Vine Glory: Vice or Virtue?
The St. Mary’s garden pulls together community volunteers and the Anderson County Master Gardeners to provide fresh vegetable to our neighbors at the St. Joseph’s food pantry. We always need help to accomplish this worthy mission.
Vine Glory: An Isidore and Maria Garden Update
HISTORY: Alice Lay, a parishioner at St. Mary’s, offered a field on her property on Dutch Valley Road as a growing area extension of our efforts at St. Mary’s Garden. We chose more aggressive weed control and chose long season varieties in order to manage a field more distant to our volunteers.
UPDATE: So far our strategy seems to be effective. The weed barrier that we employed reduced the weed pressure during the establishment of the vine cover. Between three volunteers, we kept weeds at bay through shallow tilling, ground cover, and a few strategic hand-weeding visits.
Now the butternut and candy roaster squash and sweet potato vine cover block out all of the major weeds. We do have both types of squash visible on the vines along with plenty of flowering.
We plan to manage our soil quality using fall and winter cover crops. If you or someone you love wants to participate in field and soil management using cover crops, please volunteer. We have some small-scale experience with cover crops in our smaller beds at the St. Mary’s garden. This will be our first larger-scale trial.
To learn more I plan to read this document Fall Cover Crop Selection and Planting Dates in Tennessee (W-235). Our challenges will include our methods to terminate the cover crop, our timing to terminate the cover crop, and our ability to plant our main season crops in 2023 into the crop debris. Our object is to control weeds, reduce overall management, and to maintain or increase soil organic matter over time.
After tilling…
After adding ground cover to control weeds…
Total vine cover (photo taken on Tuesday 7/19/2022).
We havested 43 lbs of tomatoes on Monday morning. Due to weather concerns we did an emergency harvest in the morning of Monday, 7/18.
Work Days
Monday evening ~6PM: We will harvest everything we can. If the weather looks bad, we may harvest on Monday morning. Please contact Jason early if you want to help. He will communicate any last minute changes.
Wednesday morning ~8:45 (after morning mass): We request assistance transporting the Monday harvest to the food pantry.
Saturday morning: This would be an excellent time to work. Please let Jason know if you will be present on Saturday morning. He can help you figure out what to do that day.
Wish List
-Pieces of brown cardboard for covering weeds. We will cover it with mulch. Plastic tape is ok. Please do not include glossy cardboard. Just drop it off by the gate. We will take care of the rest over time.
-We need leaves, shredded yard trimmings, and straw and grass clippings for compost and mulch (no sticks, no herbicide)
-We are trying to build more than one Johnson-Su Bioreactor (an interesting composting method). We are looking for the supplies listed on their site: How To Build Your Own Bioreactor
Here’s the list of bioreactor supplies. I am sure that we can find most of these locally.
These supplies are for one reactor. We hope to make multiple reactors.
Landscape cloth (woven, minimum 5 oz.): Piece One: 13’ x 6’, Piece Two: 6’ x 6’, Piece Three: 6’ x 6’
One standard, sturdy shipping pallet with dimensions of approximately 40” x 48” We have pallets.
Wire re-mesh (6” x 6” x 10-gauge wire), used to create a 5’ x 12’ 6” supporting wire cage. This type of remesh is normally used for reinforcing concrete. Be sure to use re-mesh as horse fencing or other similar wire fence products have insufficient vertical strength to hold the cage in position as you fill it.
Four 10’ lengths of perforated, bell-end, 4” septic system drain field piping
Tie wire (normally used to tie rebar together)
-If you wish to make a financial donation please mention the St. Mary’s Community garden in the comment section of the donation page at St. Vincent de Paul Society (St. Joseph Food Pantry) .
We do not need any seedlings at this time. But we can help you find a home through our network of growers.
Volunteer Requests
Saturday morning: We continue to seek conscientious individuals who will commit to a Saturday morning harvest and work time. It’s so nice to see smiling faces for a morning garden work party. Jason can help you plan what to do.
Compost project: This Johnson-Su project needs a leader. You will not work alone. This could be a technical feat that helps the St. Mary’s garden take an important step to improving product quality. This will be a superb winter project.
