February Lettuce

Gardeners at the Campbell Community Garden are encouraged to grow  the year-round. Some years winter gardens are surprisingly fruitful, other years they are quite the challenge.

The garden covered in snow, February 7, 2014

The 2013 - 2014 winter has been a challenging one! We had a big freeze in early December that wiped out our peas just as they were starting to set pods, the row was covered with fleece, but that just wasn't enough protection. The lettuce bed was covered with plastic, so it was a bit warmer, however the cold killed most all of our lettuce transplants (donated to us by Yard 'n Garden Land ). The lettuce seedlings sown mid October came through just fine.

Crispy Winter Greens, seeds donated to us by Renee's Garden

In anticipation of the big freeze of February we cut the surviving lettuce to donate to Esther's Pantry food bank on February 5th, our first donation of 2014! While the donation was small, it was outstanding: 2 pounds of pristine lettuce greens, 1 pound of cilantro, and 1 pound of assorted dried herbs (from the fall garden).

Cilantro, grown from seed saved in the garden.

Mix of cut lettuce leaves, seeds donated to us by Renee's Garden, grown organically and donated to a food bank (Esther's Pantry, just over one mile away from the garden!)

Harvesting Now

Last year the Campbell Community Garden gave away 861 pounds of produce to local food pantries. This year we have set our donation goal at 2,000 pounds; as of June 27th we have given away 266 pounds of veggies and herbs.

Beets with greens, carrots, kale, purple sage, snap peas, and lettuce

It is time to plant warm weather veggies!

It's not too late to plant tomatoes! The weather is warm enough to plant all of the warm weather crops, AND it is time to start planning your FALL and WINTER gardens :)

Planting Leeks

The Campbell Community Garden is producing enough produce right now to warrant once a week donations to our Harvest Sharing Garden recipients; soon we will be harvesting twice a week. Last week I chatted with Mary, who is enjoying the veggies I drop off each week; I told her we harvested our first snap peas and there would be more to come for the next several weeks, and that our tomatoes were planted, but quite a ways off from harvesting. She asked me about leeks, telling me that they were a big hit with a lot of people receiving our donations. Our leeks are still many weeks away from harvest time, but they are planted!
Here is a video, filmed a few weeks ago, showing how to plant Bandit and Tadorna Leeks, thanks to Straw Bale Films!



The leeks are growing fast, June 9, 2013



2013 Tomato Planting

Thanks to generous Campbell Garden Sponsors, garden volunteers planted tomatoes and peppers in our Harvest Sharing Garden on May 19th.

Black Gold donated organic fertilizer to help our plants thrive!

Hansen Family Farm is sponsoring our tomato garden again this year by giving us 20 tomato plants and 14 pepper plants. The Hansen's grow an amazing assortment of veggie starts for sale at the Milwaukie Farmers Market on Sundays and at the Oregon City Farmers Market on Saturdays.

While mid-May was still a little early for setting tomato and other warm weather plants directly out into the garden (they really prefer warmer weather), thanks to the generous donation of greenhouse plastic from Naomi's Organic Farm Supply and metal hoops from Family Table Farm, we were able to tuck our tomatoes and peppers into a warm cloche. We will keep the plastic on until the temperatures are consistently warm and the threat of severe rains are past.

We learned a lot in our first year growing veggies to donate through our Harvest Sharing Program. Unusual colored tomatoes didn't go over well with many of our harvest recipients; we would often find the brownish or purplish tomatoes left in the previous weeks donation box; and those colored tomatoes were harder for some of our volunteer pickers to determine ripeness of, resulting in a few tomatoes left to spoil on the vines. This year we are concentrating on growing round, red tomatoes, with just a few colored ones thrown in for variety. Split resistant varieties that will hold up while being transported are important; . Christie Hansen helped us pick out the tomato varieties to grow. See the list below:

Tomatoes

New Yorker

Stupice

Tomatoes and peppers tucked into a cloche.

Yellow Pear

Valley Girl

Dark Orange Muscat

Sweet Million

Snow White

Rutgers

Green Zebra

Momotoro

Taxi

Peppers

California Wonder

Anaheim

Marconi Red

Roumanian Rainbow

Wisconsin Lakes

Jaloro

Early Jalapeno

Serrano

Wenk’s Yellow Hot

One Year Ago Today

We broke ground on Campbell Community Garden one year ago today! After many months of planing, fundraising, and permitting, volunteers from Landscape East and West arrived at the Campbell School Grounds on Saturday April 28, 2012, to install water lines into the garden site.


Campbell Community Garden, April 28, 2012
First day of construction; waterlines and hose bibs installed,
 professional labor and materials donated by Landscape East & West. 


Today the garden is thriving! To date we have donated 978 pounds of food grown in the garden; novice gardeners have successfully grown and harvested veggies to feed their families; we have learned a lot from tips shared by experienced gardeners, learned from our mistakes, and made many new friends.

Campbell Community Garden, April 28, 2013
Most gardens have early spring crops started, and one gardener has taken the plunge
and planted warm weather crops including tomatoes.

The 2013 growing season is off to an awesome start. Many gardeners are returning for a second year, and the vacated gardens have all been filled. We have already harvested 117 pounds of veggies (mostly greens and herbs) to donate and have set a donation goal of 2,000 pounds to be donated by the end of the year. We have started in on building a bed for rhubarb, next we will work on our blueberry patch and build a shed.

Thank you to all of the volunteers and sponsors who helped us get to this one year milestone!

Supporting the Good Bugs

The Campbell Community Garden is tended using organic, natural gardening methods. This year we are introducing beneficial insects and incorporating more flowers into our gardens to support those good bugs while they fight the bad bugs.

The insects we plan to introduce include:

Atheta coriaria (Rove Beetle, attacks soil dwelling insects)

Stratiolaelaps scimitus (soil dwelling predatory mite)

Dacnusa sibirica/Diglyphus isea mix (for leaf miners)

Aphidoletes aphidimyza (Midge, attacks aphids)

Some of the flowers we plan to plant for the insects include:
Parsley and Cilantro (we will allow it to flower), Sweet Alyssum (we have seeds started and purchased a few plants), Sunflower (dwarf varieties), Marigold, Calendula, and Borage.We are also allowing a few Kale plants to flower.

The video below from P. Allen Smith is a nice overview of on insectary garden.