From the Gardens Registrar: Water Your Garden!; All About Eagle Heights Birds; Free Tomatoes 

Hello Gardeners,

WATER YOUR GARDEN – It looks like the current heat wave will be over in another day or two, but we haven’t had a good rain in weeks, and the forecast is not hopeful. It’s turned into a very dry summer. Most of our plants, such as tomatoes, really like this warm, sunny weather, but be sure to keep everything watered. A good soaking twice a week is better than shorter watering sessions every day – you want to encourage your plants’ roots to go deep. That protects them better in dry conditions. And mulch your garden, if you haven’t already done so – that helps keep moisture in the soil. Morning is the best time to water, but if your schedule doesn’t allow that, just water when you can.  And by the way, if your plants look droopy in the middle of the day, even when you’ve kept up with the watering, don’t panic. They may be okay in the morning or by evening – but when it’s very hot, they get a little behind in keeping hydrated. Here’s a lot of information on when and how to water what: https://www.almanac.com/content/when-water-your-vegetable-garden-watering-chart#

BIRDS AT EAGLE HEIGHTS – Today, I saw two birds in the gardens, about one minute apart. The first bird was one of our hawks, who was perched on top of the shed. The next bird was a hummingbird, which was drinking nectar from one of the red cannas by the share shelves. The hawks are year-round residents, and every year, they have at least one offspring. This year’s youngster spent several weeks screaming constantly, to try to get its parents to feed it. But it’s as big as they are now, and they’ve told it that it’s on its own.

The hummingbirds, on the other hand, will be flying south soon. The hummingbird migration begins in August. The purple martins, which lived for a few months in an apartment birdhouse at the Biocore Prairie, have left for the year already. The garden is still full of goldfinches, and one day I saw two indigo buntings – one at EH and the other at UH. There have been more than 255 species of birds identified in the UW Lakeshore Preserve, which our gardens are part of. In the next month or so, we’ll be seeing a lot of birds flying through on their way south for the winter.

But the bird that most interests (or preoccupies) EH and UH gardeners is the turkey. Yes, every year, we have more and more turkeys, and they eat more of our delicious vegetables. We consulted a UW Wildlife Specialist, who suggested, unfortunately, that fences around individual plots would probably be the most useful approach. He also suggested that gardeners should yell at them (we already do), chase them, and otherwise scare them (without actually harming them) to try to discourage their presence. I suspect, though, that they’ll decide that the great food makes up for the lousy ambience. He also sent a factsheet with more information than you’d ever want to have about these animals: http://wildlifedamage.uwex.edu/pdf/WildTurkey.pdf

While we’re on the subject of birds, a gardener saw some children chasing our crane family. Please do not harass our cranes. We are happy and proud to have them in our gardens. Also, you really don’t want an adult crane mad at you – it would not end well, for you at least.

FREE TOMATOES – One of our partners at Eagle Heights (I’m guessing it’s F.H. King, the student agriculture organization) left a huge number of beautiful ripe tomatoes on our share shelves today. Go  check them out, and take as many as you want.

Happy Gardening and Stay Well,

Kathryn