Start off your week with a triple dose of cute

When I was out at my garden on Saturday, I looked up from my weeding and there were two young deer just on the other side of the fence, munching the foliage.  They were so cute!  And their mother was hanging out nearby.  A very photogenic trio.  They were especially interested in the leaves and vegetables and trimmings that people had put on the compost pile.  I know I’m supposed to think of the deer as pests, but they were too lovely to shoo away.

They wouldn't let me get close enough to feed them lettuce out of my hand, but they weren't very afraid of me either.

As far as garden pests go, they are pretty adorable.

That's the mother in the background.

I love how big his eyes are And you can see the antler bumps starting on his head.

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A Rant Against Bugs

Dear resident insects of the Newark Street Community Garden,

I understand you have a biological niche to fill.  And I know that certain of you, namely bees, are beneficial to my little vegetable operation.  But the rest of you are completely annoying.

Mosquitoes: What is UP with you irritating little blood thieves this year?  I guess it was all the rain in the spring, but the mosquito population is out of control.  I’ve always had strong reactions to mosquito bites, so this year I’ve experienced a constant state of itchy welts and red blotches.  I had to put makeup on my legs at my friend’s wedding so that I didn’t get to be known as that weird bridesmaid with the skin disease.

White flies: or whatever you are, you who like to feast on my collard greens.  I take one step towards my brassica bed and suddenly I am attacked by swarms of little white flies.  My collards are a total loss at this point because they seem to be covered in your eggs, or your waste, or whatever.  Pfft.

Spiders: You are totally creepy, and like to pop out of nowhere just to freak me out.  I am told you are good at keeping the insect population down generally, but your job performace is seriously in doubt right now.

Other random flies: Why why WHY do you find it so irresistable to divebomb into my eyes and nostrils when I’m in the garden?  It doesn’t work out so well for you either, as you immediately disintegrate in my mucous membranes.  This is gross, and needs to stop.

Please leave me and my garden plot in peace.  Jerks.

Sincerely,

Amelia

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How the garden fared in my absence

Finally got out to my garden plot after 10 days away from it.  It was a total weedapalooza.

Morning glories and other weeds are taking over everything.  And almost all of the potato vines have wilted and dried out.  I don’t know if they’re getting choked by the morning glories, succumbing to late blight, or just dying a natural death.  But it’s a bad scene.

Oh well, I guess that just means it’s time to dig up the fingerlings.  The tomatoes seem to be doing alright, although the rains I missed while I was gone clearly caused a lot of splitting.  Witness this brandywine:

True, a scarred tomato can still be quite tasty.  Though, I’m a little skeptical that I’ll ever get to eat this tomato.  Like other gardeners in other gardeners in this area, I’ve suffered a lot of squirrel damage to my tomatoes.  That mutant brandywine I wrote about a while ago got completely devoured just before it got ripe.  I might have to take the Dirty Radish’s suggestion and build a cage around the tomatoes I really want to save.

But not all the news is depressing.  I did take home a rather large harvest: beets, carrots, torpedo onions, tomatoes, Mexican sour gherkins, potatoes, swiss chard, banana peppers, and plenty of basil and parsley.  I made sauteed chard burritos with tomatoes, herbs, and chopped Mexican sour gherkins for dinner last night, which really helped take my mind of all the weeding I’ll need to do this weekend!

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Other People’s Gardens: Glover Park Community Garden

The second in my semi-regular series on community gardens around DC, the Glover Park Community Garden is actually less than a mile from the Newark Street Community Garden where I have my plot.  But the Glover Park garden was distinct in several geographical and institutional ways.  The first thing I noticed upon entering the garden was the incline.  Most plots were sloping up the hill, which seems to have led many gardeners to use raised beds as a kind of terracing for soil retention.

Still, it looks like erosion is an issue.  My guess is that these onions used to be fully underground, but last month’s huge storms washed all the soil away around them:

Another immediate difference I noticed was the height of the deer fencing.  Unlike the fenceless Temple Garden downtown, everyone in Glover Park had fencing at least seven feet high.  Given that the garden borders a legitimate forest (with great hiking trails, by the way), I’m not surprised that these gardeners take deer-proofing seriously.  In fact, I spotted a beautiful yearling grazing up and down the rows while I was there!

I spoke with a gardener tending her plot, and she revealed some interesting institutional facts about the garden.  Because it’s on National Park Service land, rangers inspect the gardens twice monthly to make sure gardeners are weeding their plots and paths.  I guess it’s to prevent the spread of invasives into the park.  After two weed warnings, a gardener can lose his/her plot.

Perhaps this is why there were so many long-established plots in this garden: only the dedicated survive.  Some people even had fruit trees and grapevines trellises in their gardens.  One person was growing kiwis!  Those who can hang onto a plot are lucky, too, because each plot is a spacious twenty by twenty feet.  That’s a lot of vegetables – even if some wash away down the hill or fall prey to crafty deer.

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Sunday Photos: Close Range Shots

My iPhone camera had no zoom and couldn’t focus on close-range subjects.  Now with my new camera and its 5x zoom, I’ve been a little close-up happy.  I definitely couldn’t have focused on something as small as a bee with my iPhone. Note: clicking on these will take you to the super-big versions (mostly 3000 x 4000 pixels).

Hooray for pollinators.

This beetle might be a pest, but it was too pretty to shoo away.

Chocolate cherry tomatoes ripening.

The jalapenos in the background are medium to full-size fruit; the little button is just the start of one.

Squash blossoms, open mornings only.

The bee again, cropped close.

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Sunday Photo: Marigold Almost in Bloom

Wow, what an exhausting weekend.  I turned two beds, planted dozens of seedlings and onion starts, watered everything, and walked around the community garden looking for adoptive parents for my extra seedlings.  All in nearly 90-degree heat.  Phew!  I’ll write more about it when I have more energy.  For now, here is a photo of a Janie Harmony marigold in my potato patch, helping ward off pests.

Hmm, looks like I need to do some weeding.

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