From the Gardens Registrar: The Usual Coronavirus Reminder; Warm Weather Plant Delivery; Discouraged Plants; More Seeds Coming; Recycle Your Plant Pots; Roster Posted; Found Cowl

Hello Gardeners,

CORONAVIRUS  – Our lives are opening up now a little, but this virus will be around for many months, and could easily flare up. So don’t get careless. It is as important as before to continue social distancing and washing your hands with soap and water. And don’t come to the gardens if you’re feeling sick.

WARM WEATHER PLANT DELIVERY – This Sunday, May 17, Garden to Be will be delivering the warm weather plants that gardeners have ordered.  Pick-up, near the Eagle Heights shed, will be from 9am – 11am. (Your receipt from Scott may contain different times or dates, but please ignore that – there is some wrong information going out from his computer system, and he can’t change it. The correct times are 9am – 11am.)  Please come pick up your plants, or get a friend to do it for you - there will be a great many plants and we will not be able to hold any past 11:00a.m.. Any plants not picked up by that time will be delivered to garden plots.

MINT, COMFREY, ARTEMISIA, CORN – What do these plants have in common? We don’t want you to plant them, that’s what. The first three are major weeds in the gardens, and spread like crazy. This is not to say they’re bad; MINT is a wonderful seasoning. But the plant is very aggressive. It’s hard to have just a little of it in your plot. If you want to grow mint, one good way to contain it is to plant it in a pot. That will keep the roots from spreading. Gardeners sometimes ask if it’s okay to plant other herbs in the mint family - basil, thyme, lavender, oregano, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, and  hyssop are all in this family. Yes, you can plant any of these; oregano is aggressive too, but not as much as mint. COMFREY  is another plant that grows wild in our gardens. It is an herb that has some medicinal uses, and it has very pretty flowers in the late spring. But it has deep roots and is very difficult to get rid of, if it’s in your way. It’s not all bad, though – the leaves are full of nitrogen, and they decompose quickly, so you can cut leaves and put them around your plants to serve as green manure. ARTEMISIA is a big plant family – the species we have most of in our gardens is artemesia annua, which is also called Sweet Annie, for its sweet (and somewhat cloying) smell. It has traditionally been used in Chinese medicine to reduce fevers, and has even been studied as a treatment for COVID 19. However, again, this plant really takes over, and the smell can get on your nerves. Growing CORN is not prohibited in the gardens, but we don’t encourage it. It doesn’t do well in our gardens, and it attracts animal pests, such as raccoons. It’s true that our cranes also enjoy eating corn, but we have lots of other things for them to eat.

MORE SEEDS COMING TO THE SHARE SHELVES – It’s almost time to plant beans and warm weather crops, such as summer and winter squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and melons. These seeds, plus a great many flower seeds, will be appearing on the share shelves at both gardens by the end of the week.

PLANT POTS – If you’ve bought vegetable and flower plants for your garden plot, you can throw the empty pots in the dumpster. But if the pots and trays are still in good shape, remember that you can put them on the share shelves and let other gardeners re-use them.

2020 ROSTER – The current gardener roster has been posted on our website.

FOUND AT THE GARDENS – ONE NAVY BLUE AND WHITE HAND-KNITTED COWL WITH CHEVRON PATTERN   - If you’ve lost this, please let me know, and I’ll make arrangements to return it to you.

Happy Gardening, and Stay Safe,  

Kathryn