How to keep your Veggies Happy, Healthy and Productive

Tuesday March 12, 2013
6:30 - 7:30 pm
Lost Mountain Park
Western District Operations Building

You are invited to attend a free gardening class sponsored by The Green Meadows Preserve Community Garden.

How to Keep your Vegetable plants Happy, Healthy and Productive

Come learn more about the Three Bears Scale -
       Too Much,  Not Enough and Just Right

See how it applies to:

• Fertilization
• Watering
• Mulching

Please RSVP to greenmeadowscg@gmail.com
We want to make sure we have enough handouts for everyone.

Directions From the Community Garden:
Take Dallas Hwy West 2.0 miles (to the 2nd traffic light from the garden.)
Turn left at the traffic light into Lost Mountain Park . 
Take the first left.
Once you turn, go straight and the road dead ends into a parking lot between Boots Ward Recreation Building and the Western District Operations Building. If the parking lot is full, park in the parking lot in front of the ball fields.

Lost Mountain Park
Western District Operations Building
4845 Dallas Highway
Powder Springs, GA 30127

Green Weed Prevention

Now is the time to really jump on the weeds around your bed and in the community areas. We've been working on it but there is more to be done.

True, weeding isn't very exciting but it is even less interesting when you have double the amount of weeds to pull.  My philosophy has always been -while the ground is soft, pull them out. There are kneelers on the wall in the shed and great tools to help with the chore.

One way to prevent weeds from sprouting up around your beds is to rake back the mulch and spread newspaper on the ground. Once the paper is down, put the mulch back over the newspaper. This really does help, especially while our mulch is thin.






There are two piles of newspaper in the corner of the shed that can be used to do this. Or you can bring the newspaper you were planning on recycling and use it around your bed.

Unfortunately this won't do away with the onions - the only way to get rid of them is to dig them out. Each and every time you see one.

Potato Totes & Bags

The Potato Planting Demonstration on Saturday Feb 23rd was a great success.  Everyone got to participate in cutting the potatoes and planting them.

 Mike had a very intent audience as he showed examples of good potatoes and bad potatoes.

What are they looking so hard at?  Maybe the potatoes were escaping - that might explain all the laughter in this picture.

Two methods (bag & tote) were extremely easy and fast to do. The bag came from Gardener Supply as a Potato Bag Kit  which contains a potato bag, 3 bags of soil mix and fertilizer. (You have to buy your own potatoes.)                       

The basics were the same for using the potato bag and the tote. Put a 2-3 inch layer of organic material in the bottom, put in the seed potatoes, cover with another 2 inches or so of organic matter, fertilize and water in well.

Wait until the potatoes begin growing and when the sprouts are 4 inches or so tall, put dirt around the stems (but leave some green leaves sticking out), water and wait some more.

Repeat this procedure until the top of the container is reached. Potatoes will form all along the stem that is buried in dirt. If you want to read more about  Growing potatoes in containers, this is a good link.

The tote is a super size plastic bin (18 gallons or more). Because it is solid plastic, you need to punch lots of holes in the bottom and along the outside edge to provide drainage.  Once the holes are punched, fill with soil and potatoes.














It will be interesting to see which produces the most potatoes - the tote or the bag.

We also constructed a potato tower but that will have to be in a separate post!