This year’s weather gave us mild spring temperature swings, followed by a warm and humid summer, a mild autumn with virtually no rain, and no hard frost through November.
It was a great year for carrots, flowers, greens, and nightshades, a slightly less great (but not terrible) year for alliums, brassicas, legumes, root crops and squashes. The standout crops were the peppers, beets, spinach (standard and perpetual), Swiss chard, lettuce, and kohlrabi.
New crops this year were mostly flowers: Bachelor’s Buttons, Calendula and Stock, along with Tokyo Bekana, a lettuce-like green in the brassica family.
Work at the garden began with organizing and fitting out the garden’s new shed, a project that continued through the season. And we added a free-on-curb tent to temporarily shade our harvest on hot sunny days. Other infrastructure projects included building the second metal trellis for the squashes along the fence.
Reconstruction of the park playground was an ever-present feature of the park this season, canceling the Friends of Robbins Farm Park’s regular Spring and Fall Cleanup Days and Field Day. The Friends did have a Town Day booth in September, that we participated in. A playground ribbon cutting was held Nov 23.
None of this would have been possible without the skill, ingenuity, persistence, and genuine good humor of our amazing gardeners: Alan, Bev, Brian, Carol, Celia, David, Elisabeth, Lisa, Martha, Mike, Nicole, Pamela, Shakti, Steven, Suzy, Tim, and Wendy. Thank you all!
