Welcome to the VegeBlog!

This blog updates what is happening in the Organic Vegetable Garden at Potomac Overlook Regional Park (in reverse chronological order). Be sure to check back often to see what we've got "growing on"! For more information on the Garden, visit the Demonstration Gardens page.
(Past years - 2009)

2010

• Wednesday, July 28: Weeds do not cause organic gardeners much trouble. You pull them and put them somewhere other than the compost pile. Animals, on the other hand, are big trouble. We've been fighting squash bugs, which have seriously attacked the summer squash, and have been researching ways to outwit the creatures next year (like doing more companion planting). And then there are the squirrels, who have been taking bites out of the tomatoes, usually just as they are turning red. If they would just eat the whole tomato, it wouldn't be half so irritating!
• Wednesday, July 14: Rain, wonderful rain! We worked in a light drizzle this morning and it felt great. Our bush beans have not produced well after the first great flush, and we were discussing why. Others reported that their beans were also not bearing. Remembered a fragment of lore from my farm childhood about beans not setting if it was too hot. Did a bit of research and found that indeed really hot weather meant that the beans would not set, even if watered enough. Plants do have a mind of their own.
• Wednesday, July 7: Only one word described the garden: HOT! Still, we harvested beans, squash, carrots, beets, basil, and the last of the sugar snap peas. Also picked butter leaf and red lettuce, which just will not quit this year, mainly due to heavy watering we think. Tomatoes are blooming and fruit setting on but nothing ripe yet. Amazingly, in the middle of this heat wave, we checked the planting calendars and discovered that next week we need to start planting the fall and overwintering vegetables. Nothing like a vegetable garden to keep a person focused on the future.
• Wednesday, June 30: We have beans, lots of beans. Bush beans are producing and still blooming, and pole beans have just started blooming even though they went in the ground about 2 weeks earlier than the bush beans. We'll see if they bear heavier and longer. We had bad luck with our second planting of cucumbers even though we tried doing a companion planting of radishes in the same hills. Perhaps we just confused everybody. And we proved once again that zucchini can grow to baseball-bat size overnight.
• Wednesday, June 23--Hot, hot, hot today. Maybe the peppers will finally start flourishing. Tomatoes and basil (even that grown from seed when we planted the tomatoes) are happily growing away. Took the row cover off two rows of cucumbers that have started blooming so that the blossoms can be pollinated. Now if the squash bugs will just stay away! Picked the first beans and pulled the shelling peas. Sugar snap peas do seem to do better in our climate--they're still blooming.
• Wednesday, June 9: Vegetable gardening always surprises! Peas, which usually hate our Arlington weather, are producing away, and the pole beans now seem to be outgrowing the pests that had bedeviled them earlier. The peppers, however, are sulking. Planted at the same time as the tomatoes and basil (growing away happily) and in a bed carefully prepared after being fallow for a year, the peppers, no matter the variety, are just hanging on. Maybe some good, hot weather will help!
• Wednesday, June 2: Lots going on this week. Harvested three kinds of peas. Consensus is that the oriental and sugar peas do better in Arlington's climate. Fought slugs by putting coffee grounds around the plants (squash and beans) that are so far their favorites. We're doing a lot of building: supports for row covers, a bamboo superstructure for the pole beans, trellises for the peas. Who knew that an architectural mindset was useful in vegetable gardening!
• Wednesday, May 26: Split bamboo for bean supports, made frames to hold floating row covers to protect the cucumbers from being destroyed this year by squash beetles, which is what happened last year, and planted more tomatoes in containers to see how they compare with all the ones we've already planted in beds. Harvested wonderful greens and pulled the last of the radishes. Meteorological summer seems to be here, and what a difference a good rain makes!
• Wednesday, May 12: Too many bugs, and not enough of the good ones yet. Spent part of the time trying to figure out what was feasting on our pole beans. We'll replant in a couple of weeks, if necessary, in hopes that we have outwaited a pest cycle. Otherwise, a glorious day in the garden, and many hands to make light work. Have begun to harvest (and enjoy) the fresh greens. And, as always, thanks to the naturalists at Potomac Overlook, who, among other many supportive activities, identified and relocated the snakes who found the compost and leaf mulch piles attractive places to hang out!
• Wednesday, May 5--Quite the week. First was Novella Carpenter's visit on Friday, April 30, and then there was Potomoc Overlook's open house on Sunday, May 2, when we invited children (and a few adults too) to pull the just-ready radishes. Many things planted on Wednesday, and a few too many insects visiting and particularly enjoying the newly emerging arugula (Arlington insects seem to have sophisticated tastes!), but such is life in an organic garden.
• Wednesday, April 28: Thanks to many hands and good weather, we did a lot today getting ready for Novella Carpenter's visit and Potomac Overlook's open house. The garden looks beautiful. We planted beans and edible flowers, weeded, thinned endive, double dug, planted more kale, sorted out the herb garden, and talked about how soon we dared plant the tomatoes, peppers, and other warm-weather crops as we near that magic date: the last spring frost. And we tasted the first cherry belle radishes!
• Wednesday, April 14: Who knew that vegetable gardening included putting logs in the pond to soak 48 hours so we can harvest more of the wonderful shiitake mushrooms later this summer? It was also interesting that there was a story in the Home section of Thursday's New York Times about growing mushrooms in the city. Obviously, we're in good company. We also did more traditional gardening: planting, tilling, thinning, laying soaker hoses, transplanting, even harvesting.
• Wednesday, April 7: Thanks to Kirsten Buhls, Amber and Daniel Vallotton, and Andy Hankins for a wonderful day of learning as part of the Sustainable Urban Agriculture Lecture series. Now we REALLY know how to double dig after watching Daniel dig part of a bed in the garden. Wish that we could just have enticed him to keep digging. And we "planted" shiitake mushrooms in oak logs, which Andy provided in addition to his expertise. More learning than working this time, but lots of fun.
• Wednesday, March 31: Even though the ground was a little wetter than ideal, we put in more peas (Wando, Little Marvel, and Frosty), which we interplanted with carrots, and then red lettuce and more arugula. Asparagus spears coming through, and radishes planted last week are up. The beds with lots of organic material can be worked and the soil is friable, but the ones that we haven't amended as much yet are clearly wetter. Compost really does work!
• Wednesday, March 24: It was dry enough to plant, and plant we did! Planted Bloomsdale spinach, Cherrybelle and Minowase radishes, Crosby's Egyptian beets, and various kinds of lettuce and carrot seeds, plus more peas to join the ones mudded in two weeks ago. We even harvested more Russian kale and some collards and spinach, a winter gift to us. Also found our first nonbeneficial insects of the season: harlequin bugs on the kale.
• Wednesday, March 17: A beautiful day in the garden! Welcomed two interns from this year's class in doing the unglamorous but necessary work of spring cleanup: turning compost, spreading wood chips on paths, cutting back and mulching asparagus plants heavily with wonderful black compost from our bins. Sadly, too wet to turn the beds or plant.
• Wednesday, March 10: First "official" visit to the Organic Vegetable Garden and what fun. Even after this miserable, snowy winter, kale and spinach had survived and were beginning to put out new leaves. The leeks are still there, looking bedraggled, but we pulled about five and left others to see what they will do with the warmer weather. And the rhubarb was again proving how tough it is and pushing its first rosy pink growth through. Took a leap of faith and planted about a half a row of sugar snap peas. A good day to be in the garden!