Rossville Community Garden

Yes, we will have a garden this coming year! We took off 2012 due to the library director’s maternity leave, but the garden is coming back this year.

It will look different that in 2011 when we started this venture. We’ll go smaller–probably plant several varieties of tomatoes this year. We hope to see our chives and a few other herbs make a comeback. They self-seeded in 2011, and were growing last year without any care from us–even some lettuce did the same. If they come back again this year, we’ll tend to those plants.

We are going small so that we can develop some definite garden areas to continue in the future while keeping our budget low. We will buy weed fabric to put around the base of the tomato plants.

We hope to get our rain barrel finally installed on the back side of the library!

As to our other library landscaping, we have tulips coming up already in the front in our large container pots and our brick planters. They will be beautiful very soon I’m sure! Thank you to Ann Foster for planting these for us in the fall!

Also our large burning bushes received a much needed trimming in the fall–they were so overgrown! We thank the volunteers who helped with that laborious task.

If the garden and I had a personal relationship, I’d be in the doghouse! It has seen some neglect these past few weeks from me personally as we’ve been blessed with cooler temps and rain. The library has been so busy as we wind down summer and prepare for our booth at Tall Corn this weekend. But I gave it some attention this morning–and plenty of my sweat!

I harvested so much okra today! (Without long sleeves again, alas.) I also harvested as many red tomatoes as I could find and get to amidst our “tomato jungle.” I got one cantaloupe out, some baby green peppers, and more basil. So come on in and get them before they’re gone!

Tasks we need help with:
- Weeding the tomatoes so we can harvest more easily
- Pulling out the corn stalks (they didn’t do well this year)
- Installing our rain barrel (is anyone handy?)
- Anchoring and helping install our garden arch (it’s been sitting in the back for awhile because we haven’t had the time nor tools to anchor it firmly into the ground–any ideas or help with this would be great!)

If you have any time to help us keep the garden going or if you have ideas for us for next year, let us know. We would love to see more community involvement!

We had some AwEsOmE volunteers out this week during the mornings to help get the garden presentable again! Thank you so much! They weeded, pulled, trimmed, and composted for several hours each morning they were here.

We’ve harvested some awesome cantaloupes, which were snatched up quickly. More to come soon. We also have some okra I need to pick–should wear long sleeves next time. Those plants can irritate your skin pretty easily. (According to worldcrops.com, “Most varieties have hairs on all parts of the plant that can cause skin irritation, so gloves and long sleeves are recommended for harvest.”) Well experience is a great teacher! We are also harvesting tomatoes, which are slowly turning from green to red. And we still have some peppers.

Feel free to pick some basil if you want some; it has flowered, so I doubt we’ll get much more in a few weeks. It’s kind of bushy and in the north-central part of the garden.

My fall project for the garden is seeing how we should handle our compost bin pre-winter. I also need to get in there and mix it up and add some manure or other “starter.” If you are experienced in making compost or want to research it and help us, we’d love to get more volunteers! We also need to install our rain barrel still, so if you’re handy and want to do that for us, please let me know, and I’ll show you where it goes.

This is definitely the time of year no one wants to be in their gardens! Our best intentions from April & May quite literally evaporate in seconds in this heat! I saw on the news last week that we’ve already exceeded the average number of days per year that are over 100 degrees…and this week so far it’s been 100+ each day.

Nevertheless, our garden is hanging in there. If you’d like to help us water, we’d love it! Just stop by in the morning and we’ll show you the best way. Good news is we have a sprinkler and with just two movements, you can get the entire garden watered. While you wait for the sprinkler to do its magic, you can relax in the library and read a book, magazine or hop on a computer! (From beginning to end, about 45 minutes is required.)

Last week, we harvested many items from the library including: cabbage, kohlrabi, hot Mucho Nacho peppers, “Fooled You” jalapenos (not hot), shallots, the rest of our yellow and white onions, okra, one yellow crookneck squash, one zucchini, and basil.

We have many tomatoes on the plants that should be ripening soon! Get your canning supplies ready! We will also soon have cantaloupe, little baggies of coriander (and instructions on how to use coriander, which is the seed from the cilantro plants we had), more peppers, possibly a few more kohlrabi and cabbage, and there’s plenty of basil, oregano, and mint!

We have about half of our kohlrabi plants harvested and available inside the library. If you don’t know what to do with kohlrabi, pick up a recipe sheet! I’m going to try it myself tonight for the first time.

Also available are onions and basil that I harvested this afternoon. Jalapenos and other peppers will be available soon, and I pulled two baby tomatoes today that were turning red! Also soon to come are more cabbage, onions, and cantaloupe (we have quite a few that are growing large!).

Despite the grass and weeds taking over parts of the garden, it’s doing well. We weed as often as we can, and most plants are producing and surviving! Let’s keep our fingers crossed for an awesome tomato harvest this year. Get your mason jars ready!

Right now we have onions, peas,  some lettuce and a variety of herbs that are ready. Just stop by and get some! We have some tomatoes that are small and green but in no time they will be ready also. When then time comes we will have plenty of tomatoes for the whole town. The cabbage is growing  strong and the squash plants have some that are coming on so in the next week we will have a few squash.  Just as always we need volunteers to help out with the weeding. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. If you want to become more active in your town this is a great way to help the community, or if you are just needing some community service hours this will work great.

The new compost pile can always use more clippings, hay, leaves or manure (from grass eating animals).  Just bring anything in that will work, and add to our growing compost  pile.  Everybody is welcome to stop by and just look at the garden, pick up some food or help with the weeding. All you have to do is stop by and ask Mrs. Olejnik, the director, what needs to be done.  Thanks for your time and energy in making the Rossville Garden a success!

This post written by Kelsey Crow, Summer Intern.

Instructions for our compost pile

With the recent rains and warm weather the garden has sprung to life, including all of the weeds. So anybody with 15 minutes  of extra time is welcome to come help us with weeding. All help is appreciated!

We’ve been giving away cilantro, mint, oregano, and baby onions (great to dip in salt and munch on!) for the past week. Not only have many enjoyed these items but it has helped spread the word that we have a garden back there!

Tomorrow I hope to finally get the dirt for our strawberry patch. Our strawberry plants have been hanging on as we water them every day…just waiting to get them in there. Sorry for the delay on that, but it requires some extra help and effort, and times are definitely busy here at the library as we are have been hit with summer!

A few of our squash, zucchini and cucumber plants unfortunately didn’t make it. Bugs, weird weather? Not sure what happened. But we have pumpkins, cantaloupe, and some squash (and maybe one zucchini) that are still doing well in that same area.

Something anyone can help with is adding to our compost bin. We had some generous citizens donate a black compost bin that they no longer needed, so we’re starting with that. We’ll probably add another, larger bin, too, but we’re starting with the black one for now. Please come by and add greens to it–we need a nice thick layer of organic materials for its base. This can include vegetable wastes, sod, grass clippings, leaves, hay, or straw. We need 6-8 inches of these, so help add to achieve our first layer!

We have a lot of baby lettuce and some spinach that can be picked for fresh salads. Just stop in and we’ll get some for you!