We are planning on having a maintenance day on November 11th from 9am-12. By then all garden beds should be cleaned out and if you are planning on renting next year that would be a great day to amend your soil. With beautiful weather in the forecast for the next week, we really need to spend a few minutes cleaning out the beds. It's also a good time to plant garlic for next year as well.
What will be doing on that day? You can care for your garden by cleaning it out and then we need help moving the picnic tables and covering them, washing the tools (important so that when we use them next year if there were any disease on the tools it will not be transferred to someone's garden), cut the grass one last time, stack all the tomato cages in the back of the shed so they don't blow away, put the hoses away, put down some clover and clean out the shed. After November 11th the water will be shut off.
It's time to clean out your garden beds of all fallen produce, perennials that do not belong (strawberries, raspberry bushes, corn stalks and mint.) If you would like to grow mint then you need to put it in a plastic pot and then plant the pot in the garden. This way it does not multiply throughout the whole garden. If you ever decide not to use that garden space and the mint had been growing then it would be a big deal to remove it and this holds true for the strawberries and the bushes.
The University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension offers these free one hour LEARN AT HOME webinars. This one is perfect for us: "Putting the Garden to Bed: Tips and Tricks for Success Next Year" . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuuAh1Ir4Es There are others and once you visit their website you can choose whatever seems to be of interest to you.
Lastly, I want to thank all our volunteers for their hard work keeping the Community Garden going so smoothly. Deb Schwab has really stepped up to be our liaison from the Recreation Dept to all of you. She has been behind the scenes organizing all the eagle scout projects, managing the volunteers for the maintenance days and I can't thank her enough. Teresa Triana, Jen Kuse (Franklin Food Pantry), Melanie Hamblen and all our eagle scouts. This has been our best year by far and it's because of all of these individuals. Thank you letters will be going out to our eagle scouts today.
We will open up registration to all returning gardeners for 2021 on Monday, February 1st, 8:30am.
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| Jen Kuse and Lynn Calling viewing the garden beds that the Franklin Food Pantry used this year |
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