence posts being installed    Same view May 2012 after completion of 
                                                                                                         fence & planter beds

Travis Jones and Troop 524 who installed the planters                      Proud mothers of Troop 524

It's also really gratifying to see the students from Mamie Lee School with their teachers out enjoying the new planter beds!  Suzanne had specifically chosen varieties of plants that have peculiar “sensory” qualities, so that the students can enjoy interacting with the planter beds as horticultural therapy.  Thanks to Ms Lechner for all your work in the garden, and for these photos!

                   Mamie Lee students enjoying the new planter beds

spring has sprung

It's early spring, but some plots in the garden are full of green (and purple and yellow and red, too). Most of the plots have been cleared of debris and tilled -- and a few gardeners have already planted and started to see the fruits of their labor.

I took a few pictures this week and plan to take more as the plants grow. Already we can see lettuces, tomatoes, eggplant, artichoke, onions, and lots of herbs.

swiss chard

wild mint (which grows plentifully all over the garden)

variety of lettuces

baby beets

More pictures from the garden this week can be seen here. (I'm not sure what all of them are -- so please leave a comment below if you're able to identify any.)