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Reopening the playground heralded the return of Field Day to Robbins Farm Park for the first time in three years. And Robbins Farm Garden was, once again, part of this popular event. Thanks to Suzy, Brian, and Steven for opening the garden to the event’s many visitors. Here’s Suzy’s report:

We had a great field day in the garden today! The bounce castles were set up directly in front of the garden, but that didnt seem to detract too much attention as we still got lots of visitors. Some kids came in with their scavenger hunt sheets, on which it seemed they were simply tasked with finding and writing down “something grown in the garden”. We had some carrots, salad turnips, bell pepper, and broccoli cut up for kids to sample, which were all popular. The stevia and mint were big hits as well, and the inflatable snakes drew intrigue from the kids as usual.

Over a decade of experience, and ideal storage and slip-starting conditions in Lisa’s basement have led us to reliable success with growing our own slips from the previous year’s sweet potato crop. (See The Great Sweet Potato Experiment by Lisa for more info.)

The process began on April 12. We currently grow three types: standard (originally from Beauregard and Georgia Jet tubers), Murasaki (a Japanese type), and Purple (from tubers donated by Daphne Gould of Daphne’s Dandelions). The purple sweet potato slips were slow this year, and needed to be put under lights for additional warmth to begin producing.

The sweet potatoes were harvested yesterday, upon the discovery of exploratory digging in the bed by the local wildlife. It was a joint effort, starting with Celia and me, with David adding as much work as the two of us combined. We harvested a total of 29.25 pounds of tubers from our 36 square foot plot, or 0.8#/sf. Below are the detailed results of the harvest, with thanks to Carol and Suzy for their careful documentation and to Alan for the photos.

Standard (18sf)
12 plants produced 19.6# = 1.6#/plant

Murasaki (12sf)
8 plants produced 5.4# = 0.7#/plant

Purple (6sf)
4 plants produced 4.25# = 1.1#/plant

See the red yarn on this okra? It tells us that this pod will be allowed to mature so we can use the seeds next season. (Attention Gardeners – if you see red yarn, don’t pick it!) We are attempting to save seeds whenever we can. In short, if a desirable vegetable produces seeds, is not a hybrid variety, and there are no other varieties it can cross with, then it’s a candidate for seed saving. We save seeds for many crops, including arugula, fava and lima beans, cilantro, ground cherries, malabar spinach, okra, sesame, some tomatoes and some flowers. For more information about saving seeds, visit the Seed Savers Exchange.

In a previous post from 2019, I measured the flow rate of our hose and nozzle and related it to the watering needs of the garden, as a guideline for watering. The guideline is based on a reasonable estimate of the need for water of most mature crop plants, which is about 1 inch per week. Since that post, we’ve changed both hoses and garden bed size, so this is an update. This is of course only a guideline, and watering requirements obviously need to take in account the weather and the particular needs of different crops.

Our main garden beds are nominally 4 x 23 feet, or 92 square feet. 1 inch of rain on that surface would be about 7.7 cubic feet which is about 57 gallons.

I measured the flow rate of the two hoses by timing how long it takes to fill a 4 gallon bucket. The hose and watering wand connected directly to the hydrant took about 50 seconds to fill the bucket, or about 4.8 gallons per minute. So to get 1 inch of water on the whole bed takes almost 12 minutes. The hose and wand on the other end of the garden took about 110 seconds, or about 2.2 gallons/minute, so 1 inch on the whole bed would take about 26 minutes.

Splitting those times into 7 days, that would be about just under 2 minutes or 4 minutes on each bed per day to get 1 inch of water per week, if there’s no rain.

The photo above is our kale bed on May 24, stocked with well-established seedlings started indoors in early April. The photo below is from May 25 last year. I don’t think we will go back to seeding kale in the soil. With our springtime weather, the results are far too unpredictable.