The Giving Garden of Carrollton

Saturday Harvest

Harvest has begun and for several weeks, The Giving Garden has gathered produce to donate to CCA. Today we picked 44 pounds of beautiful, organic vegetables. Potatoes, squash, peppers, chard, kale, onions, tomatoes and okra are producing right now.

The garden is growing not only delicious, healthy produce but we are developing a caring community. Quite a number of gardeners turned out about 8 a.m. to help pick, wash and sort the produce. Thank you all, Giving Garden Gardeners.

Thank you also for the many folks who have helped finish up the third mulch delivery. We are close to completing the aisle and common areas and will soon be able to use the remaining mulch for the garden beds.

The garden is looking just beautiful! Happy Gardening All.

Herb Garden

With two deliveries from Living Earth of 25 cubic yards of mulch, the garden is looking so beautiful. Believe it or not though, we still need to buy more to complete a few rows and the common area between Phase I and II. The mulch has made a huge difference in the neatness of the garden and will help with the weeds between the beds.

Here is a photo of the newly planted herb garden that is available to all gardeners of The Giving Garden. This bed was initially planted by Daisy Troop #3959. Kirsten, Amy and I had fun with the nine 5-6 yr. old girls and their parents, planting out the bed on Saturday, April 9. Soon the herbs will be mature enough for harvesting. Thank you, Daisies.

Some gardeners are already harvesting onions, carrots, potatoes, chard and kale. David Strickland took 25 pounds of veggies to CCA this past week. Soon we will start our Saturday harvests for our food share program. The soil seems so much better than last year, our first year. We have identified some pests this year-the harlequin bug and the flea beetle. So far, we have not seen the squash bug, but we are on the look out! Many of us have taken steps to deter the squash bug, such as planting radishes around the squash and setting out beer traps. So far, so good.

We soon will be harvesting tomatoes and squash. Happy gardening all!

Growing Plants for the Garden

Many Giving Garden gardeners having been growing vegetables to sell to other gardeners in order to raise money for the garden. The plant sale will be at the garden on Saturday, March 19 at 10 a.m.

Please come and support our efforts to raise funds as our needs are many. There will be many varieties of tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, among other varieties.

Each plant will sell for $3. Please bring cash or checks made payable to Keep Carrollton Beautiful with a notation for The Giving Garden. I’m looking forward to seeing you all at the garden on March 19th.

Happy Gardening!

Ladybugs on Arugula

I stopped by the garden yesterday to check on the “greens bed.” I’ve planted a variety of greens-butter lettuce, kale, spinach, chard, mesclun and argula. I was surprised and delighted to discover a ladybug explosion in the bed. I stopped counting at 20 ladybugs. I’m sure they were finding some bugs to munch on and they were also busy making more ladybugs!

Last spring, Willie Lane released a bunch of ladybugs in the garden and I’d like to think that these are their offspring. Hopefully the greens bed will keep them around until the next planting. I’ll be covering the bed to protect them from hard freezes.

Be sure to order your seeds for next spring’s garden now. If you want to grow your own seeds, many should be started around mid-January.

Happy Garden Planning!

A freeze is on the way next week, so David and I built a hoop structure to hopefully protect the greens I recently planted in bed #28. I hope to be able to pick greens all winter. The arugula, chard, bib lettuce, spinach, mesclun and carrots should be able to take a freeze, but will need to be covered if there’s a deep freeze. Here’s a photo of the structure:

Hoop Structure for Winterization

The cloth is rolled up to the center top board and will be rolled down and secured with binder clips when needed. It’s a fun experiment and we’ll see how it makes it through our winter this year.

Happy Gardening to all and have a safe Thanksgiving.

Square Garden Layout

Saturday was a beautiful day to work at the garden. Although we had only a few gardeners, those few got quite a bit of clean-up done.

All the beds are now numbered, 1-32, so it will be easier to locate a certain bed. Fire ant mounds were drenched with orange oil and horticultural molasses. Lots of weeds were pulled around the plots and in between the beds, but sadly, there is still a lot more weeding to be done. Hopefully, all those who were not able to come on Saturday will weed around their own beds in this next week. We were starting to look pretty raggedy!

The fall veggies are really starting to take off, so be sure to take out those old, spent summer vegetables and put in a fall crop. We’re still collecting each Saturday for the food pantry and this past Saturday we collected 12 pounds of eggplants, okra, peppers and basil.

Here’s a picture of our new shed with its new forest green paint job. Thank you “Mark the Painter” for doing such a great job. Mark is Cindy Baxley’s brother and the Baxleys sponsored Mark to paint our shed.

Our New Garden Shed

Happy gardening all!

When I visited the garden this morning, it seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief that the triple digit weather has abated. Most everything seems to be growing again-especially the basil. If you haven’t made any pesto yet-it’s time! Freeze some in ice cube trays to pop in your pasta or soup dishes this winter.

The garden is really looking up with a new picket fence, a vegetable washing stand, two raised handicapped beds and two picnic tables. Yeah for the eagle scout projects. We have accomplished so much this season. Thanks to everyone’s efforts we have collected over 200 pounds of organic produce for those in need in southern Denton County.

The best time for gardening in Texas is near-Happy Gardening All!

Well, there are things still growing in this heat. Here’s a picture of a beautiful eggplant growing in Cindy and Amy’s garden. Eggplants, okra, cucumbers, sage and basil are the stars this week. The heat doesn’t seem to faze them.

Bark mulch is being laid in Phase II, thanks to the hard work of our community service volunteer, James. Please give him a big thank you for all he’s done for our garden. He’s worked exceptionally hard, especially in our triple digit heat.

New fall transplants are hanging in there. It will be cool one day. Happy gardening everyone.

Here is a photo of the beautiful gate that Justin completed. It does give us a presence now, doesn’t it?

Most of our fall transplants are surviving the July heat. I lost one tomato and one pepper plant in the last week.

Besides the bunnies, we are also battling rats for our produce! Some of the trials we are experiencing make me think of how hard it was for our ancestors to survive this land when they first settled the area. My hats off to them! The thought puts things in perspective when I think we’re having problems.

I’m going to put on some more fertilizer tomorrow to give everything a boost. The eggplants are really growing now and it’s getting hard to keep up with the cucumbers. Happy gardening everyone.

Many of the gardens are now seeing this new pest-a leaffooted bug. I found several on my tomatoes this morning. They feed on developing fruit and also on stems and tender leaves of plants. They should be eliminated if you can catch them. I’m going to take a jar of soapy water to the garden to drown them as I catch them.

The garden has dried out from the rain of last week. Back to hot, humid and dry conditions. My new fall tomatoes have survived the week in good shape, and the brandywine tomato I cut back has sprouted a bunch of healthy leaves.

Our Giving Garden sign on the front gate is awesome! Thank you so much, Justin. Happy gardening all.