Anybody there?

Dear gardeners, please comment if you use this blog or its links anymore - including the planting calendar links.

Blog Settings

Hey everyone, I set the blog settings so that only EC Garden bloggers can comment on our posts, because we were getting spammed out.

Does anyone want to administrate the EC Garden blog? Please contact ECG: 752-9118.

Experimental College Community Garden

Hey everybody, here ara a couple of links with vegetable planting dates for the Sacramento area (thanks in part to the Solano Park Garden Association).

Vegetable Planting Calendar for Sacramento



Vegetable Gardening at a Glance - including Sacramento area planting dates


I hope these links work out, but if not, they are also listed in Links.

Wash your veggies

Hello fellow gardeners,

I thought I would send this along. During the aerial anti-mosquito spraying last week, the plane veered around the Student Farm, as it was registered organic. But in doing so, its flight path was directly over the EC Garden. For everyone's information, both Pyrethrin and PBO which were the active ingredients in the spray, degrade in sunlight, most during the first day after the spray. However, it would still be a good idea to wash your veggies. On that note, you should probably be washing them anyway... unless you like manure bacteria on your food. Mmmm manure.

The research conducted during the spray showed that spiders and dragonflies were not affected by the spray, and my bees had a sum total of one visible mortality outside my hives. (My own bee experiment suggested that bee loss was minimal, although I didn't have very much data.) I don't think we should have any problems with the beneficial insects in the garden post-spray.

Whenever you wander around in the garden, off away from the cultivated areas, it might be good to keep an eye out for standing bodies of water, such as ponds, puddles, buckets, and tires. Let me or one of the garden coordinators know about ponds that need fish, or you could always pick up some fish yourself! Every acre of land that breeds mosquitoes makes future West Nile sprayings more likely.
Karl

Washington State Offers Organic Farming Degree.

To read all about it, click here.

Extra Stuff

I've got a bunch of extra sprouting potatoes (russets - 2# and reds - 2#) and some sprouting garlic. Does anybody want some?

I've left the potatoes on the table in the shady grove, just to the east of the toolshed. Take as many as you'll plant. Enjoy!

Easter Egg Hunt

The EC Garden is such a great place to be. I've been thinking for a while that we should do more fun stuff there. Last year, I took my family to the EC Garden during WEF to see if anything might be going on - nope. This year we have something: Finishing the Cob Benches on WEF Saturday! Other opportunities await us: Easter Egg Hunt, EarthDay/Mother's Day/WEF, Solstices/Equinoxes, Holidays, and much more.

I want to make the EC Garden a place where people want to spend their time, where people can't wait to come when vacation starts, a place that people want their families to come visit on special days.

We're counting down to the day of the Easter Egg Hunt! HELP, we need eggs! Please poke holes in the top and bottoms of eggs and blow them out so we can paint and dye them to hide for the hunt this year. If we don't get enough empty eggs, I'll have to use plastic eggs.

Gardeners, Domies, and friends of the EC Garden are blowing out eggs. We need about 100 more. Don't make me turn to the plastic industry, email us (ecgarden) to let us know how many eggs you've got for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Thanks

Thanks to whomever dumped the grass over by my plot today (near the old compost piles). I had a huge wheelbarrowful of oats and, being 5 days overdue to have a baby, got tuckered out. My husband Joel and I came over in the late afternoon to tend to it, and it was gone. Thanks so much to the mystery person who took care of it.

Uber-Party Pictures

Hello Gardeners!


Many of you attended the Uber-Work-Party on Saturday March 25, and so much got done. Many of you may have also seen me wander around taking pictures of everybody working. Can you believe I got work credit for watching other people work?! Heh, well, it only took a few minutes to snap some shots, and some editing time later, I have for you the visual catalog of everyone's efforts, plus a few gardens that look good.
Who's ready to see some pictures?
WARNING: The following images have graphical depictions of humans doing real and productive work while having a whole lot of fun at the same time. May not be suitable for all ages.



The potluck breakfast food had been well eaten by mid-day. The apples and pancakes seen here were snack-fare for many.

Off in the distance, three parachutes were gliding. (Two shown)











Look at all the debris cleared from the Southwestern quadrant of the gardens. Where will it all go?

Two gardeners got the idea - take the branches to the front for more wood chips!


















But before paths can be wood-chipped, first they must be leveled out so wheelbarrels and trucks can have a smooth ride over them. Here some volunteers are scraping the path flat.

To the right, posts await being sunken into the ground. Here you can see one of the little ones that have come to help out.

















Meanwhile, The Apostle Gabriel is nestled under some Prunus trees in flower, overlooking some of the first flowering shrubs and a prolific artichoke. He mixed up some entertaining work music for everyone. It got me thinking, can we have music blasted across the garden every weekend? Anyone have any huge capeable boomboxes to recess into the walls of the tool shed? Heh.

And now, a close-up of the apostle.















Way out on the other side of the garden in the Northwest quadrant, some workers are clearing away the brush and undergrowth.

Here are a couple more.



















Turning around, this gives you an idea of where these folks are clearing stuff out - and a nice look at the gnarly grape vines before they bud forth with foliage. That speck in the distance is the tool shed and civilization as-we-know-it.
Speaking of which, here's a nice shot of the pink almond tree in full bloom over the shed. Beneath, signs are being prepared illustrating the up-and-coming community space.


















It is always locked. Have you ever wondered what goes on in the back portion of the tool shed? Once shrouded in mystery, this reporter has gone in depth to reveal a host of tools that you would dream to get your hands on. Nice saws, machinery for tilling soil and shredding compost, paint, oil, Human Cadavers (in the shadowy spot), and marking tools.

Back in front again, the camera is treated to a shower of flower petals from the almond tree.















Carbon, carbon, everywhere, and not a pile of compost to stick it.
Nevermind, there's some! Mmm, black gold.















Many volunteers took off before this picture was taken, but here is everyone again. Note the difference between the first picture and this one: Everyone is grinning! What are we to conclude but that a day of garden work is good for the facial muscles? Ok, it was taken seconds after the first one, but the camera was flipped upside down, which everyone thought was so funny. Photoshop, however, didn't think it was all that special and let me flip it back again. Viola!

This could be you at the next work party. Huzzah!

I'm not quite done yet. It is time to wander back through the gardens and pick out some nicely maintained plots. Here's a cute small plot that has been carefully cleared and planted.


On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have that great big fenced plot growing herbs. Those can't all be for one person. I could never drink that much peppermint tea! (foreground) Always well groomed.















Of course, in front of the tool shed we have those soft berms of meticulously planted crops. Ok, you have way too much time on your hands. Some say that the planting of this plot was guided by a GPS uplink, and that at all times, whether planting or harvesting, there is always a prime number of plants.
Ok, no one says that. But it makes you wonder...

Here we have the garden with the broken tiles and the glass orb.
















But you may more easily recognize this gardener's artistic merits by the cute wire mesh cones protecting the plants. The acheing question now is, how can one make use of this practical design without looking like one is copying? Note the S-curve path.

And finally, shameless self-promotion. Here are my neat little rows of garlic, onions, and the chard-row of Supreme Jealousy. Inverted bottles mark the rows.



Thank you everyone for perusing these images of the garden. Take a walk around the gardens yourselves, and get come ideas from fellow gardeners as to how to grow things. But be unique! Everyone has the opportunity to express their individuality with creative planting arrangements, artwork, and straight and precise or flowy rows.
Every couple of weeks I will be wandering through the garden to take snapshots of things as they grow, so here's to some good gardening ths year!
Karl J. Mogel

Let's post pictures of our gardens.

Hey everybody, let's post pictures of our gardens on the blog. It would be really cool if all of us wrote a little blurb about what we're growing and what was growing there last season. You might also say how long you've had your plot and tell any story about your time at the EC Garden. I'm still without a digital camera, but here's a web image of the fingerling potatoes that I'm really excited about planting!

Petty Vandalism

Greetings gardeners,

Although I wear the hat of the Fenstigator from time to time (Such as at the uber-party this saturday) in this post I am approaching everyone as a gardener who's been having a problem with his plot as of late.

Since I have been gardening here, I have added numerous features to my garden, namely a pond, lots of colorful glassware, a picnic table built from scrapwood, and a civil engineering sign of my mother's that I modified. Aside from the mammalian pests roaming around and mipping at my produce, gardening here has been quite fun and tasty. (fenstigation hat on: Vee shall prevail! hat off) However, in the past approximately six months there have been several cases of petty vandalism going on in my garden.

The wind often blows hard out in the gardens, and so things that could very likely have been due to the wind, such as things slipping into the pond, and one glass item breaking, are to be expected. However, the things that I will list here cannot be attributed to mere wind and rabbits.

First, one of my glass items, a pale green cone over a foot long, was smashed to bits in the fall of 2005. This was no act of wind, I had to get on my hands and knees and carefully pick all the pulverized smitherines of glass out of my onion patch. I have shown the fragments to Annie, a former garden coordinator whom you all know. I still have two of these cones left, fortunately.

Next, two of my glass items have gone missing. One was a very unique swirly piece of glass that looked like the tail of a brown whale coming up out of the ground. I bought it for about $15 at L-street furniture downtown. The second piece of glass to have gone missing was one of two green flasks that I bought off of the internet. It has since turned up at the Yolo SPCA thirft store, and so now it will be returned to my garden shortly. As a side note, I had to pay for it again as the SPCA would not give it back to me free. Oh well, its all for the animals.

And finally, about a week ago I was treated to all the bricks surrounding my pond being kicked into the pond. While fishing them out, I have found that the pond has become half full of rocks as well and all the fish are gone. I will have to clean it out Two piece of evidence were recovered from the scene: One was an old kitchen paring knife, and the other was a small water pistol. The acts themselves already bespeak juvenile attitudes, but the water pistol might confirm that it was indeed perpetrated by kids. I left both items on my table, and the water pistol has since disappeared.

Since it is easy to notice these sort of things in one's own garden, and not others, I have no idea whether these cases are specific to my plots or if this is happening everywhere. Has anyone else had things done to, or taken from their plots?

I would like to ask just a few things of my fellow gardeners. The first is, please email me at karl AT inoculatedmind DOT com if you have any information about any of these events. I have the knife in my possession - if anyone has seen someone playing with an old short knife and/or the water pistol, do let me know.

The second request is that everyone keep a watchful eye when they are in the gardens for people that may be messing around with other people's gardens. Get to know your neighbors, come and say hi! By forming social networks we can not only detect people that are not actual gardeners, I think having a friendly relationship might deter any sour-minded gardeners from wrecking the work of others.

Third, there are some kids that I and other gardeners have seen regularly hanging out at the gardens. I would not presume that they did anything to my garden, but it is a possibility. Does anyone know who they are? I know that other gardeners have seen them take food from people's plots, but they have been informed of their

I have been given a couple of ideas as to how I can address or prevent these little cases of vandalism against my plot, but they haven't satisfied me. Any ideas? Note that only the glassware and pond have received damage.

Also, about the future of my own plot, which has looked kind of ratty in the past, it's getting a makeover and I will also be adding a little mailbox with 3x5 cards in case anyone wants to drop a note!
Thanks,
Karl J. Mogel

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Anyone need a laugh? Ha, Cuke Skywalker...