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Finally, they are here – our first lettuce and spinach! The spinach has done particularly well this year. It’s a new variety: Regiment from High Mowing Seeds.

We harvested some lovely young Egyptian walking onions today. They were a delight to take home at the end of a full day of seed planting. These onions have thrived in some of the garden’s least desirable real estate and we’re grateful for their easy reseeding each year.

Mark your calendars with a big squash blossom star for Opening Day at the Garden on April 6th from 9AM to Noon.

Weather permitting, we will be cleaning up the garden, possibly planting early seeds and seedlings, turning the compost, checking the overwintered crops and harvesting parsnips.

Come join the fun!

Picking up lumber for the new accessible front gate and raised beds.

The first crop of 2019 seedlings, planted on Saturday, are up and growing under lights. The brassicas (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages and cauliflower) were the first to break ground, quickly followed by the greens (lettuce and spinach). The alliums (leeks, onions and shallots) and celery have yet to appear. Thanks to the seedling crew for getting things started!

Save the date – our annual Seed Selection Meeting will be on Saturday, January 26th in Community Room of the Community Safety Building from 10 am to Noon(ish).

Everyone interested in the crops & varieties we will grow at Robbins Farm Garden this season is welcome. Prospective new members of the garden group are especially encouraged to attend and join in the discussion. Bring your seed catalogs and great expectations for the season to come!

You will find the Community Safety Building (Arlington Police Headquarters) at 112 Mystic Street. When you enter the building, go directly up the stairs; the community room door will be on your left.

General comments:

• Fertilize EVERYTHING on a more regular basis – and not just with compost. Research to find ideal frequency & nutrients needed, by crop. Consider foliar feeding, e.g. with Stress-X or other seaweed-based fertilizer, which also helps to discourage foliar diseases.
• We need to be more ruthless in our thinning. Research ideal spacing, by crop, & adhere to that when thinning.
• Use an organic critter deterrent (spray and/or in small, ventilated bottles hung throughout the garden, possibly allowing us to avoid chicken wire around crops where the wire interferes with tending/harvesting.

Garlic: did well, fertilize in spring next year.
Leeks: did well, but not quite as robust as in some years.
Onions: sets did fine, seed varieties all did well, counting problems with seedlings, consider fertilizing mid-season.
Scallions: grew stronger and faster in sunny spot near gate, bed near bench took all season to mature. Scallions near bench were in thick hedges, consider distributing the seeds in thinner rows to make harvesting easier.
Shallots: did well, but didn’t have enough, consider fertilizing mid-season.
Walking Onions: provided spring scallions, first bulblet planting not as successful as second.

Broccoli: first crop slightly discolored (try fertilizing mid-way), second crop solid, but all headed up the same week. Late crop covered with insect screen, but lots of cabbage worms matured under the screen. No noticeable lasting damage from the worms.
Brussels sprouts: grew 3 varieties due to old seed (difficult to tell apart) some didn’t mature, aphids only on leaves.
Cabbages: early green did well (red variety was small), late varieties good (except Aubervilliers hardly headed up). consider covering spring cabbage bed with agrofabric when transplanting seedlings.
Cauliflower: early crop variety did well (some headed up very early), late crop didn’t all mature.
Kohlrabi: good way to use space in center of zucchini bed, but difficult to harvest, try starting as seedlings or maybe making a raised-bed, like leeks?

Carrots: first crop basically failed: poor germination and die off, second crop planted earlier than usual did well. Make sure to keep soil moist after sowing.
Celeriac: strong seedlings, plants did well; too close together. If we’re going to continue planting these, maybe we should plant half as many?
Celery: strong seedlings, most plants did well, may have wrapped too early, research blanching and companion plantings. We need to keep an eye on these once they are wrapped and it rains. A couple of them rotted. Needs calcium (eggshells) and boron.
Parsnips: poor germination despite pelleted seed (straw mulch or soil temperature?), those that matured were good, harvested late Late harvest after poor germination reinforced the need for serious thinning, as most of the parsnips harvested were a good size.

Basil: plants did well, some insect damage (wooly bear caterpillars)
Cilantro: first planting good, but spotty germination afterward
Nasturtiums: did well (took over Malabar Spinach), consider planting with zucchini. Overtook the malabar spinach seedlings, consider bigger gap between them.
Okra: strongest seedlings ever, all matured, need mid-season fertilizer.
Popcorn: new variety similar to old variety, slightly less productive.
Rhubarb: hanging on, but not thriving – research ideal conditions. Rhubarb definitely loves sun, so moving it to a sunnier spot would help.
Sunflowers: awesome!

General: consider insect screen for more crops, esp. Collards, Chard, Lettuce, Spinach.
Arugula: first planting good, but spotty germination afterward.
Bok Choi: both crops did well.
Collards: did well, some insect damage early in season.
Kales: chicken wire worked well for bunny protection, some insect damage.
Malabar Spinach: strong seedlings plus self-seeded plants did fine on side without nasturtiums.
Lettuce: germination a problem all season (lots of transplanting), early seedlings did the best.
Mesclun: grew fine in shady bed, need to establish schedule & find someone to adopt. Good way to use up old greens seed at end of season.
Mustard: green not as robust as red, need to establish schedule.
Perpetual Spinach: did well again, even in terrible location.
Spinach: seedlings bolted a bit, seeded crop had spotty germination. Needs lots of calcium (eggshells).
Swiss Chard: some die-off (rot or fungus) early, try transplanting to fill gaps, use larger piece of screen to cover Poor productivity- need to research possible causes of rot/die off problems. Screen definitely helped causes problems.

Beans (bush): chicken wire worked well for bunny protection, germination problems with yellow varieties, lasted just long enough to meet first pole bean harvest. Infilled yellow bean several times; could germination issues be related to the company we ordered from (not our usual source)?
Beans (dried): saved (from bunnies) by chicken wire, though not as many perfect beans due to lots of rain late in season It would be helpful for these beans if we could remove the chicken wire once the beans were tall enough. We couldn’t do this because several of the squash plants had grown through the chicken wire.
Beans (pole): saved (from bunnies) by chicken wire, purple variety was early & good, green variety was later & good, Romano types weren’t as good as Garden Of Eden.
Fava Beans: best yield yet, but hit by wooly bear caterpillars.
Peas: uneven seeding & washout from rainstorm, yet good yield from spring planting. Fall planting had typical poor germination (high soil temp).
Soybeans: chicken wire worked great to prevent bunny damage, germination not great, replanted some areas twice.

Eggplants: all needed staking, Asian type most productive, Italian type hit by insects and dropped off early, white variety less productive.
Peppers: did well, reasonable yield. Matured a little slower than patio plants at home. Pick off any flowers on seedlings or low on the plant. Avoid extra nitrogen.
Potatoes: all did well. Might do better following the bean bed in rotation.
Tomatillos: grew 3 plants (rather than 2), healthy, productive plants but small fruit.
Tomatoes: awesome! Left extra leaders, fertilized every 2 weeks, mulched and finger pruned. Only disappointment was determinate Defiant. Possibly increase spacing between plants since the extra leaders spread I think I lost control of the pruning at some point in the season. It’s a quandary because we don’t want to decrease the number of tomato plants but things were definitely out of control. Oh, and the clover died off because of the shading from the tomatoes. Rutgers tomato did poorly- probably should take it (and the Defiant) off the list.

Beets: only one crop this year, seedlings were weak, but those that survived did well. Likes pH neutral soil; try adding 10% elemental boron.
Jerusalem Artichokes: grew well, lots of flowers and tubers.
Radishes: standard varieties were fine, daikon variety wasn’t worth the effort, late season planting partially washed out by rainstorm, try growing with salad turnips after onions.
Rutabagas: interesting experiment, needed to be thinned and given space.
Sweet Potatoes: remove all slips from tubers to produce more (don’t let them get too large), experiment with deeper planting.
Turnips (cooking): did well.
Turnips (salad): early crop did well, late crop (after onions) was awesome.

Butternuts: good yield, needed fertilizer mid-season.
Cucumbers: good yield, but short season due to wilt/mildew. Distributed cucumbers weren’t as productive or disease resistant this season. Heavy feeder, give frequent fertilizer.
Delicata: hit with borers, but still reasonably productive.
Pumpkins: good yield despite borers, needed mid-season fertilizing. Mildew/wilt left a few small immature pumpkins.
Watermelon: seedlings almost wiped out by mechanical damage, only one melon.
Zucchini: seedlings were strong, plants hit hard by borers, but good, long yield from both varieties, try starting a second crop earlier than in 2017. Consider covering squash with insect screen until the first blossoms emerge to reduce chance of moths laying eggs. I agree that it would be good to try an insect screen experiment next year, possibly with not all of the plants because of space concerns.

Second sighting of our resident praying mantis.  It was resting upside down on the chives.

Praying mantis

Public welcome to this family-friendly, free, self-guided tour
Saturday, September 29, 2018 – 11 AM to 2 PM
Seven Locations Around Arlington, Massachusetts
Visit seven beautiful public gardens, each offering lessons in environmental sustainability

Join us on Arlington’s self-guided walking tour to explore and learn about (and from) some of our beautiful public gardens! You will get a chance to visit a wide array of locations, from the Cyrus E. Dallin Elementary School gardens to the community space of Magnolia Gardens. This event is a great way to hear from local gardeners, pick up new planting methods, and learn about the gardening opportunities provided by the town of Arlington. Free admission, all ages welcome. We hope to see you there!

Tell us you’re coming and share this event on Facebook, #AnOutdoorEducation

Maps of the event will be available (coming soon) or at any of the stops along the tour:
Robbins Farm Learning Garden – all kinds of vegetables will be ripening
Dallin School Green Team garden – includes backyard composting demo/Q&A by Jeremy Marin at 12:30 PM , and “Meet the Hawk” by Arlington’s Animal Control Officer Diane Welch at 11:00 AM
Hurd Field Rain Garden – includes Stormwater Awareness activities for the family with DPW’s Jack Turner
Arlington Reservoir’s Habitat Garden -see native plantings in their fall glory
Bishop School learning garden and Green Team pollinator garden– includes “Meet the Hawk” by Arlington’s Animal Control Officer Diane Welch at 1:00 PM,find out how Bishop is integrating gardening into their curriculum
Arlington’s new orchard – a hidden gem
Magnolia Community Garden – tour the newly-expanded Arlington Recreation community garden, includes a lesson on backyard composting best practices with garden compost coordinators Allie and Steven

Our first harvest of Sugar Dumpling squash and Baby Bear pumpkins of the season.

The first Saturday in July ushered in our first major harvest of beets, eggplant, peppers, potatoes and zucchini. The tomatoes aren’t far behind!

We still have some surplus seeds available for the asking. Here’s the list Steven has compiled:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pu1BuPvCr71CRBn0YJMtRKehiqTRIgQ8-RJJtLXjofI/edit#gid=0

We’ve been starting our cucurbit (squash family) seeds indoors under lights to get a leg up on the season for a few years. Last year, we noticed that the germination rate for these seeds was unusually poor. This was brought into painful focus when only 1 of 33 of our Baby Bear pumpkin seeds germinated. A clue presented itself when we noticed that this pumpkin variety was the only one of our cucurbit seeds that was offered as treated seed.

Following our notes from last year, we started all our cucurbits in sterile soil this year. The results are now in, and they are striking. The one-to-one comparisons are shown in the table below. Each of the varieties shown were grown under the same conditions from the same seed from the same source for that year (2017 for non-sterile and 2018 for sterile).

[It’s important to note that we start most of our indoor seeds in sterile soil. In fact, we sterilize compost and make our own soil mix using coir, sand, vermiculite, wood ash and organic fertilizer. However, we decided to risk the non-sterile mix for the cucurbits because we start them just 2 weeks before they’re planted in the garden and they seem like such robust seeds.]

On average for all the cucurbit seed, the germination rate went from 53% for non-sterile soil to 94% for sterile soil. As for the pumpkins, we opted for the treated seed this year… and the germination rate went from 3% to 83%.

The newly-transplanted tomatoes, eggplants and okra are seeing real sun for the first time today in the greenhouse. They will be ready to go outside and get full sun soon, in preparation for being planted in the garden. We will have well over 100 seedlings (including all the wonderful peppers, tomatillos and basil) when planting day comes…