Hello Gardeners,
COLD NIGHTS – The current forecast is for temperatures close to
freezing Friday night, (33 degrees F), and continued night time temperatures in
the middle or upper 30s for the next week. So pick your produce unless it’s
frost-tolerant, or else protect your plants.
LEAF MULCH – The University Houses Gardens really need leaf
mulch. As always, the problem is getting it there. We get our leaves from the
Village of Shorewood, and when they start bringing leaves to us, later this
month, they will bring a load to U Houses first. We don’t mean to slight U
Houses, but with the only access being an unpaved road, and so much of the
garden area being really wet and soft, it’s often just not possible to get
supplies there.
Meanwhile, there is still lots
of leaf mulch at Eagle Heights. As you pull out your dead vegetable plants, you
can cover your garden with a good layer of mulch. It will protect any perennial
plants in your garden from severe weather. Also, it will improve your soil as
it decomposes, suppress weeds, and reduce soil erosion. However, it can also make
a nice cozy winter habitat for voles. If you have a lot of voles in your garden
neighborhood, you might want to wait until the ground is frozen before bringing
the mulch.
SWEET POTATOES – I know that quite a few of our gardeners signed up
this spring for the Dane County Sweet Potato Project. (The project provides
free sweet potato slips to gardeners who are willing to share half their crop
with food pantries.) If you grew sweet
potatoes this year, how well did they do? Did you try growing them in
five-gallon buckets? (This was a separate, but related project.) Please email
me (ehgardens@rso.wisc.edu) and let me know how this worked out for you. Have
you harvested yet? Once you dig them up, it’s best to put them through a curing
process before storing or donating them. Here’s a link to the project’s
website, which has lots of information about growing and harvesting these
vegetables: https://sweetpotatoproject.wordpress.com/
DO
YOU HAVE PICTURES OF YOUR GARDEN TO SHARE? - Thanks to the generosity of a number of seed
companies, which donate outdated (but still viable) seeds to community gardens,
we are able to provide free seeds to our gardeners, at our annual Spring Seed
Fair, and at other times of the year, as well. I’m sending thank you letters to
these companies, and would like to enclose some pictures that gardeners have taken
this year of their plots – particularly pictures that show gardeners planting and
harvesting. We put pictures on our website, too, and could really use some new
ones. Please email them to me. Thank you.
BRUSSELS
SPROUTS – Some gardener pulled up
their Brussels Sprouts, and threw them in the dumpster. Of course, they should
have gone on the weed pile rather than the dumpster, but I can understand
throwing them out. They’re not exactly my favorite vegetable, either. But some
people love them. Here’s a recipe from the New York Times that sounds easy and
good: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1890-roasted-brussels-sprouts-with-garlic By the
way, Brussels sprouts, like other cabbage family relatives, were originally
native to the Mediterranean region. The northern Europeans now known as
Belgians started growing them as early as the Thirteenth Century.
WORKDAY – We will have a workday on Sunday afternoon,
October 13, from 2pm – 5pm, at Eagle Heights. The task will be path and water
system maintenance. Here’s the link to sign up: https://doodle.com/poll/g28d7e3ycu9irzeh
It will be chilly, even in the afternoon, so dress
accordingly.
Happy gardening,
Kathryn
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