From the Gardens Registrar: Parking on Eagle Heights Drive; Translation Requested; Co-Webmaster Needed; No Workday This Weekend

Hello Gardeners,

PARKING ON EAGLE HEIGHTS DRIVE – The University has put up the winter parking signs on Eagle Heights Drive – that means no parking for gardeners (or anybody else) on the street on weekdays. Weekend and holiday parking is still allowed through the winter. With the current weather and forecast, gardening is pretty much at an end for the season. But I know gardeners are still doing clean-up, so I regret the inconvenience. Hopefully, everyone has picked their winter squash and pumpkins, and hauled them home already. (If not, do it NOW because they can be damaged by frost. You can still eat them if they’ve been frosted, but they won’t keep.) If you do drive your car to Eagle Heights on a weekday, the closest parking is at Frautschi Point (2662 Lake Mendota Drive.) Meanwhile, the gardeners at University Houses can feel smug, which they don’t get to do very often.

TRANSLATION – One of the garden committee chairs of the past, Robin Mittenthal, wrote a wonderful guide to planting vegetables in Wisconsin, which is available on our website, at: _http://www.eagleheightsgardens.org/tips/garden_manual_v_1.12.pdf. The manual includes a five-page “Quick Reference Guide” (starting on Page 61), which lists common vegetables, and how and when to plant them in our gardens. Unfortunately, this guide is only in English – I think it would be very helpful to have copies available at our Seed Fair in the spring, and on our website, in Chinese and Korean. So I am looking for gardeners who would be able to translate, at least the names of the vegetables and the headings on the guide. Anybody interested? You’ll get workday credit for it – either this year (if you haven’t already done a workday) or else next year. I would also be open to translations into other languages, but we have so many gardeners from China and Korea that those languages are the ones we most need. Let me know if you’re interested.

WEBMASTER – The gardener who has been our webmaster for the last couple of years is giving it up. We have another gardener with excellent experience who has taken over some of the work, but we still need someone to manage the "backend" of the website. This includes wordpress updates and plug-ins, security monitoring, and interfacing with our host lunarpages/hostpapa. This also qualifies for workday credit. Please let me know if you have website experience and are interested. It’s not a lot of work, but when we do have a problem with the site, we need someone who can respond pretty quickly.

GROWING HERBS INDOORS – One of the worst things about losing your garden in the fall is that it’s the end of fresh herbs for a while. There are numerous websites on the Internet that tell you how easy it is to grow herbs inside in the winter, and have as much as you want to cook with. I have tried it, and it is not easy. I have had no success with this whatsoever. But I still want to try it. Here is a website with a lot of information and a more realistic approach:  https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/54973/how-to-grow-herbs-indoors/

NO WORKDAY THIS WEEKEND – We will probably have another workday or two before the season ends officially, but not this weekend. You can stay home and stay warm.

Happy gardening,

Kathryn