From the Gardens Registrar: Seed-Saving Class; Gary K.’s Famous Garlic Planting Seminar; Sunflowers; More Weed-Whacking at Both Gardens; Remove Your Tomato Blossoms

 Hello Gardeners,

VIRTUAL SEED SCHOOL – Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit seed company whose mission is to save and distribute heirloom varieties of seeds. They’ve donated seeds to Eagle Heights for our Seed Fair for a number of years. They have invited us to attend their Virtual Seed School, which will provide instruction in saving seeds from your own vegetables, fruits, and flowers. The School will take place on Mondays at 6:00 p.m. from September 14 – October 26 via Zoom. The deadline for signing up is September 10, (that’s tomorrow,) and we can send up to 3 people. If you are interested in learning how to save your own seeds and would like to share what you learn from these webinars with the rest of our gardeners, please contact me right away, so I can sign you up.

 GARLIC PLANTING – Garlic can be planted in the Spring, but the best time to plant it in Wisconsin is the Fall. That gives it time to settle in and develop roots, so that as soon as the ground thaws in the Spring, it can sprout and start growing up. Planting garlic in the Fall gives you the longest growing season for it. Our former gardener, Gary K,, will be offering his annual Garlic Planting Seminar at Eagle Heights on Sunday, September 20, at 9am. He will have handouts, in English, with planting information. Gary always recommends that we not plant our garlic until late October, depending partly on phases of the moon. If you’ve never planted garlic before, don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a master.

 SUNFLOWERS – This has been a spectacular year for sunflowers at our gardens, and we seem to have more of them than usual. They get so tall that it’s inevitable that they fall over or the stalks break. A gardener wrote me that she’s finding seed heads tossed in the weed pile, and suggests that gardeners leave them on the share shelves instead – many people would be happy to take the seeds for themselves or to feed to birds in the winter.

MORE WEED-WHACKING – Megan has set up Doodle polls for gardeners to sign up for the upcoming weed-whacking volunteer shifts. This is the link to sign up for the session on Monday, September 14, at Eagle Heights: https://doodle.com/poll/vab6i6gczqtehqu2  And the previous day, Sunday, September 13, there will be a session at University Houses; here’s the link to sign up for that one:  https://doodle.com/poll/nuxq4egd3wdy74x8  As always with these sessions, only three gardeners can participate in each session. And if you work two sessions, that constitutes a workday.

TOMATOES – Keep picking your tomatoes. Don’t let them rot. They should continue to produce for another month or so. But it’s time to remove new blossoms from your plants, because they won’t have time to set fruit, and you want to encourage the plants to put all their energy into ripening the fruits that are already growing. Pepper and eggplant blossoms, too.

 

Happy Gardening and Stay Well,

Kathryn