The Highlights of the 2011 Summer Garden

Well, the summer season at the Alpharetta Community Garden is winding down. I always hate to see it go, although I look forward to the fall season which will no doubt prove wonderful in terms of growing greens and carrots and cruciferous vegetables. 

I would consider this past summer at the Community Garden a success for almost everyone who gardened with us. The older members of the Garden did their thing with a quiet confidence and their resultant plots were green with fruition. The newer members were (and always are) infectious with their enthusiasm at the chance to have a vegetable garden. 

Several people tried new things that were very interesting to me. For example, one of our gardeners, Sandra Kinney, grew “pineapple ground cherry”, or Physalis pruinosa. She says it’s kind of like a gooseberry. It looks like a tomatillo. Sandra is also growing mushrooms in her plot. I’ll admit, I don’t understand the whole procedure but it has something to do with inoculating a log and then tucking it away in a dark place. Sandra’s method was to bury the log and cover it with a thick layer of straw. I’m pretty excited about getting to taste a home grown mushroom. You have to admit, one of the stranger botanical delights known to man is the edible fungi - the culinary mushroom. 

Another of our gardeners, David Cox, was the poster child for vertical gardening this year. He built a latticework structure with 4 sides and a kind of lattice like roof. Alongside this structure he planted cucumbers and tomatoes. It proved a fine way to assure good air circulation to the tomatoes but the cucumber plants were the ones that really loved it. His yield was around 172 cucumbers this past summer.  

One of our newest gardeners actually grew watermelons in her little 40 square foot plot! Doing this at all in such a small space was admirable, but she took advantage of vertical space to the extent she could.  We actually discourage the growing of watermelons at the Community Garden because they can prove to be just too tempting for those with a tendency to take what doesn’t belong to them. And sure enough, one of her watermelons did suffer such a fate – a great discouragement. We only hope that whoever stole it enjoyed it and felt mighty guilty afterwards!

To that end, one of our successful projects this year was our Demonstration Vegetable Garden just outside our fence which was gardened by the very capable Jan Waters. In this little bed we grow things for the express purpose of being stolen – although it isn’t really stealing when we have a sign that says, “Please Sample”. We grew tomatoes and edamame and sugar snap peas and herbs like basil. We haven’t decided what to plant there for fall.

What I regret the most about pulling out my summer garden is that I will be dismantling Morticia’s spiderweb. Morticia is my garden friend, a female Argiope spider, that took up residence in my plot and guards it from wayward insects and wayward human hands by her beautiful, yet grotesque spiderness. I included her picture with this blog. I hope you can see her brilliant yellow and black abdomen. I simply can’t take away Morticia’s home entirely.  Maybe I’ll leave an okra plant or two.  

One thing is certain - I’m looking forward to some cool breezes. This summer has been unbearably hot and we are in the midst of a prolonged drought. Let’s hope a bit of rain is in the forecast.