Okay … Who wants this one?
tomato
Veggie School meets again
Altogether, close to 90 exuberant, inquisitive, and pretty well-behaved students attended one of three 25-minute classes this morning at the Veggie School in Robbins Farm Garden.
We talked about different veggies’ origins, the different parts the plant we eat with different vegetables, what kinds of bugs we like and don’t like and why, and what were our favorite and least favorite veggies.
Tops in students’ favorites were tomatoes and carrots, with onions coming in third. Least liked in general were beets and eggplant, though most everyone agreed that the deep-purple eggplants were among the most beautiful vegetables in the garden.
The few students repeating from last week marveled at how some of the garden’s plants had grown, like the three squashes (pattipan, crookneck and zucchini), the cucumbers, and especially the sunflowers, reaching now to almost 9 feet tall.
Visitors enjoy the progress
I opened the garden for an hour and a half yesterday afternoon. Though there were dramatic rains in both Lexington and Boston, none here! Even so, the garden looked well watered.
A nice group of Asian-American mothers and children came to visit. They remarked on the eggplants (great purple blossoms), the amaranth, and the tomatoes. Earlier a mother with two daughters enjoyed finding the hidden zucchini. Several people took the cards.
I tried to draw the amaranth and the basil, impossible as usual.
Promise
The tomato patch is full of promise, from the insanely huge clusters, galaxies, of flowers on the Blondkopfchen to the fully fleshed fruits of a neighbor. The Blondkopfchen, "little blond head", is producing true to its description in the Seed Savers catalog, "enormous yields and never a cracked fruit" (we’ll be happy to see the latter). All that and it is said to bear until frost!
Mid-season pH check
When we first opened the garden, we had the soil tested, and the pH (acid/alkaline balance) was very low, about 5.8. We added 170 lbs of lime when we dug it up – about 17 lbs/100 sf. We checked the soil again on June 26 in a few spots around the garden, and the pH was around 6.6, which is just about perfect for most vegetables. It takes a while for the lime we added in April to change the soil chemistry, so we wanted to verify that we’d added enough. Every time it rains, the soil becomes a little more acid, so we need to keep checking and adjusting throughout the season.
We lightly dusted lime around the plants that have a sweet tooth (cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, beets and greens). Some plants (potatoes, eggplant) like it a bit more acidic, so we did not add any lime to those beds.
We used calcitic lime (plain ordinary powdered limestone, or calcium carbonate) because it adds a quick shot of calcium to the soil, to help prevent blossom end rot on the tomatoes.
Soil pH is important because plants won’t absorb nutrients from the soil as well if the pH is too high or too low. A good introduction to soil pH is here, on the UMass Extension web site.
Did you know that farmers used to check their pH by tasting the soil?
Black Gold!
To gardeners, wealth is in the ground. And rich soil is made richer by adding lushly black compost. The last Saturday in June, we harvested our first batch of compost, much earlier than I expected. 
The top was wet and slimy — the result of adding clippings of grass from the fence edge. The sliminess results from suffocation, and therefore simply remedied by turning. A suffocating compost pile will give off an ammonia-smell from the anerobic bacteria. But in our case, there was little smell, because below the layer of grass was nicely composted soil. I was a bit worried about the straw added the previous week, as I feel it decomposes slowly, but it may have provided some aeration to the lower mass.
We sifted the compost as we extracted it, using a rectangular frame with a wire mesh about 1/4-inch fine. The plastic tray we used to sift into cracked, so next time we’ll bring a wheelbarrow to sift into. Sifting allows earlier use of ready compost, as different materials decompose at different rates, and were put into the compost pile at different times. The apple cores and banana peels of April were completely decomposed, but the straw of the previous week was quite present. I had been keeping the compost moist by covering it, since hydration speeds decomposition. Compost should be kept about as wet as a damp-to-wet sponge, to give room for air, which soaking wet does not. The downside is that wet compost is harder to sift, but we managed.
We extracted several buckets of the "black gold" which was then used to "top-dress" a number of vegetables. The compost thus put around the plants served two purposes: first, nutrients from the compost will leach into the soil to feed the plants. Second, the compost also serves as a mulch, keeping sunlight from reaching new weeds. We also put some compost into the holes destined for transplanted tomatoes. This is a better location than the soil-top, as the plants have yet another reason to send roots downwards (which makes them more robust during dry spells).
At the bottom of the compost we found many earthworms, a great sign of good decomposing, as well as many scurrying black bettles.
The first Saturday in July I turned the compost again. First, the de-harvested snap pea plants were put into the empty bin, nearly filling it. But the heavier compost-in-progress turned atop that easily flattened the pea plants. With the forecast for hot weather upcoming, it looks like the compost will need to be turned at least weekly (especially with the continual addition of grass clippings).
Both compost bins seem to work well, it’s hard to tell if either is working better, though I might give the black plastic bin an edge (because it may retain heat and water better).
