Week 14: May 19, 2018

Hi Friends! Last week was our CVG Picnic and Veggie Contest, and boy do we have some fun pics to show off. We had people from all over San Antonio come to volunteer their time to help judge, help cook out and help bring dishes for us all to share potluck style.

What a great volunteer turn out we had last week. Also, I think we should note (for those of you who are new to our blog) we have volunteers come help run each garden group weekly. In addition to volunteers on Saturdays, we also have a team of volunteers who come during the week to water the beds. Together, our volunteer team is absolutely essential to the success of the beds, and the garden would flounder without them. Take a look at our volunteer garden leaders with their respective groups:

Our gardeners worked all season to harvest that perfect veggie to enter into the vegetable contest. I should note that the Bexar County Master Gardener judges had very strict guidelines regarding judging the produce:

As you can see, this contest was serious stuff for a new gardener to try to win. 😉

Are you ready to see our contest participants?? Here we go:

 

!!What an impressive showing!!

As we all know, it’s not always about winning. The knowledge each gardener gains from this program will stay with them for a long time. Making the connection between food and it’s source is such an essential lesson for young people to learn, and add the knowledge of how to actually grow food, and you’ve got a major game changer there. So, in the spirit of knowledge, each gardener was a winner, regardless of how their veggies looked. (And I mean that in the least cheesy way possible, because everyone who participated really, honestly does come out ahead.) BUT, just in case you were wondering, here are some of the entries that went through the very rigorous judging process ;):

AND THE WINNERS…..

What a fun day for everyone, especially for those who competed. What’s better than beautiful weather, great food, green and growing gardens, and awesome company?

That’s all we’ve got for now, friends. Only two more weeks to go before we put our gardens to bed for the summer so, make sure to check back in next week to see how our plants did in the HEAT.

**Special thanks to the Yaeger family, Dana Drury and Lou Kellogg for taking the best pictures and allowing me to share them on this blog**

Week 13: May 18, 2018

Hi friends! Man oh man, the harvesting that was done last week was incredible! All the hard work of planting, fertilizing, pest removal and watering has paid off BIG TIME. The amount of tomatoes, potatoes and beans I saw kids harvesting was seriously impressive.

^^LOOK AT THOSE POTATOES^^

One young gardener told me that digging for those was just like digging for treasure – and I’d definitely agree.

 

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Y’all, for real, these gardeners have done a fantastic job this season and have the harvests to prove it. The squash was really coming in last week, and some people were able to take some home! 

The garden pests are always sneaking around though. It’s important to always continue to the on the look out for detrimental insects. I know my garden had a lot of harlequin bugs this past week, and even though the Children’s Vegetable Garden does a great job of hand picking and treating organically, the bad bugs always find a way to show up here and there. Take a look at the cucumber beetles photobombing my picture of a beautiful squash blossom…

We’ve touched only a bit on our Junior Master Gardener lessons here on the blog. Basically, each week we have a local expert on various topics come talk to the group or give a demonstration. Last week we had a local Purple Martin expert, Mr. John Henry, come to the garden and talk about the local Purple Martin population. This was especially cool for the kids because he lowered their houses and showed us THE BABY BIRDS THAT JUST HATCHED. They were adorable and looked like tiny bald aliens and the kids went nuts over them. It was truly very cool to see.

Overall, the progress the gardeners have made and the amount they’ve learned is honestly very impressive, and they’ve really earned all the fresh veggies they get to take home.

That’s all we’ve got for now, friends. Make sure to check back next week to see who won the veggie contests at our CVG picnic and party!

Week 12: May 5, 2018

 

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Hey friends! We had lots of stuff going on around the garden last weekend – thankfully it was a beautiful day to be outside! We’re still growing our veggies as big and healthy as we can for our annual CVG Picnic, where we’ll hold our CVG Vegetable Contest. This year it’s May 19th – just over a week to grow still!

In the meantime, we’re doing our best to keep the pests out, and really make these last few weeks count. Hand picking pests off our plants is a pretty easy and effective way to manage their populations, but at the end of our meeting, we still applied Organic Pyrethrum to our plants just to make sure. (These guys can be super sneaky.)

All the green (or flowering) and growing plants are all still looking great! Some beds might be ready to harvest their potatoes already and the tomatoes are coming along nicely.

 

My personal favorite, though, is the progress of our cucumbers:

 

^^How great do these look?!^^

Very impressive.

We also had a few other chores around the garden to take care of – the volunteers helped harvest the ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss Chard from the research bed, and some of our young gardeners helped by watering the raspberry beds, the strawberries and the hops. Others helped by cutting vines, adding compost to established beds and cleaning out the shed.

That’s all we’ve got for now, friends. Make sure to check back next week to see how much progress our cucumbers have made!

**Special thanks to the Murphy and Yauger families for sharing their pictures**

Week 11: April 28, 2018

Hi friends! Last week in the garden was another beautiful Saturday morning. There was no planting to do, but there were A LOT of garden chores to take care of. The first thing we had to address was all the BUGS.

Harlequin bugs.

Everywhere…

One of the first things our young gardeners had to do was make sure the broccoli plants were removed from the garden after harvesting. This is super important in our fight against the insect offenders. If unnecessary plants stems are left to grow in our beds, it simply provides a to breeding ground for the bad guys and makes it more difficult to control their population.

You can see in these beds where our gardeners took out what was left of their already harvested broccoli plants.

We took a look at our green and growing plants, too – we made sure to pinch off any tomato leaves that were touching the ground and attached our cucumber’s vining tendrils to the trellis.

Has anyone been harvesting their spearmint? Our ‘Yerba Buena’ spearmint is especially tasty in fresh tea, lemonade or even salads.

Bonus – the kiddos got to participate in a Junior Master Gardener exercise in team building: “Over and Under” TEAM building.

Another important task we do each week is ensure each bed is weed free. I know, I know…weeding is boring, tedious and annoying – but essential. Weeds will gobble up all the fertilizer and leave your plants without proper nourishment. You can see a volunteer helping to tidy up a plot below – take a look at the other plots – all weed free.

That’s all for now, friends. Be sure to check back next week to see how our young gardeners being prepping for the CVG Picnic and the veggie competition.

**Thank you to Dana Drury for sharing her photographs for this post**

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