"Time For Me" Learning Center Visits the Garden for the First Time!

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 The preschoolers from “Time For Me” Early Learning Center, just down the road from our garden, came to visit and have a lesson in the garden .  http://www.timeformecenter.com/

We talked about what things are extinct and what that word “Extinct” means.  Everyone was excited to raise their hand and share that they knew that dinosaurs were extinct and all that was left behind were bones! 

However, we then talked about how some fruits and veggies are going extinct, and they were very surprised! 

It is estimated that the average 
American meal travels about 1,500 miles to get from farm to plate. Because more and more people wanted to eat foods that were out of season, like strawberries in October, foods needed to be shipped from all around the world.   Farmers had to start breeding varieties that held up in boxcars, trucks, or ship’s cargo.  SUPER SEEDS!

Vegetables from hybrid (super) seed have some benefits like;  disease resistance, greater productivity, and a more uniform fruit (pretty), better pest resistance, disease resistance, cold tolerance, drought tolerance, and added nutrition!  They are genetically altered to create a “super seed”.  With these super seeds, some of our Heirloom plants started to disappear! 

Heirloom = seeds passed down from generation to generation!

They were no longer grown, and their seeds no longer saved!

They learned that Andean farmers in Peru once grew some 4,000 potato varieties, each with its own name, flavor, and use, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic and covering the color spectrum from indigo-purple to red, orange, yellow and white.  Now, even in the regions of Peru least affected by the modern market, only a few dozen potato varieties 
are widely grown. 

The RCS Giving Garden introduces new heirloom vegetables to our garden every year.   Purple Beans, Dragon Carrots, Green Zebra, Black Sea and Red Zebra tomatoes, and Rainbow Swiss Chard to name a few

Did you know that when you cook purple beans, they turn green?!   And if you put them in a little olive oil and vinegar and put them in the fridge overnight, they turn a little light purple again!   At their next visit on July 11^th, we should have some purple beans that they take home with them and experiment!

The RCS Giving Garden orders our heirloom seeds from Seed Savers at  www.seedsavers.org.     Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.   Since 1975, their members have been passing on our garden heritage by collecting and distributing thousands of samples of rare garden seeds to other gardeners in order to bring back those delicious and rare varieties.

After hearing about Seed Savers, the Time for Me group thought it would be fun to grow Dragon Carrots in their garden next year!

Finally, we took a tour of the garden plants and then visited the bee hives from a safe distance. 

Thank you Time for Me for coming to our garden!  We will see you next month when everything has grown much taller and you can see the vegetables that are growing in the garden!

Bee hives in the shadow by the building
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- Contributing Writer, Joni Fletty

Mulching and Weeding and Bean Leaf Beetles

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The plants have certainly grown since planting day on May 21.  Squash plants are blossoming.  The corn is higher than ankle height.  Eggplant and edamame (a green vegetable type of soybean popular in Asia) are thriving and the tomatoes have tripled in size.  The bush beans have many holes in their leaves from bean leaf beetles.   Since it is early in the season the beetles are probably adults that overwintered in the soil. We will keep an eye on these plants but as the bean plants develop and grow more leaves the plants will likely be more tolerant of the damage.  If you want to read more about bean leaf beetles - click on this link to the University of Minnesota Extension website:   http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/insects/find/bean-leaf-beetles/

Our volunteers today were a group of Summer Stretch students and their leader from Woodbury Peaceful Grove United Methodist Church.  Our willing helpers put on gloves, took charge of rows and aisles and spread out 12 bales of marsh hay mulch in record time.  We talked about how mulching or putting down a layer of material on the soil surface helps the garden in many ways such as conserving the soil moisture, reducing fluctuation of soil temperatures, adding organic material back to the soil and suppressing weed growth.

Speaking of weed growth, after the mulching our volunteers went after the weeds in the leaf lettuce and the edamame.    It took determination to pull out all the tiny weeds growing amidst the small lettuce leaves but everyone stuck to the job and had at least half of a plastic bag full of weeds when we were done.

Thank you Summer Stretch group for accomplishing so much and helping the Giving Garden get off to a good start!

Contributing Writer -

Deb Lynch
Master Gardener

Rutherford Junior Master Gardeners come back to the garden!

On a sunny Tuesday, the Rutherford Junior Master Gardeners met at The Giving Garden after school to learn about honeybees and the new beehives on site, to plant a row of heirloom tomatoes they started from seed under grow lights and to enjoy a summer fruit pop treat!  We look forward to working in the garden this summer!

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Thank you to Master Gardener and beekeeper, AJ Moses, for teaching us about the importance of honey bees and how beehives are constructed!  We need our bees!

         

Click on the bee picture above to open up the bee lesson!

Thanks also to a group of Washington County Master Gardeners and parents for helping the kids to plant their tomatoes properly.  Plant them deep and water them well!  This year we planted the following heirloom plants:  Nebraska Wedding, Black Krim, Powers Yellow, Redfield Beauty, Beam’s Yellow Pear and the kids’ favorite, Green Zebra.