From the Gardens Registrar: Garlic Planting Workshop; Garden Arbor and Rain Garden; Squash Facts; Workday at Eagle Heights Saturday Morning

Hello Gardeners,

GARLIC PLANTING WORKSHOP – A reminder – garlic-master Gary K. will give his annual garlic-planting workshop, near the EH shed, on Saturday, September 14, from 9am – 10am. As always, he does not recommend planting garlic until October. In fact, he thinks that the best time this year will be after October’s full moon, October 13. His talk will cover how, when, and where to plant garlic. If you love Allium sativum, you should really hear Gary’s advice before you plant.

GARDEN ARBOR AND RAIN GARDEN – The beautiful Garden Arbor at Eagle Heights is maintained entirely by volunteers. We can always use more people to help out with weeding and other tasks. Yes, you get workday credit for your time. Please let me know if you’re interested. This year, we added more space to the Arbor Garden, by turning the former Plot 606A into a rain garden. The lowest area of the gardens, most of the 500 and 600 rows, was flooded much of last year, and again this spring. We had two reasons for creating this rain garden – one being to establish a perennial garden that would grow well under wet conditions. The other reason was to see if a rain garden could be helpful to neighboring plots. The rain garden volunteers dug out some of the dirt/mud in the space and lowered the area before the rain garden plants were put in. Hopefully, if/when we get heavy rains in the future, some of the water will run into the rain garden, leaving other nearby plots drier. The plants have settled in very nicely and are growing well. One result we’ve seen already is that the plants in this garden are attractive to butterflies – volunteers counted 15 Monarch larvae on the swamp milkweeds last weekend.

WHY ARE SQUASH CALLED “SQUASH”? – Our term for the vegetable,” squash” (okay, botanically, it’s really a fruit) comes from a Narragansett Indian word, askutasquash, which means, “eaten raw or uncooked.” Squash and pumpkins have been cultivated for food (and utensils in the case of gourds) for at least 12,000 years, and originally grew wild in Central America. When Europeans came to North America in the 1500s, they found the native peoples growing and eating a number of different kinds of squash, most of which are still grown and eaten today. Zucchini, like all the other squash, originated in the Americas, but were developed in Italy in the late Nineteenth Century, and then were brought back here by Italian immigrants. Here’s an article on squash history from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/squash.html

WORKDAY – We will have a workday at Eagle Heights this Saturday, September 14, from 9am – Noon. The task will be removing weeds and debris from the shed area and the 1300’s path. Please bring gloves. Meet at the garden shed. Here’s the link to sign up: https://doodle.com/poll/6zwnufbfhba8z4ai

Happy gardening,

Kathryn