SMC Organic Garden

Tis the Season of Stubborn Squash

2011-09-30T09:05:00.010-04:00

Today is the last day of September (wasn't it just August?) and our very stubborn honey-nut mini butternut winter squash have still not ripened! We have one little guy that is about ready to be harvested, but about 15-20 others that are still completely dark green! Butternut squash typcially take about 100 days to reach maturity, which means we should have started harvest on the 8th of September. Our sugar dumpling winter squash did take an extra 3 weeks from their expected to harvest date to the actual harvest date. So perhaps we just have increbily stubborn squash this season.

Thankfully, the pumpkins were not as stubborn. We harvested all of the pumpkin varieties Tuesday morning (all right on time and one variety a week early). Our Farm Stand this week definitely looked very festive for the fall season that just arrived. In the next few weeks ahead, we'll be transitioning the garden to its winter fashion, planting garlic and fall bulbs and a cover crop of winter rye. There will most likely only be 2 more outdoor farm stands for the season, so make sure you put them on your calendar (11:30-1:00ish every Tuesday!)

Autumn, Already?!

2011-09-23T07:04:00.000-04:00

Happy first day of Autumn! How did this happen? Life down at the garden has definitely been showing signs of Fall. We survived last weekend's threat of frost, but time is starting to slow and harvests have already reached their peak as we slide towards the sleeping season.

Our fall crop is coming in strong as the summer veggies start to die off. We harvested our sugar dumpling winter squash (which has a high sugar content, for those that love sweet winter squash). We are still waiting on our honey nut mini-butternut winter squash, which have started to show signs of ripening (when their outer skin turns from green to a butternut shade), we hope they become ready within the next couple of weeks.

One sure sign that it is now Fall is that our pumpkins are ready for harvest and will start showing up at our farm stands. We have a good crop of New England Pie Pumpkins (specifically for the bakers out there, we encourage you to only purchase the pie pumpkins if you intend to bake with them). We have a handful of your typical jack-o-lantern pumpkins as well (not as much as last year unforunately).

Hope to see you all on Tuesday at the farm stand, until then, enjoy the first fall weekend ahead!

Frightful Frost Alert!

2011-09-16T13:46:00.000-04:00

Hug your veggies the next couple of nights, it's going to be a cold one! Monday temperatures reached into the lower 80s down at the garden and the next two nights the area is under a frost advisory! Not the 5 letter word in mid-September!!!! In preparation for the potential frost visiting the garden, row covers have been put on top of the veggies that would be most impacted by the weather change, as well as the ones we like the most, (cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, swiss chard, cucumbers, winter squash). There are all types of row covers out there for gardeners to use.

We use two types down at the garden: All-Purpose Garden Fabric and Garden Quilt Fabric. There isn't a huge difference between the two. The All Purpose Garden Fabric allows for 70% light transmission and provides frost protection down to 28 degrees F. The Garden Quilt allows for 60% light transmission and provides frost protection down to 24 degrees F. We also use the row covers during the summer season to keep pests out. We try our best to keep the covers in good condition which allows us to reuse them for a few seasons.

We also decided to harvest a couple of crops ahead of the potential frost, all of our onions are out of the soil and curing in Heather's office on North Campus (it smells delicious!). We also harvested all of our sugar dumpling winter squash this morning (look for them at next week's farm stand). Fingers crossed the veggies stay warm over the next few nights, and if you are able to, camp out with them!

Changing of the Gardeners

2011-09-09T07:17:00.000-04:00

School is in full swing. As the campus makes the transition from summer to the hustle and bustle of the academic year, the garden experiences its own transitions. The amazing summer team has finished their time tending to the garden and we now welcome the Fall Team. Carly Allen is our new Organic Gardener and Local Food Coorinator for this academic year. We are incredibly excited to have her as part of the team. Not only does she already have farming/gardening experience, but her enthusiasm and passion for gardening is just what the Organic Garden thrives on.

Two weeks have passed since the start of the new school year and the garden has already had many different groups down for a visit. Friday afternoons we are very fortunate to have MOVE's OVE (outdoor volunteer efforts) group spend time tending to the garden. With all the weeds that have decided to take root in the garden, the extra hands are more than needed.

Other garden news: we have begun harvesting our first winter squash (our Delicata squash), powdery mildew is still persisting on our squash and pumpkin leaves, our cherry tomatoes are ripening faster than we can harvest them, our pumpkins have all started to turn orange and we have a pair of humingbirds that spend their mornings in the garden.

What's Taters Precious?

2011-08-29T19:41:00.001-04:00

Po-ta-toes! Boil them, mash them, put them in a stew! Even Irene couldn't ruin that! While the water levels are out of control in Vermont right now, our garden remained unharmed for the most part, and we were able to dig up some nice tasty taters that will be on sale at tomorrows farm stand.

In other parts of the garden we have noticed some powdery mildew accruing on our pumpkin patch and squash plants. In order to treat the condition we sprayed our plants with the same neem oil solution that we used as a pest deterrent. Other methods that are also helpful include using a compost tea spray or a baking-soda solution.

Please swing by the farm stand tomorrow between 11:30 and 1:30 outside of the chapel. With all the students, faculty, and staff members back on campus we are hoping to have a very productive day, so come early and you can grab one of the last few melons of the season. Have a great week!

A Fond Farewell

2011-08-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

Hello readers! It has been a lonesome week working in the garden because Erika has left and gone home for the rest of the summer. The garden looks much bigger and much more quiet now that I no longer have someone to work with. Thank you Erika for being there with me for most of the summer you were a great help and taught me a lot about the wonderful world of gardening. With Erika gone, I am doing my best to continue harvesting and maintaining our plants for the final few weeks of summer.

The past week has been rather uneventful. I mostly weeded in order to keep our garden looking neat, and I harvested a few days during the week to make sure that our veggies did not become too ripe. Our farm stand this week was on the slow side, but the students are starting to come back to campus so sales should be up next week!

Please try to swing by the farm stand if you are in the area. As always we will be outside the chapel from 11:30 to 1:30 with lots of fresh vegetables. I hope you all have a great weekend. Stay tuned next week for more stories from the garden.

How Grows The Garden

2011-08-13T07:05:00.000-04:00

Hello readers and followers! We have seen some things come and go this past week. Our bush beans have been chomped on, but our eggplant has come in! The dill has bolted, but new herbs have germinated and will be ready for the fall! Our tomatoes have blight, but our melons are ripe! Some things are living and some things are dying, but such is life in the garden.

To ensure the safety of our vegetables from future garden predators, we sought out the hole that a woodchuck nibbled on our fence. The hole has been patched and hopefully he won't be back to feed on the fruits of our labor. *Correction, veggies of our labor.*

We have found ourselves on maintenance mode picking our vegetables when they are ripe and taking what we don't sell to the food shelf as a donation. Remember to check out our farm stand next Tuesday between 11:30 and 1:30 outside the chapel at Saint Michael's College. Have a wonderful weekend and stay tuned for more stories from the garden next week!"Have a nice weekend!

Thanks, Brian

Hornworminator

2011-08-05T07:34:00.000-04:00

The hornworms have arrived. Monday morning upon entering the garden and looking at our tomato plants we noticed several large green pests munching on our plants. We took care of these behemoths of garden pests by cutting them in half with garden shears, swiftly ending their lives and preserving the health of our plants. With the hornworms seemingly out of the picture we have seen some of our cherry tomatoes turn red, but we have got wind that late blight has hit in Jericho Vermont, destroying a home gardener's crop. We hope that this tomato killing phenomenon doesn't rear its ugly head on our plants!

Our farm stand this week went much better than our first one. There was no rain during the stand, which meant our customers were able to come outside and not be soaked. Next week we hope to maybe even have some melons at our farm stand, but Erika and I will test them this weekend or on Monday to see if they are ready.

Stay tuned in next week for more stories from the garden. Make sure to swing by the farm stand on Tuesday next week outside of the Saint Michael's chapel from 11:30-1:30. Have a great weekend everyone!

Garden Gab

2011-07-29T11:54:00.000-04:00

Well, we had our first farm stand of the season, and other than the rain it went fairly well. We had a few customers come by and pick up some beets, basil, and chard. Next week our customers can look forward to more of the same and some new veggies. Our bush beans are ready for picking and we should have summer squash for tuesday as well. Our garlic has all been picked and is being cured (for bulbs that we'll store over the winter). To cure our garlic, we followed the instructions on High Mowing Seeds website. Hopefully the skies do not open up on us next week while we try to sell our crops.

This past week Erika and I weeded our old lettuce beds because our lettuce had bolted and died in the hot weather. We tilled up the beds after weeding them and replanted lettuce so that we could have it ready come September. We also hilled our potatoes again, and continued the on-going project of weeding our beds and walkways.

Our cucumbers are growing bigger each day, and our eggplants have finally started to flower! I think that this weekend's hot weather will help give our plants the sunshine that they need to come to fruition. Stay tuned in for more stories next week, and remember to swing by our farm stand outside of the chapel at Saint Michael's between 11:30 and 1:30 next tuesday!

Beeting the Heat with a Farm Stand Next Week

2011-07-23T16:06:00.000-04:00

It was one hot week working and weeding in the garden. Thankfully we had some volunteers come down and help lighten the work load by weeding some of our beds giving us new areas to re-plant kale and plant more herbs. Though the heat was rough to work in, our plants enjoyed the warm weather. Our tomato plants have really started to pop, and our melons are looking bigger and better every day.

With our plants looking healthy and strong it is time to have our first farm stand! On Tuesday, July 26th from 11:30 - 1:30 we will be having a farm stand outside of Alliot Hall at Saint Michael's on the walkway near the chapel. Since not all of our crops are ready, this will be a smaller farm stand, but some of the vegetables that will be available are beets, chard, and hot peppers. We will also have some herbs for sale as well.

Hope everyone has stayed cool while riding out the heatwave. Stay tuned for more news from the garden next week.

MOVErs and Plant Pruning

2011-07-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

What a week we have had in the garden. On Sunday we had a group of volunteers come down to the garden that were with MOVE's "Community Service Orientation Weekend." The group was made up of 12 first-year students, 4 student leaders, and the directors of the MOVE program, Erin Collins and Heidi St. Peter. Erika, Heather, and I welcomed these visitors with open arms because our garden was in need of helping hands. Much like the week before, we have seen an abundance of overgrowth in our beds and walkways. Thanks to MOVE's wonderful budding first-years, the weeds were uprooted and our garden is looking a lot healthier. The work that the group did would have taken Erika and I days upon days to do, so thank you to MOVE for all of the extra help.

For the rest of the week, Erika and I continued our efforts ridding the garden of weeds. We also put down kelp meal, bone meal, and organic tomato fertilizer throughout our plants, enriching the soil with minerals to help give the plants extra nutrients aiding the growing process.

Apart from weeding and fertilizing, Erika's brother Jesse helped us find the pleasure in suckering our tomato plants. A tomato plant has a few main parts to it. Their is the main stem, branches, and suckers. The suckers are the branches that develop in the area where the main branches meet the stem of the plant. These suckers can produce flowers and fruits, but they tend to be smaller in size because of where they develop. By removing the suckers, more energy is put back into producing the fruits that will develop on main branches of the plant which will be larger in size. By pruning these suckers, Erika, Jesse, and I found ourselves surrounded by the scent of tomatoes with green fingers and thumbs from picking at the plants. With some of the tomato plants already producing little green tomatoes, we believe that our pruning will help them grow even bigger and better.

Next week, we expect to see more growth in our vegetables. Our hot peppers are pickable, and our chard is nearing a harvestable size. Tune in next week for more news on what's going on in the garden.

Walking in a Weeded Wonderland...

2011-07-09T23:43:00.001-04:00

After a nice long weekend away from the garden we were welcomed back to it by a bounty of weeds. Our beds and walkways have become quite overgrown, so we spent most of our days this past week weeding them. Some of the areas that we took care of were the herb beds and the potato bed. After weeding out the potatoes we planted some rosemary to help deter the potato beetles that have appeared in the garden. Yes, that's right we have started to see pests picking at our plants.

Some of the techniques we have been trying out include partner planting and neem oil. Much like we did rosemary with the potatoes, we have planted marigolds with our squash and cucumber plants, and we are going to plant basil amongst our tomatoes. These are just a few of the plants that we have read up on that are supposed to be natural deterrents of pests. Neem oil is another form of a natural pest protector.

Neem oil is a natural product that is used with water to create a solution that can be sprayed directly on the plants. The solution will help to deter pests keeping the plants growing to fruition without the problems of insects eating them before we do. Hopefully it will work for us. We haven't seen many pests after spraying the plants so perhaps it is working already.

Stay tuned in for more stories next week.

Farming Friends and the 4th

2011-07-01T18:19:00.000-04:00

After putting in our new fence we have not seen any signs of the berry burglar, but we did have a little bunny chew through it. Those holes have been mended and hopefully we wont see any more signs of him. In an effort to feed the little pest we harvested some of our lettuce! While the lettuce is too bitter right now to sell at a farm stand, hopefully the woodland critters will enjoy munching on it.

On Tuesday we took a trip up to Craftsbury, VT and took a tour of the beautiful Sterling College. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Sterling it is a progressive liberal arts college that offers three full semesters making it a year-round college. Students put theory in to practice at Sterling as part of their course requirements giving them both academic and field experience. The college educates students on a wide variety of environmental and sustainability fields while running their own farm as part of their education. Being Vermont gardeners ourselves we truly enjoyed our visit to this small agricultural college in the Northeast Kingdom! We are hoping to stay in communication with the folks at Sterling so that we can potentially work with them in the future.

On our way back to Saint Mike's from Sterling, we took a tour of the High Mowing Organic Seeds trial gardens to see where all of our seeds are actually propegated. It was neat to see all the different varieties lined up with one another as well as take note of different growing styles (raised beds, row covers, different types of trellising, etc.)

Our veggies are looking good, and hopefully the warm weather over the weekend will help to keep them growing healthy and strong. We hope that all of our followers and those that have been reading along have a happy 4th of July and a great weekend. Stay tuned for more stories next week!

Wicked, Tricksy Thieveses!

2011-06-25T12:34:00.000-04:00

They stoles is from us! Wicked, nasty, tricksy thieves! They stoles our precious...strawberries! After spending a weekend away from the farm Heather, Erika, and I were none to pleased to see that one of our strawberry bushes and both of our potted raspberry bushes had been taken out of the garden. Someone had come during the weekend and trampled over our fence and dug up one of our precious strawberry plants that we had planted after laboriously digging out a beautiful place for them. Not two days after we had lost the first strawberry plant did the wicked tricksy thieveses come back for a second. We have now lost two out of our three strawberry bushes, and unfortunately we will have no raspberries this year. In an effort to deter future theft we put up a new fence. Hopefully when we get back to the garden on Monday all plants will be accounted for.

In other areas of the garden we are very pleased to see the flowering of our pepper plants and melons. The sugar snap peas are starting to vine their way up the trellis, and our spinach has produced larger leaves than years past. We welcomed the rain with open arms at the end of the week, but it did hinder our ability to tend to some of the plants. We learned recently that you are not supposed to weed your beds during or after a rainfall. Weeding at times after recent rain will not allow the roots of the weeds to dry up in the sun and can cause contamination from bed to bed introducing new weeds and potentially diseases to other vegetables, so the weeding will need to wait until the sun shines a little brighter and a little hotter.

With everything growing we are hoping to start harvesting sometime within the next few weeks. Stay tuned for dates of farm stands and more stories. Hopefully we wont have any more unwanted visitors plucking out plants from under our noses.

Sunshine, Snakes, and Snails

2011-06-16T20:33:00.000-04:00

It has been quite the week working in the garden. Thanks to some much needed rain over the weekend we have been welcoming the sun as it showers our plants in a new way. The soil temperatures rose over the course of the week, so we sowed some seeds that like to germinate in these hot temperatures. In august we will hopefully have healthy and delicious boothby blonde cucumbers, summer squash, and zucchini! We also planted pumpkins in the back of the garden, but they won't be ready to harvest until the fall.

With the beans breaking through the soil, the basil making itself known, and the carrots hiding amongst the weeds, we are seeing great signs of life in our crops. On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have he help of Corey Dolbeare during the morning hours. Corey helped us move our water source, dig drainage ditches, and grab a garter snake for a friendly hello. Later in the week Erika and I witnessed one of the garter snakes eating a frog back in the mellon bed. It was quite the display of nature right before our eyes. Now if only the snakes would acquire a taste for escargot perhaps the snail population would begin to diminish. Alas they continue to thrive, but we did have some visitors come down on Thursday that took care of business in the snail department.

Sarah Regan and Olivia St. Peter came down to the garden for a little tour and some volunteer work. Olivia helped plant some carrots, and then she realized the immense joy of snail hunting. Olivia and Sarah spent some time going up and down the rows of the garden picking up snails and throwing them clear over the fence and into the wild blue yonder. Hopefully they will come back again soon so that they can resume their snail tossing.

As the week comes to a close we have our crops in and our first harvest. Heather harvested some garlic scapes today giving us hopes that the garlic bulbs are on their way! Tune in next week for more stories from the garden.

Soiling Ourselves

2011-06-10T12:38:00.000-04:00

Hello and welcome to the 2011 gardening season with Saint Michael's College. My name is Brian Ahern, and I have spent the past week plotting, planting, weeding, and watering in the organic garden located on the lower 40 of Saint Mike's campus. After holding positions as a well driller's assistant, a dental assistant, and a researcher over the years I find myself working in a completely different field now. The mornings are early and the work days are dirty, but luckily I have a few friends helping me along the way. Heather Ellis is my boss, and she is great. She has been working hard with the garden for a few years now and will be in and out of it on a daily basis helping with tending to the crops. Erika Bodin is in her second year at the garden, and she has been teaching me the ropes and tools of the trade. We like to think of each other as equals, but she is much more the Miyagi type while I am the inexperienced Daniel-san. Last but not least we have a new addition to the garden. His name is Gerome the Gnome and he hails from the MOVE office. Gerome began working in the garden shortly after I did, and he keeps an eye on things for us while we are hard at work.

Before I arrived in the garden this week Erika and a team of wonderful individuals helped to till up the soil and plant most of our crops amidst a mix of rain, hail, and hot humid heat. Over the past week Erika and I have been working on replanting some of the seeds that were lost in the storms as well as putting in all sorts of new ones like herbs, beans, tomatoes, and peppers. We have been lucky enough to have frequent visitors in the garden. Thanks to Valerie Banschbach's Ecology class and the helpful hands of Bill Grover and Greg Delanty we were able to transplant many of the crops we had started in pots as well as cut back the vegetation and overgrowth from beyond the fence so that our tomatoes don't get stuck in the shade. We were also able to plant a few different varieties of sunflowers in the back of the garden.

So far we have seen signs of life in our kale, chard, snap peas, and onion plots among a few others. Our fingers are crossed for sunshine and rain to keep our plants growing strong.

As I am new to this work I am still getting a feel for how the earth works, but stay tuned in for tales from over the hill. Erika, Heather, Gerome, and I have happily soiled ourselves and are eagerly waiting for our hard work to pay off.

2010-07-29T15:12:00.001-04:00

Harvest Time

2010-07-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

For the past three weeks we have been harvesting and selling our vegetables and flowers on campus. Last growing season we began having farmstands the first week of August and this season we have already had three before the end of July! This is exciting progress for us not only because it means our crops are healthier and more abundant than last season, but we also have the opportunity to earn more money to fund next year's garden intern position. The farmstands have been a great learning experience in all aspects of mangaing the production and sales of our bounty.

When we started the farmstands in '09 we decided to not set specific prices for our vegetables. Instead we established a donation system and our motto has been "take what you like and give what you like." This has served as an interesting social/economic experiment. Our profits have been steady and consistant despite the inevidable varation that this system entails. Some folks are more than generous and others are able to give what they can and still receive plenty of organic produce. Now that we have experimented with the donation system for two seasons we are beginnging to consider if we would like to maintain this mentality with our farmstands or would we like to try a different approach. We are now considering buying a scale so we can weigh the vegetables and then people can sense from there about how much things would cost in a grocery store and then base their donation on weight. We are also contemplating setting fixed prices that are comparable to local market prices.

With these thoughts in mind many other questions arise such as, will fixed prices encourage or discourage sales now that we have been functioning on a donation basis? Who are our customers and how do we ensure all SMC students have equal access to the vegetables? Another big question on our minds now that we are producing more has also been what to do with the extra produce? We have been donating our surplus to the Chittenden County Food Shelf, but are there other venues for sharing what we glean? The exciting thing about all of these questions is that the Farmden serves as an excellent opportunity to experiement with various methods and approaches to growing and selling organic produce and we have the support and flexibility test our ideas and learn from our experiences.

2010-07-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

The incoming first year students came down to the garden on Sunday for the MOVE community service weekend! They were a great group! We gave them a tour of the garden...told them how we practice crop rotation and organic pest management. We're hoping we can get some new students interested in helping out in the garden :) We got a lot done; a few groups weeded the pumpkin patch as well as the rows of onions, swiss chard, and carrots. Another group was in charge of getting rid of the ever-annoying cucumber beetles that are attacking our squash. Ended with some of Heather's delicious baked goods and a group photo. All in all, a successful day with the MOVERS! This is the second year that we've had MOVE help in the garden. This connection with MOVE, as well as OVE, is really helpful in raising awareness about "the Secret Garden" (frequent response to saying I work in the garden: Garden? I didn't know Saint Mike's had an organic garden! Where?) More awareness = more involvment and that is exactly what we want!

Speaking of awareness...we are having a farm stand tomorrow on the chapel lawn! We have zucchini, lettuce, swiss chard, kale, basil, cilantro, turnips, and dill. Stop by to pick up some fresh, delicious veggies and herbs!
-Sedgewick

Beetle Juice!

2010-07-08T09:26:00.000-04:00

Now that things are in full swing down at the garden, flowering plants, thriving lettuce, forests of tomato plants, the pests are moving in. Our biggest challenge over the past couple weeks have been cucumber beetles! Initially they attacked our zucchini then gradually discovered the squash, cucumbers and pumpkins. So each day we spend a good chunk of time hand picking and squishing the beetles. Handpicking is recommended as the most effective organic method for controlling these pests. They like to cluster in shaded places so they can usually be found on the underside of leaves or nestled in at the base or stem of the plant. This is also where they like to lay their eggs. We have placed tin foil at the base of each plant which reflects the sun up on to the plant so there is less shade for them to dwell in. Each morning we inspect the underside and ground around each plant and squish as many as we can grab. One of our reference books, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, suggests heavy handpicking early in the growing season because they can produce up to three generations of beetles in one summer!

So, far we seem to have the situation under control. We used one application of garden dust, which is another organic method of insect control, on all of the plants and this definitely slowed them down substantially. Aside from cucumber beetles, we also have our usual colony of snails and slugs living at the garden and munching all the plants. Beer has been our weapon against these pests and we leave small dishes in areas where the snails and slugs seem to gather. Our latest pest discovery is broccoli worms. Since we did not previously grow broccoli this will be a new opportunity for experimenting with organic remedies. We are considering using a garlic/cayenne spray or a neem oil spray, any suggestions?

One thing all the pests in the garden indicates is that we sure do have a lot of food for them to munch on! Everything is growing healthy and strong and in the next couple of weeks we will be taking the vegetables away from the bugs and bringing them up on to campus to share at our farmstands!
Stay cool,
-Sedgewick

Taming Weeds

2010-06-17T14:35:00.001-04:00

Greetings everyone. In the midst of plentiful rain and cooler temperatures we had a productive and delightful week down at the farmden. Thanks to some tiller lessons and help from our friend Roger we were able to till up all the walkways in the farmden in preparation for hay mulching. We plan to mulch every row as well as around some of the plants in an attempt to keep our weeds under control this growing season! We vigorously weeded throughout the garden in an attempt to eliminate any competition for the sun we are expecting this weekend.

We also had a Veggie Start Farm stand this week. After thinning and transplanting was done we still had some left over veggie starts that needed homes. Here on campus we were able to share some new varieties and vegetables with folks who still had room in their gardens. We also donated some of our veggies starts to DREAM, the youth volunteer program run through M.O.V.E. and they will be planting at the Franklin Square Community Garden right in Burlington. And believe it or not we still have some baby plants looking for homes, so if you or anyone you know would like to nurture them please let us know. We are so happy to have the opportunity to not only share our veggies with our community, but also to be a resource for assisting people who want to learn how to grow food!

Thanks to Wonderful Volunteers!

2010-06-09T12:20:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday our farmden was graced with the presence of an amazing group of volunteers! When our work day was finished we all looked around and couldn't believe how much we had accomplished in just a few hours.
Here's what we did:

We dug a trench around the perimeter of the farmden and
Constructed and secured the 7' fence
Planted a new flower plot along side our blueberry bushes
Planted beans and squash
Raked new beds in preparation for planting
Transplanted onions, broccoli and peppers

Now not only have all of our vegetables, herbs and flowers been planted, they are safe and happy thanks to the protection of our new fence. The weather has also been very cooperative lately with a nice balance of sun and rain giving young plants just what they need. We are now growing squash, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, turnips, parsnips, onions, rhubarb, beets, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, potatoes and pumpkins (carrots and pak choi to be planted very soon).

Some other news from this week is in addition to finishing all of our vegetable planting we also finished all of our companion herb planting. This is a new experiment for the garden this year where we planted some of our herbs right in the beds of vegetables that compliment each other. These included:

Rosemary&Beans
Rosemary&Potatoes
Basil&Tomatoes
Cilantro&Tomatoes
Thyme&Lettuce
Parsley&Broccoli

We also have these herbs planted in beds of their own and we are excited to see what differences and benefits we notice throughout the growing season. We hope our herb and vegetable companions enhance each others lives as much as our wonderful volunteers have enhanced ours. Thanks again organic growing companions!

-Sedgewick

"Farmden" 2010

2010-05-31T19:56:00.000-04:00

Greetings and welcome to the first Saint Michael's Organic Garden 2010 update!

"Farmden" is a term I was introduced to at this year's NOFA conference (Northeast Organic Farming Association) coined by gardener Lee Reich (author of My Weedless Garden) it refers to a growing space that is more than a garden but less than a farm, which perfectly describes our Organic garden. This year we are diving into some exciting new initiatives and changes in the garden that definitely qualify it as a farmden.

One of the biggest changes this year is our conversion to rows instead of plots. Last year the garden consisted of plots of various sizes where our vegetables, herbs and flowers grew. This year we have designed a row system which entails 4' beds and 3' walk ways in an alternating pattern across our entire 1/4 acre growing space. Each row is broken down into sections of different vegetables and we will integrate herbs and flowers throughout each row based on companion relationships and aesthetic delights! The rows are intended to cut down on soil compaction because we will be able to reach across each 4' row to tend and harvest the vegetables without ever having to step in them. The 3' walk ways also make our farmden more community friendly because volunteers and visitors will know exactly where to step and where not to in addition to having plenty of space to maneuver. We are also experimenting with plastic row covers this year and we will be sure to keep you up to date on the benefits and challenges we discover with using this method. So far we have planted some of our heat loving vegetables (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant) with row covers.

Another big change for this year is a 7' deer fence that will be constructed this week. Our fence will consist of 7' metal poles spaced approximately 12' apart and a plastic fencing surrounding the entire farmden. Our hope is that this more permanent and sturdy fencing will deter our animal friends from getting into our expanding farmden. In fact we had a critter visit and dig up some of our transplants their first night in the soil, so we are greatly looking forward to the protection a nice big fence offers.

This year we started several vegetables in a biology lab greenhouse here on campus. This was the first year we successfully started and transplanted our own vegetables. One of our goals for this growing season is to learn more about seed saving and storing methods in hopes of eventually practicing the whole process of producing, storing and planting our own seeds. We are growing some new vegetables this year including: broccoli, beets, turnips, potatoes, rhubarb and zucchini. We have also transplanted 12 blueberry bushes into our new fruit plot which is located just a bit uphill from the main garden area. Next year we plan to add strawberries too!

We are really looking forward to learning from our expanding farmden this season and we can't wait to share what it produces! Stay tuned!

-Sedgewick

First Farm Stand of the Fall Semester

2009-09-09T11:29:00.000-04:00

We had a very exciting turn out at our first farm stand with students back on campus.

We sold out of all the veggies and herbs! We had the farm stand open at a time right between classes so students were able to get their hands on the veggies first! There was so much positive feed back and interest from students and much inquiring about how to get involved.

Students at Farm Stand last Friday!

If you would like to partake in garden/farm stand activities there are several ways to do so. Outdoor Volunteer Efforts, a M.O.V.E. program, offers opportunities to help out in the garden Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings (check the MOVE board in Alliot for sign up times), Green Up holds weekly meetings where garden up dates and projects are announced and discussed, or you can mosey on down to the garden yourself and check it out.

We have plans to have a stand in the next couple of weeks that includes food made from the garden such as: salsa, pesto, tea and we will provide bread and chips so we can have a farm cafe.

If you have any suggestions or input on this idea please post them here or come to the next Green Up meeting with feedback.

Until next time,

-Sedgewick (your friendly garden gnome)

Awesome Volunteers

2009-08-26T12:28:00.000-04:00

We had a wonderful group of volunteers from the M.O.V.E. program Trek come to the garden yesterday and what a difference they made! We weeded several beds that were becoming wild with weeds (as happens in late August) and we also toured the garden and our SMC compost!

Check out the before and after pictures of the Three Sisters bed!

Before and.....

......After! WoW!

We are greatly looking forward to sharing our garden and it's wonderful harvests with everyone as they return to campus. Another Farm Stand will be held next Friday. This will be our first of the school year, so feel free to stop by. Many opportunities to be involved with the garden will be organized in the next couple of weeks. Keep posted and come share in this wonderful community sustainabilty project here on campus!

Happy trails,

-Sedgewick

Harvest Time

2009-08-19T13:36:00.000-04:00

Yes, the garden is now indeed in full swing with small harvests ready daily! With the amazing hot days last week and a steady period with no rain the garden took off running. The weather provided just the boost it needed! Now we have wonderful straightneck summer squash, red tomatoes, Boothbay Blonde cucumbers, zinnias and even some pumpkins emerging. All of the greens are flourishing right along and as they welcome all the new veggies!

Most excitingly, last week's first farm stand was a great success! We were able to share our harvest and enjoy the wonderful tradition of a farmers market style gathering right here on campus! All of the profits went directly back to the garden to ensure sustaining our community garden project for the future!

Although harvest time also indicates things will soon begin to wind down we have many new beginnings to look forward to at the garden as well. There will be various class related projects going on this up coming semester such as science tests and analysis, writing and photography class work as well as community service volunteer hours opportunities all at the garden!

Thanks so much to everyone for all of the support, involvement and love the garden has been receiving all summer long. It's going to be a wonderful fall!

-Sedgewick

Wild August

2009-08-05T16:41:00.000-04:00

Happy Wednesday from the Garden!

What excitement we have had in the garden this past week! We've had some heavy rain, some much deserved long hot days without rain, and our maturing plants are getting ready for our first Farmers Market Stand this Friday!

We are thrilled to be able to share a variety of mixed greens (baby lettuce, kale, spicy stir fry mix, and heads of romaine), baby potted herbs( basil, cilantro, and mint), and a beautiful array of wildflowers with you at our Farm stand. We will be located on the main campus green, Friday August 7th, in front of St. Ed's from 12-1:30 or until our harvest is exhausted. We will be offering suggested prices, but haggling or donating will be encouraged!

Now, along with the excitement of having maturing vegetables and plants ready to share also comes new challenges. Just like humans, as our plants grow further along new demands and issues emerge. We discovered yesterday that our squash plants are suffering from squash vine borers. The worm like larva of this pest bores into the stem of the plant and eats it from the inside out. Luckily we identified this problem and implemented the necessary steps to eliminate it from our plants. Today we discovered it also traveled to our pumpkins and we are keeping a close eye on our cucumbers which may be the next victims. We have strong faith that our actions will successfully get rid of this pest and the plants will make it through this and be even stronger!

We hope to see you Friday!

-Sedgewick

Edcuational field trip

2009-07-30T14:25:00.000-04:00

Hello,

The sunny week has helped many of the plants look positive. The trimed lettuce is growing well and becoming sweeter. The squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins all have flowers blooming, and the tomatoes have stabled.

Wednesday Heidi and I ventured down to Rutland, VT where we volunteered at and toured Boardman Hill organic farmed. We picked a veriety of squash and Zuchini on the 15 acher farm and pulled weeds in the overgrown bean bed.

And next Friday we plan on holding a small farmstand. We will update this with implications of the farm stand.

Sedgewick

Experimentation

2009-07-22T12:48:00.000-04:00

Yes, the garden has been undergoing much experimentation as we learn ever more about the specific needs of our soil. Our hope is that this year we will have learned some effective growing methods that can be passed on and improved upon in future years.

We added a Bone Meal fertilizer to the entire garden over the course of last week. We chose Bone Meal because our soil was particularly lacking in phosphate and Bone Meal has a high concentration of this nutrient. We also chose Bone Meal instead of just phosphate rock because it had other supplementary nutrients as well. Since our soil is so young we feel giving the plants any extra boost we can will be beneficial.

When fertilizing, we chose to add Bone Meal to half of the Carrot and Swiss Chard bed and see if there was a noticeable difference and there was!

Notice in the picture how the carrots to the right of Sedgewick(the little gnome) are bigger and greener than those on the left! They appreciated the phosphate!

We also chose not to fertilize the large mesculn bed. We made this decision because we harvested the entire bed today cutting each plant down so just a small amount of green is left. This is done to stimulate new growth. Each plant could potentially produce two more harvests. Now that the plants are trimmed we will fertilize the bed feeding the new crop as it emerges. Our first harvest of lettuce was...bitter...this is simply the nature of a young garden that is working to establish a nutrient base. However, since it has been such a rainy season the second harvest of lettuce has great potential for better flavor.

Another experiment we have begun is trying different trellising methods for the cucumbers. One area of the garden has tri-pod style trellising constructed of sticks and the other section has a row of plastic fencing. As the cucumbers grow and begin climbing we will be able to see if there is a difference in the growth of the vegetables and we will see if one method is sturdier than the other.

We will be sure to tell you the results of all of our exciting experiements and projects real soon!

-Sedge

The Sun is Shinning and the Weather is Sweet

2009-07-15T15:11:00.000-04:00

We have had a wonderful week in our Garden!

Some much needed fertilizer has been added to the plants and we are looking forward to the sunny forecast over the weekend. The plants are steadily but surely getting bigger! We anticipate a late summer harvest for most of the vegetables in our young garden and we plan to have a late season crop of leafy greens planted just in time for everyone to enjoy when fall semester begins.

We have been grateful to have many hands helping to meet the needs of and improve our garden. With the thoughtful, passionate and determined involvement we have in our community, success is ensured for our garden this year and for years to come!

Be sure to keep up to date with our photo album where photos are added weekly so you can see the progress of the plants!

Think Sun!

-Sedgewick

Gobble, Gobble

2009-07-08T10:27:00.000-04:00

It's a rainy day here at the farm and our wild turkey friend came to visit to this morning! Luckily, he is the only big creature to be spotted in the garden so far. Yesterday afternoon we experienced intense thunder storms and even some hail. But, have no fear our warrior vegetables survived and are stronger for it!

At the end of last we we fertilized the peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers with a compost concoction consisting of: 1/3 SMC compost, 1/3 last year's Intervale compost, and 1/3 this year's Intervale compost. The plants loved it! We had no sign of any tomatoes when we left for the weekend and when we came back Monday many new little fruits had popped out and now almost every pepper plant is producing! This growth indicated to us that our plants our healthy and alive but they are lacking sufficient nutrients for substantial growth. We plan to continue adding our compost mixture to the rest of the crops and possibly some additional phosphate for the tomatoes.

Some of our leafy greens are just about ready for their first harvest. We have a "cut and come again" mesculn lettuce mix that is ready for some picking and our thriving stir fry mix (pak choi, kale, mesculn, romaine) is ready to be munched on. Some of the pak choi in this mix went to seed, but not all of it. We are anticipating that the trimming of these greens will stimulate new growth in the plants as they persevere through our wonderfully exciting Vermont summer weather!

Gobble, Gobble,
-Sedgewick

T-storms

2009-07-01T14:02:00.000-04:00

Hello from the SMC Organic Farm

The first T-storms began this week and the plants seem to enjoy them. Beans that we planted last week are growing stronger than most other plants that have been growing for a month now. We are guessing this is a result of high soil temperatures at the time of germination. We have continued to lay down compost as fertilizer on most of the plants. This week we also began researching other fertilization methods. Right now we have a compost tea brewing and we have been researching fish emulsion. Due to the youth of our garden and it's soil we are sensing that supplements such as these are consistantly necessary. At the end of the day the beans, squash, some cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, and the greens are growing well. The tomatoes have settled in and are growing well but are small due to a bad start. Any advice for giving our tomatoes a boost?

One pest issue we have been dealing with the past month is snails. We picked up all of the hay mulch because we discovered it was a paradise for them. We feared the anticipated for rain this week would boost the snail numbers; fortunately, they are not out of hand. Our method for detering the snails other than picking up the hay has been to a do daily snail hunt. Since our farm is in a damp site we are accepting that this will most likely be a continuous issue throughout the growing season. Does any one have any snail emlimination tricks?

All and all it has been a great week! The garden is stable and we are learning about our soil and vegetable needs daily, ensuring much gained knowledge and experience for next year!

Sunshine, sunshine nothin' but Sunshine

2009-06-24T14:06:00.000-04:00

Happy hot and sunny day from the farm!

We spent today watering and now the plants are enjoying a nice long day basking in the sunshine. With all of the rain we had last week and all of the sun
to come in the next few days, we couldn't ask for better growing conditions!

This week we created a forum for posting pictures of the farm as it matures.
Please take a look when you get a chance. All of the photos are accompanied by the date they were taken so you can easily follow the progression of our wonderful organic farm.
We would love to hear any feedback or advice you may have about how the plants look or any techniques and tricks for vegetable growing success that you would like to share!
Follow this link to access the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/SMCOrganicGarden/OrganicGardenMayAndJune2009?feat=directlink

Now that we are almost diving into July, things have smoothed out from the lively start that always comes along with planting your garden each season. Now that the plants are growing and weeds are semi- tame, we have been provided with the opportunity start sharing our progress with you! So, please also feel free to visit St. Michael's new sustainability website where a complete update of our farm project is available. http://www.smcvt.edu/sustainability/projects/garden.asp.

Happy Trails
-Sedgwick

June 18th, 2009

2009-06-18T11:35:00.000-04:00

Greetings from the SMC Organic Farm!
We are happily caring for our community farm as it begins it's second season here on Saint Michael's campus. This growing season we are focusing on cultivating based on the needs of our soil. This means we have researched and planted our crops according to factors such as PH levels, nutrients, and zoning particular to our site. Accordingly, we will establish a crop rotation layout which will ensure future soil stability and productivity. We are eagerly anticipating lots of rich, leafy greens (lettuce, kale, swiss chard) to be ready for picking in the next couple of weeks. Check in later this season for our first SMC Organic Farmers Market dates!