Even if spring hasn't arrived officially yet, it was certainly in the air on February 20, when we celebrated Hoodie-Hoo Day, launched our brand new seed library, and anticipated the season to come with a seed-starting workshop. Many thanks to Geiger's True Value -- our wonderful neighbors who donated potting soil for the workshop. Within a few days, the first brave little seedlings had pushed their way out of the soil (brassicas -- broccoli, cabbage, kale, etc. -- leading the way, as usual). As of this writing, there have also been sightings of baby tomatoes, basil, torch sunflowers, summer savory, and thyme. If you can't wait to get into the garden, come check out some seeds from our seed library! Seed Savers Exchange granted us the seeds and resources to launch it, and we are excited to share it with you.
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Once again, the generous folks at Seed Savers Exchange came through for us with a Herman's Garden seed donation for our library garden. You'll be seeing some of these colorful and delicious varieties growing in the garden in just a few short months! Meanwhile, if you just can't wait for spring any longer, you're invited to the library on Feburary 20 to celebrate Hoodie-Hoo Day! On this very special day, residents of the Northern Hemisphere, tired of winter, step outside at noon, wave their hands over their heads and yell “Hoodie Hoo!” Sound silly? You bet! You’re invited to wear a silly hat to help get in the mood, and make sure to show up a little early so as not to miss the countdown.
We’ll follow our hollering with a drop-in seed-starting workshop, where you can help us get ready for planting our library garden. Bring a small plant cell pack or a cardboard egg-carton if you’d like to start a few seeds to take home! All ages welcome; children under 10 must be accompanied by an adult. In addition, we'll be launching our new seed library, which is also made possible in part by the support of Seed Savers Exchange. With this new addition to the library, you will be able to “check out” seeds to take home and plant. Several varieties will be available, and experienced gardeners will be on hand to give "seedy" advice to new gardeners. If you are an experienced gardener (or simply up for the adventure), there will be the option to save seeds from what you grow this season, and bring some back to the library to renew the available stock and keep the cycle going. More information will be available when you stop by on or after February 20 at noon. Come grow with us! (Have extra pots lying around? We’re seeking donations of clean plant pots, preferably 3-4” diameter, for transplanting our seedlings when they get bigger. Unused potting soil is also welcome!) Well, goodness. Suddenly it's been nearly a year since the last post -- and what a year! Here are some highlights from the garden: In early spring, we received another amazing donation of soil from Hoerr Nursery, which enabled us to make progress on our goal of connecting all the individual garden beds into one large plot with mulched footpaths. Otto's Monuments kindly helped us out by using their machinery to help us move the soil to the proper site in the garden. We used carboard for sheetmulching, laying it out over the patches of grass and weeds and spreading the soil on top. The cardboard will smother most of the weeds, and eventually it will decompose beneath the soil. Meanwhile, spring was already well on the move! Our perennial herbs were greening up, the milkweed was growing in stature, and the wildflowers sown last year were making a brilliant comeback. Mid-June found us wrapping up the distribution of soil (one wobbly wheelbarrow at a time!) and excavating our new paths. Not easy work, but the Chillis came out on top again, of course. Meanwhile, the garden continued to bloom around us. In July, we enjoyed harvesting the garlic that had been planted in previous years. We have about three different kinds, though we've lost track of which is which. Oops! Our harvest was quite productive, anyway. There were also bountiful flowers, and many a bouquet brightened the library. As summer and early autumn progressed, we harvested a rainbow of tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos, putting the bounty out for library visitors to take home and enjoy. So even though our dirt-moving and path-establishing projects got us off to a bit of a slow start this year with planting, we ended up with a sinificant amount of food to share, not to mention the fun planting, tending, and watching the garden evolve.
Here's to 2017 and a new year of growing! I've seen them -- little green sprouts beginning to push up from the still-cold ground. Spring is on the move! Though it will be a while yet before we can bite into those nice, ripe tomatoes, the time is perfect for starting seeds for the plants that need a bit of time to mature before planting them out, like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. We're reviving our garden programming here at the Chillcothe Public Library, beginning with a seed-starting workshop on Wednesday, March 9, at 6:00 pm. Visit our website for more information and to sign up! We've been delighted with a donation of beautiful seed packs from the amazing Hudson Valley Seed Library, and Chillicothe's very own Geiger True Value has generously contributed potting soil, which we'll put to good use at the workshop on March 9.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in volunteering to help out as we get our garden plot in shape for the season, please contact us (email Catherine or call 309-274-2719) and we'll put you to work! Want to learn more about gardening and sustainability? Keep an eye on our calendar of events for workshops and programs to nurture your green thumb. This was our last meeting of the season. We did some more clean up in the garden, bedding it down for the winter, but leaving a few plants standing to provide a bit of color and interest during the months when nothing is actively growing. We also continued a tradition from the past couple years of making a “nature loom,” weaving some of the standing sunflower stalks with plant stems, faded flowers, seed pods, and other found objects, as a creative tribute to the beauty that can be found even as the plants die or go dormant and the cold weather descends. If you’re wandering by the garden, feel free to add a sprig of evergreen or weave in a blade of prairie grass. The dried stalks of the Bells of Ireland flowers were lovely in the late afternoon sun: We also harvested much of our sage and thyme, which we tied in small festive bundles to distribute at the food pantry. Fresh herbs for Thanksgiving!
Recipe for cornbread (borrowed from Better Homes & Gardens)
Beat just until smooth. Pour into greased 9 x 9" pan. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes. Recipe for Garden Huckleberry Jam (or for use in pies, muffins, etc.) We had about a cup of fruit, but this recipe can be adjusted for other amounts. I've included links to some online resources if you want to delve into more recipes.
We also enjoyed the wildlife that still populated the garden, and we wondered what critters like grasshoppers and caterpillars would do when it froze.
Have you ever seen such itty bitty snails? We had a bountiful late-autumn harvest; the garden was so beautiful, seeming to be at its peak of loveliness about the time it started frosting!
Buckets o' greens and peppers:
A morning stroll through the misty garden revealed a ghostly display of sunflower skeletons, draped with delicate silver strings of spiderwebs beaded with dew.
Hard to believe it, but it's time to begin tidying up the garden for winter. Today we cut down the cornstalks from the patch of Oaxacan Green Dent, with the intention of chopping them up and composting them. Which we did, to an extent. But these are the Green Chillis, and our imaginations know no bounds. One can do many things with a cornstalk. And the bold takeover of the library: Quite a satisfactory afternoon, I should say, what-what!
(And I may never give up my saucy cabbage-leaf cap.) Today we harvested the bulk of our Oaxacan Green Dent and Two-Inch Strawberry Popcorn! If corn kernels were as hardy as minerals, we wouldn't have to mine at all to have a plentiful supply of colorful, iridescent gems for our jewelry-makers. We planted our Strawberry Popcorn from seed we saved last year from our mini-field in the parking-lot median (that, in turn, was planted from seed I grew in my own garden at home). Though planted in a smaller area, this year's harvest was even better! This was probably due largely to better soil, more timely planting, and plenty of rain. The ears were larger and we didn't see any huitlacoche, which claimed several ears last time (though that was a treat in itself - or at least a worthwhile experience, depending on who you ask). Though we planted late enough last year to avoid cross-pollination, this year our corn was tasseling around the same time as the Oaxacan Green (I think we missed the window for crossing with the conventional field corn around the library). That, or a recessive gene, or who-knows-what-in-the-mysterious-history-of-this-variety-of-corn may have contributed to the exciting finding we had: four ears of white corn! They looked like albino versions of the normally red ears, except that one of them had a single yellow kernel. Maybe that yellow kernel came from a few years ago, when I planted the ancestors of these seeds at home near a plot of Tom Thumb Popcorn (I don't recall if they tasseled at the same time). We've sent off photos to our friends at the Seed Savers Exchange (the original seed came from them), and we may try to grow these seeds out and stabilize the unusual trait. Backyard genetics for the curious gardener!
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Click here for more information about Green Chillis, our seed library, and other garden-related library programming.
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June 2017
CategoriesMany thanks to our generous sponsors:
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