Still producing!

Aptiv is winter squash heaven with the vines spreading into the next county! There are still lots of potatoes at Aptiv, too, along with broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, chard, kale, and green beans.

At City Hall, the peppers and broccoli are this year's stars with eggplants, green beans, cucumbers, summer squash, kale, tomatoes, and chard still coming in, too. We planted some second crops and you can see them coming up now, too. We should have lots of kale this winter.

The Hogan garden is still producing too despite the Reader's Digest worthy story of a couple of weeks ago! Because we aren't sure of the school district's plans, we are going to assume this is probably the last year for Hogan in this form. Are there other sites in the neighborhood where a community victory garden could grow?

As we near the end of the fifth year of gardening, we are amazed to see how many vegetables we're still getting! The weather outlook is for warmer than normal through the end of the year. We'll see how long we can keep things going!

If you want to volunteer, please connect. We'll need more help at season's end for sure.

Here's a good recipe for this time of year (and you can even make it vegan!)

Eggplant with feta from The Spruce Eats is quick, easy, and scrumptious. And you can use a vegan feta if you want. Easy to find and yummy are Follow Your Heart crumbles or VioLife block.

Caring Community

Vegetables are popping out all over the place and we encourage you to pick what you need for your family. It looks like more people are  picking at Aptiv. That's great!

There's nothing a gardener loves more than seeing plants they've cared for over several months produce corn or cucumbers, beans or eggplants. Few veggies pop right up, so we have a long time to consider when they'll be ready and how we can prepare them.

For community victory gardeners, the joy also comes from knowing SOMEone will get a meal or a favorite treat, even if they don't know how to grow it or don't have the money to pay for it.

That's why what happened on September 1 at the Hogan garden is so frustrating, maddening, saddening.

One of our garden volunteers was walking past the garden Monday evening and found two boys selling vegetables

They were selling Victory Garden vegetables (which are FREE). They had picked pretty much everything, including potatoes and beans that were ready AND squash, peppers, and eggplants that were not ready to be picked. 

Worse, people had apparently paid the boys for the free vegetables. When our volunteer talked to them about their actions, they didn't really seem that concerned, pulling out a big wad of cash that they were going to use to buy treats at Ranison.

Please help us look after this community resource. Don't buy free vegetables. Watch over the garden. Help educate children about community care. Please. 

There may be time for some things to come back; new little eggplants are pushing out, for example. But, in the meantime, if you live in the Hogan neighborhood and need vegetables, try the Aptiv or City Hall gardens (Aptiv is bigger). Bring your kids and let them help.