North Marietta Community Garden

Several of us went and visited the North Marietta Community Garden on Monday. Their garden is really cute! They don't have as many beds as we do but they have lots of great art in their garden. Here are a few pictures from the day.

This is a view of a part of the garden. It backs up to the Head Start
and has lots of space to expand up the hill from this picture.

This is the cutest gnome! But it wouldn't work in our
garden as it is tied to the sign so it won't fall off.

I LOVED the hubcaps!

Close up of the bejeweled hubcaps.

A trellis structure with a hubcap and a pretty
sign personalizing the bed.

Fun paintings on their storage shed.

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Grape Glaze

Hey Everyone,

What a nice way to use some of those
fresh garden onions, garlic, and
rosemary!

Nothing says summer is here like trying new things on the grill! While this recipe does take some prep time, it is simply delicious and always a hit when entertaining.  A friend of mine gave it to me years back from her Cooking Light Magazine.  I enjoy making the glaze a day ahead and then marinating the chicken for a few hours before grilling the next day.

Ingredients:  Serves 6 at 2 pieces each

Glaze:

4 cups red or black seedless grapes
2 teaspoons Bertollini Extra Light Olive Oil
1 cup chopped fresh onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 - 1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

Chicken:

3 - 3 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless, chicken breast or about 12 pieces mixed
1 tablespoon Bertollini Extra Light Olive Oil
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Cooking spray
Fresh rosemary leaves for garnish (optional)

Preparation:

Clean, remove residue, and place grapes on paper towels to dry.  Place the cleaned grapes in blender; process until smooth. Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add onion; cover and cook for 10 minutes. Add garlic, cover and cook 3 minutes, stirring often.  Add the pureed grapes, vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon of finely chopped rosemary.  Stir well and bring to a slight boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 10 minutes or until slightly thickened, making sure to stir often.  Cool somewhat, then place grape mixture in a blender and process until smooth.

For the juiciest and most flavorable chicken, marinate for 2 to 4 hours before grilling.

Prepare grill.

Clean and skin all chicken.  Brush 1 tablespoon of oil over chicken; sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of finely chopped rosemary, salt, and pepper.

Place chicken on a grill rack coated with cooking spray.  Baste, cover and grill for 25 - 30 minutes, turning and basting frequently with the grape glaze mixture.  Garnish with fresh rosemary leaves to serve if desired.

This recipe freezes exceptionally well for extra batches when grapes are in season.  It also doubles quite nicely for those times when the gang's all there.

Happy Grilling,

Denise, Beds 25 & 29

Serious Squirrel Defense Structures!

Yes....squirrel defense structures are popping up left and right!

If you are lucky, they only dig deep holes that dry out the ground and cover up the plants like in this bed. If you are unlucky...you lose the plants like I've lost a number of carrots in one corner of my bed.

There is no way the sunflowers will survive if we didn't create a structure to keep the squirrels from digging in the bed. They've already destroyed the one sunflower plant we had! This will also protect the seeds and seedlings from the birds as well.

I ramped up my squirrel repelling cage because I didn't want them to destroy my newly planted tomatoes or tear up my lettuce and carrots while I'm gone. Once I'm back I'll put the cages on the tomatoes themselves and figure out exactly how I'm going to protect everything until the plants are bigger.

 

Jim's First Tomato of the Season

I think Jim beat us all getting the first tomato and pepper of the season! Tuesday he harvest 2 tomatoes and 2 peppers.  He did start off with very large plants with tomatoes on them.

 

So did it go in a salad or did you have a tomato sandwich?

Weekly Calendar May 23 - June 1

Saturday May 23
NO Gardener on Duty
Have a great Memorial Day weekend

Tuesday May 28
Gardener on Duty
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Thursday May 30
Workday
10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Saturday June 1st
One Year Anniversary Celebration!
6:00 pm to whenever
Details in email sent on May 21

Mini-Bluebird Muffins

 KC Bearden made some scrumptious blueberry muffins for the Bluebird Trail Tour back in March. They were incredibily good because of the surprise in the middle.

Mini-Bluebird Muffins

Ingredients:
Use any blueberry muffin recipe or boxed blueberry muffin mix that contains canned blueberries or fresh blueberries.

1 additional pint of fresh blueberries is needed as well

Topping:
1/4 cup of oats
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of butter
1 Tablespoon flour
Shake of Cinnamon
Shake of Nutmeg

Grease the mini-muffin tin with cooking spray.

Mix the topping ingredients and set aside (feel free to add a bit more of any of the topping ingredients to suit your taste).

Mix the muffins as directed and fill each hole in the muffin tin 3/4ths full of batter.

Add 3 fresh blueberries to the center of each muffin and push them lightly into the batter.  Put a small clump of the topping on each muffin over the blueberries.

Bake as directed for your recipe.

Here is the special surprise:
The blueberries form a berry center in the middle and the topping also follows into the middle of the muffin. When you bite into the muffin, you find the sweet oat topping and fresh blueberries in the center of the muffin.

Totally delicious! This will delight, surprise and make your family and friends happy.

Sunflower Seed Planting

Looking for Volunteers to help plant sunflower seeds in the sunflower border on Tuesday May 21 from 5:00 until done.  It shouldn't take very long to plant the sections with sunflower seeds. If you are interested in helping, just show up at 5:00 to help. We already have a variety of seeds bought, ready to plant.

I'm hoping we won't have any critters come get the seeds or the newly sprouted plants.  But if we start having issues there is plenty of wildlife/bird netting that can be put over them until they are tall enough.

Weekly Calendar May 17 - May 18

Saturday May 18
NO Gardener on Duty

Tuesday May 21
Gardener on Duty
5:00 - 7:00 pm

Sunflower  Border
(plant sunflower Seeds)
5:00 - 7:00 pm

Happy Mother "Nature" Day

Happy Mothers Day to all the wonderful moms at the garden.

Weekly Calendar May 10- May 18

Saturday May 11
MG Plant Garden Tour and Plant Sale
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Cobb MG Garden Tour Info

Gardener on Duty
10:00 - 12:00

Tuesday May 14
Gardener on Duty
5:00 - 7:00

Saturday May 18
Garden Party!
Celebrate our 1st Anniversary
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Details of the party

Garden Party!

Come out and enjoy talking to all your fellow gardeners without having to work. We are having a pot luck social to celebrate the growth of the Community Garden since it opened in April 2012.

Date:  Saturday May 18, 2013

Time: 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Where: Green Meadows Community Garden

Bring: A dish, a chair to sit in and your own beverage if you don't want bottled water.

Rained out Strawberry picking

Unfortunately, we are going  to get rained out for Strawberry picking. The rains move in around 10:00 tonight and don't really let up again until Monday. They've already posted a flood watch from Saturday 8:00 am until Sunday 8:00 pm.  Boo hoo hoo.....

Magnifiers to the rescue

 

Sometimes you just need a little extra help to see those pesky spider mites, insect eggs, or to determine, yes those are black aphids in my spinach, not just dirt splashed up from the ground.

 

We now have two small magnifying glasses in a green box in the shed that you can use. And they are right above the yellow sticky traps that you can also use to help monitor if you are developing pest problems in your bed.

 

 

If you don't have a trellis or a metal stake in your bed, just get a stick that has a twig sticking out and you can attach your yellow sticky trap to the twig. (But don't forget to actually push the stick in the ground in your bed!) Lou and Ryan have done that and it seems to be working out just fine for them.

Weekly Calendar May 3 - May 9

Friday May 3 & Saturday May 4
10:00 - 5:00
Root House Plant Sale
Sale of heirloom vegetables, ornamentals, and more

Saturday May 4
7:30 am
Meet at garden if not raining
Strawberry Farm Field Trip

NO Gardener on Duty Saturday

Tuesday May 7
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Gardener on Duty
Azamax spray available if not raining

Wednesday May 8
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Azamax spray available if not raining

Thursday May 9
9:30 am
Garden meeting at the garden

Poison Ivy Pullers

Along with the greening up of all the wonderful trees, shrubs and flowers that we like we also have the greening up of that hateful but wonderful native plant - poison ivy. Because the garden was built in an area that had been left to run wild, we have a poison ivy problem.

Inside the garden we've about got the old poison ivy vines removed. Outside the garden, behind the shed and along the back fence, there is still lots of old poison ivy that is leafing out. However, there are still a lot of seeds in the soil and the birds keep depositing more seeds. When you weed under the pecan tree, weed with caution.

Poison ivy does have its uses (gorgeous foliage in the fall, beautiful flowers in the spring and it is a favored source of food for birds)  but it does tend to grow where you don't want it. We've come a long way with getting rid of the poison ivy in the garden, but it still pops up from time to time.

The best way to deal with poison ivy is with respect and caution. I believe in pulling and discarding poison ivy because dead leaves can still cause poison ivy for those who are highly allergic. If you use an herbicide on the plant, it kills the leaves but then the leaves fall off and are in the leaf litter. When you rake up leaf litter/debris, those dead poison ivy leaves are still in there waiting to cause misery.

Hairy Rope - Don't be a dope

Leaves of three - Leave it be

Pulling poison ivy will transfer the oils in the poison ivy plant onto your gloves. You can always use plastic gloves but I much prefer newspaper or bread bags. It is one way to recycle that unending stream of bags. Using the bag method, I'm protected up to my elbows and I've got something to put the poison ivy in after it has been pulled.

If I know I'm going to have really long pieces of poison ivy, I have grocery or garbage bags to stick them in. This protects me as well as the garbage men who deal with my trash.

The leaves on seedling poison ivy are not as big and can be confusing to recognize because the poison ivy doesn't quite have the same kind of leaves that go with the poison ivy sayings below. If you don't know what poison ivy looks like, memorize these sayings until you do.

Leaves of three, leave it be.

 

Hairy rope, don't be a dope!

In other words, if you don't recognize the plant and it fits one of those two sayings, don't touch!

 

This is baby poison ivy. It doesn't quite have 3 leaves

yet and looks very similar to other desirable plants.

If in doubt, leave it be.

 

There are lots of good plants that have three leaves or have hairy vines. Don't destroy them until you know what you have. You could be tearing out a highly desirable native plant.

If you want to learn to identify poison ivy on your own, just ask, we can show you many great samples of poison ivy in the woods and the hairy rope as well!

Special thanks to Kitty for being my assistant with these photos.

Pestiferous Wild Onions

The wild onions we have in the garden are pestiferous to the max.

We are going to experiment with several new ways of getting rid of them but in the mean time, the best way to get rid of them is to dig down to the very bottom of the stem and gently extract the onion bulb and all its bulbils.

If you don't, you leave the big bulb and all the baby bulbs  behind to resprout. It does take longer to get them all out but if you do you are rewarded by not having to get mess with them in the future.

We have new neighbors!

We now have another nest to watch at the garden. Last week I noticed a Carolina wren nest had been built in the corner of the ventilation window on the side of the shed. It actually is a really good place for a wren nest because it has a cool breeze, is totally protected from the elements and has a wide ledge for the nest to sit on.

Wren nests are very hard to peer into to count how many eggs are there. Cavity nesters (bluebirds and American kestrels) and birds such as osprey, great blue herons and peregrine falcon's that nest repeatedly in a particular place, are much easier to observe.

Even though bluebirds nest in boxes, you can wire the boxes with a nest cam and see all the activity in them. Last year my husband and I were addicted to watching an American kestrel nest cam in Boise Idaho.

Nest cams are video systems that you set up to live stream all the activity that occurs at the nest location. Most nest cams only work during daylight hours but some use an infrared camera so you can watch all night.

There are many local nest cams (just search for nest cams in Georgia). One that I know will be active for at least another month is in downtown Atlanta.  The peregrine falcon nest is on the the Sun Trust Plaza building, approximately 50 stories up. Since the nest is on a tall building, it is well lit so it can be seen in the sky. It certainly makes it easy to watch this nest 24/7.  Peregrine Falcon Nest -Downtown Atlanta.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York has two nest cams and links to others (Cornell University Nest Cams). This year they have links to 2 osprey nests, a red-tailed hawk and a great blue heron.  The American Kestrel Nest Cam just went live so there will be activity for the next 2 1/2 to 3 months for that box.

On the Green Meadows Bluebird Trail we have Carolina Chickadees, Eastern Bluebirds, Tufted Titmice and Tree Swallows nesting in the boxes.  There aren't any nest cams on those boxes but here is a link to the Bluebird Blog Nest Cam post if you want to watch bluebird nest cams.

Saturday Workday Fun

We lucked out and had beautiful weather for Saturday's work day- okay it was beautiful because it didn't rain and it wasn't cold! In fact, as of 8:30 Saturday night it still hadn't rained.

The Bluebird Fundraiser was a resounding success. Mike and Sue did a wonderful job preparing the food for the Bluebird Blue Plate Special . If you weren't there, you really did miss out on some delicious food! And you missed out on getting to just sit and chat with your fellow gardeners while at the garden.

Everyone was already a winner after eating that delicious lunch but went home as double winners after the Bonanza Door Prize Drawing.

The garden looks 200% better than it did at noon on Monday. Spreading a huge pile of mulch, moving a huge pile of dirt, tilling up a huge sections of weeds besides digging weeds makes the entire garden look new and fresh. Yes!

There are still a couple of sections of the main paths that still need work before the next load of mulch gets delivered.

 













Above: The sunflower border after the first 2 passes with the tiller. To the right: The sunflower border after the tilling has been completed. Quite a difference, isn't it!  Thanks Denny for tilling it for us and Mike for using his truck to bring the tiller to the garden.

Everyone is hard at work at some task or the other

 

Chuck spend all morning moving sifted soil back and forth. Either to the sunflower borders or into the compost bin while Jennelle and Susie sifted, sifted, sifted... Jennelle was very happy to use the gloves she had gotten as a door prize after a previous workday. Susie wished she had some. Lucky her, she managed to snag a new pair of gloves at today's Door Prize Drawing!



















        Team 1 - aka The Blues Sisters                                                   Team  2 - Mary & Carol

 It was sad work removing all the fruits and flowers from the apple, pear and plum trees but it had to be done. The trees will be much stronger now that they can devote all their energy to making roots versus making fruit while their roots aren't established yet.

Field Trip to LCCL Strawberry Farm!

Mike and Sue go to LCCL Strawberry Farm every year to pick strawberries. Last weekend they did a trial run up to see how many berries were on the plants (lots even though it was early in the season.)  The strawberries they brought back with awesomely delicious.

Now that the strawberries have come in, it is time to plan a field trip to get some!

When: Saturday May 4th

Time to meet: 7:30 am

Where to meet: Green Meadows Community Garden Parking Lot

Destination:   LCCL Strawberry Farm in Rome Georgia to pick strawberries.

We will probably only be gone about 3 1/2 hours. But if you want to stay longer to pick more feel free to.

Ariel Hardy the 1st has spines

 

Ariel Hardy the 1st and her daughters have beautiful foliage. They look very soft

and wonderful to touch but beware........

If you touch the tops of the leaf you are fine. If you grab a handful of the leaves and stroke you will get lots of spines to pull out of your hand. They now have warning signs in front of them to remind us to be careful.

Ariel the 1st survived her move from Jane's bed - even through several hard freezes right after she was moved. Her two daughters are struggling a bit since it has been warm and sunny since they got moved. It will be interesting to watch them grow and hopefully produce artichokes.