Tomato time and fall info

Here are Nicole's tomatoes, which she shared this week with Meals on Wheels. Kathie writes this morning that another 16 pounds of theirs went to Kitchen of Hope this week. Jim took lots of stuff to Hunger First this week, too. Fabulous!

I sent an email yesterday to all of the gardeners giving info on fall planting and the date for our fall celebration and garden clean-up. I'll copy and paste some of that here:

If you're looking at having a fall garden at Harvest of Hope, it's time to plan. If what you've got in your raised bed(s) is still thriving and producing, don't pull it up, but as the summer crops start to wind down, it'll soon be time to pull things up and replant. Some master gardeners I know have suggested that August 15 is a good date to think about getting fall crops in the ground. Some good ones are:

spinach (which overwinters well -- you can leave it in the ground and it will come back in early spring)
Swiss chard
kale
other lettuces and greens
broccoli
onions
green beans
If planted soon, squashes and zucchinis can produce another round, too.

October 20 is good date to estimate as first frost, so use that as a guide when planting fall crops.

As your tomatoes, in particular, begin to slow down, think about pulling them up. If withering tomato plants stay in the beds too long, they can contract diseases that will stay in the soil.

Because it's been hard to get all of us together at the garden and because fall looks so busy for most of our planning crew, we decided to let you do fall planting yourselves without a specific planting day. If you have questions, please let me know and we can try to get them answered, but otherwise, go forth and plant for fall by the end of August! Seeds and seedlings should be fairly inexpensive and available in town, especially at garden centers like Ward's.

Second, we set a date for our fall festival and garden clean-up day. At the festival, we'll gather to celebrate our great success this year, to thank you gardeners, to thank our sponsoring partners, and to get the garden in winter mode, and maybe order some pizza and have drinks and desserts together. The date is October 27. We'll probably gather in the morning, as we've done in the past. First Presbyterian is very generous to let us use their property for the garden; one of their only stipulations to our using it is that we tidy up at the end of each season -- so we all need to chip in to make sure our beds are "bedded down" for the winter and all messes straight. I'll give you more specifics about this day as it gets closer, but please pencil it in on your calendar right now so you'll be able to join us to clean up and to celebrate.

In the meantime, if you have any stories to share about the garden, or news to tell about how and where you've shared your harvest, please email me.

Happy day!