Tag: gardening

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Ward Acres Community Garden/WACG

Written by: Ethan Cuggino-Zensky

I remember when I was in elementary school, we joined a community garden called Ward Acres. We didn’t have much sun in our backyard, so we decided to grow our plants there. Because the garden was new, it didn’t have running water initially. So we filled jugs of water and brought them there every other day or as needed at the end of the day, and  depending on the weather. We did this for a couple of years. Finally, the garden got running water, which made life easier. I couldn’t wait to go there on summer evenings. It was a joy to observe things grow. One of the major things we grew were Italian Pole beans. We used a trellis so vines could wrap around it and grow upwards to have more space. The leaves were large and they grew very quickly. We planted seeds one inch down and four inches apart around the trellis. We planted our seeds at the end of  March or early April when the temperature was warm enough.

When the beans were ripe for picking, we could harvest large amounts. My mother sauteed  the pole beans in garlic and oil and mixed them with potatoes or ate them straight. We also grew rosemary. We grew four rosemary plants to frame the trellis for the beans. The rosemary would be used as a garnish for chicken dinners. Opposite to the rosemary was basil. 

My mother used it in tomato sauce. I remember the strong scent of the basil and rosemary. These herbs were easy to grow like the beans. When growth was slowing down in the fall, we harvested everything.  All remaining rosemary and basil that we collected got washed, sealed, and frozen in ziploc bags to be used all winter. That’s what I remember most, that we could use them all winter. Lastly, we planted Salvia Farinacea, which is not an herb. It is a tall blue spiky flower that we planted  around the border of our 15 by 15 plot. Those plants lasted through November even after all of our other plants would die. 

   Since that time, the garden has grown in the number of participants. People have also donated benches and artistic art sculptures. Many people now go there to sit, relax and observe our beautiful community garden!

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Thyme

Overview: Thyme is in the mint family. Thyme is well known for its fragrant smell and strong flavor. 

Planting: You should plan on planting your thyme in the spring, when the frost is done. Thyme thrives in well drained and fertile soil. It needs to be in a sunny area. You can grow thyme from a seed or you can grow it from an already existing plant. If you are growing from an already existing plant, you need to space the plant 12”-24” apart. If growing from a seed, you should start it in a pot in the early spring and scatter the seeds over the soil, then cover with a thin layer of soil and lightly water. (Source: Bonnie Plants)

Growing Advice: In order to thrive, you need to grow thyme in a sunny and warm environment. The more sunlight the crop receives, the stronger the flavor will be. (Source: Love the Garden)  

Harvesting: On average, thyme will be ready to harvest between 75 and 90 days of planting. However, some varieties take up to 200 days until they are ready to harvest.  You should plan to harvest your thyme before the flowers bloom. Cut the top 5-6” of the plant. The best time of day to harvest thyme is in the morning after the dew has dried. (Source: Almanac.com: Thyme)

Retrieved from: How to Culinary Herb Garden

Thyme Roasted Potatoes

Check out this recipe for Thyme Roasted Potatoes. This is one of the simplest and easiest sides if you want to impress a crowd. This is one of my favorite sides to make when our thyme is ready to harvest. 

Ingredients:

  • 2 pounds of your choice of potatoes (I like baby red potatoes)
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • Salt & Pepper
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
  • Shredded parmesan cheese
  • Optional: fresh garlic and lemon slices for added flavor

Steps:

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit
  2. Wash and slice your potatoes
  3. In a large bowl, add your potatoes, olive oil, garlic powder, salt & pepper and mix 
  4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the potatoes out evenly. If you halved your potatoes, make sure they are flat side down to ensure a crisp
  5. Roast the potatoes for 30 minutes, at 15 minutes, add the parmesan cheese 
  6. Remove the potatoes from the oven and toss them with fresh thyme, add another drizzle of olive oil and use a spoon to carefully mix
  7. Optional: squeeze the lemon wedges on for a tangy flavor

Written by Lexi Lescovitz

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Hydrangeas

By Chloe Newell

Hydrangeas bushes are beautiful pom-pom looking flowers that are native to our zone 6 climate. Hydrangeas bushes can be seen all over Massachusetts in various assortments of colors based on the soil. Before planting your hydrangea, you should plan out which type you’d like to bloom. Use acidic soil for blue or purple-blue hydrangeas. Alkaline soil with a pH above 7 for pink and red hydrangeas. Alkaline soil with a pH below 7 creates a purple hydrangea. (Source : HGTV).

Photo by Victoria Syverson on Flickrhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/124651729@N04/51243638915

Seed Starting Advice

Most people who are starting to grow hydrangeas start with the root. This can be done in the ground or in a pot.

  • Plant in an area with partial sun. 
  • Trim around the root for parts that look rotting.
  • Dig a hole deep enough to cover the entire root, leaving 2 to 3 inches on the sides of the root.
  • Make sure that the top of the root meets the top layer of soil.
  • Remove root from hole, fill soil with water halfway.
  • Once water has absorbed, replace the root back into soil and fill the hole with water.
  • Re-water the plant once again.

(Source : The Almanac)

Growing Advice

When growing hydrangeas bushes, you will need to plant them at least 3 to 10 feet apart (Source : The Almanac). This will give them plenty of space to grow out and not be on top of each other. When it comes to protecting them from pests, you should keep your eye out for holes within the flowers. Slugs can be discovered when there are munches on your petals, and can be reduced using slug traps. Other insects, like scale, aphids, beetles and fruit worms, can be reduced using an insect control spray. ( Source : Esponma).

Harvesting Advice

Avoid cutting your hydrangeas when it is hot outside, since this will cause the flower to wilt. Cut within the months of August and October, which is when they are at their blooming season. Pick when the flowers are fully bloomed. (Source : Garden Guides).

Arrangement Inspiration

The most perfect bouquet featuring hydrangeas include different types of roses, like spray roses and African roses. They also pair well with peonies and dahlias. Alongside these statement flowers, you can add smaller greens, such as babies breath, eucalyptus, delphinium, foxglove, freesia, and bells of Ireland (Source : Cascade Floral Wholesale) When it comes to the colors of the arrangement, you want them to match based on what color hydrangeas you are using. When using blue or purple hydrangeas, you should stick to a more cool toned bouquet, and when you’re using pink, you should use more warm toned flowers- white is the middle ground and can be mixed with either color. Below is an example of a bouquet mixed with both warm and cool colors that looks beautiful as well.

Arrangement done by Flores & Co on The Florist Market
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My First Garden Experience

By Julia Hamilton

When I was in kindergarten my town library had a garden program where children could pick four different types of seeds to plant. The library supplied the seeds, the soil, and peat planters. The four types of seeds I chose for my garden were tomato, cucumber, zucchini, and carrots. I planted them, watered them, and made sure they got enough sun.

Merrimac Public Library. Photo Credit: Julia Hamilton.

In a couple of weeks sprouts began to pop through the soil, and I was so excited. As the pants grew bigger we saw that the plants would soon need to be transplanted. We chose to do a container garden and picked out large clay pots to transfer the plants into. There are woods behind my house that have animals that might eat our garden, so we decided to get a garden fence to put around the plants to protect them. The garden was growing well and the plants started to flower, which would soon turn into vegetables. We had a trip planned one weekend, and watered our plants well and made sure the fence was secure.

Tomato. Photo Credit: Julia Hamilton

When we left the zucchini plants were about three or four feet high with a lot of flowers. They were on the end of our container garden. When we got back from our trip we could not wait to see how our garden was doing. We were surprised about what we saw on our return home. The tall zucchini plants that we had left a few days before were eaten down to the stems. Our best guess was that some deer got into our yard and ate all of our promising zucchini blossoms. They had not gotten to the rest of the plants so we did get to enjoy our tomato, cucumbers, and carrots. We learned a lesson with our first garden. Make sure that your fence is tall enough to protect your plants of you have wildlife around.

Cucumber. Photo Credit: Julia Hamilton
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Merrimack Seed Library: Getting Started

We’re excited that you took home some seeds from Merrimack College’s Seed Library! This volunteer-run Seed Library works in concert with the Merrimack Garden (located at 27 Rock Ridge Rd.). Feel free to pop by the garden any time. We have a host of annual vegetables and perennial plantings.

A chalk board sign welcomes people to the Merrimack Garden. We have lettuce, strawberries, blueberries, apples, asparagus, corn, beets, carrots, potatoes, chives, kale, broccoli, rosemary, thyme, lavender, onions.
The Merrimack Garden welcome sign highlights the 2021 offerings
A hand holds a ripe strawberry.
One perfect Merrimack Garden strawberry

Our Seed Library will be open from the end of February through December in the McQuade Library basement. Beginning in the spring of 2023, we are offering over 30 different kinds of seeds! Into the summer and fall, we will have a rotating offering of seeds that suit the time of year.

If kept cool and dry, the seeds you take home should last for at least a year. Once you get growing, please tag @Merrimack_Garden on Instagram or email Lisa Perks (perksl@merrimack.edu) if you have any photos to share! 

This image is of a book shelf with garden-related books on the bottom and a seed library on the top in a card catalog-type box.
The Merrimack Seed Library on its birthday

This first post gives some general advice for starting and maintaining a garden. Click the links below for your type of seed to learn more specific growing advice. If you have more questions, feel free to do what some of the best gardeners do: Google it. 

Seed Starting

Many seeds can be planted directly in the ground. Others may need to be started indoors (under grow lights or on a sunny windowsill) during the colder New England months to get a jump on the growing season. Check out the seed-specific blog posts linked below:

Getting to Know Your Merrimack Library Seeds (more links to follow)

Site Selection

Plants can be grown in many ways: raised beds, straight in the ground, in pots or containers. 

The first main step is to find a site that gets a good amount of sun. Six to eight hours a day is ideal. Be creative: this may mean you grow plants on a deck, rooftop, front yard, driveway, etc. 

Part-shade can support greens (kale, lettuce, etc.), herbs, and shade-loving flowers. You could also consider growing mushrooms if you have shade! 

Types of Gardens

Consider whether you want to build raised beds or an in-ground garden. To build a raised bed (which means you raise up the soil level), you can use lumber, logs, bricks, rocks, a kit, or something else. Just avoid using treated wood that could leach chemicals into the garden. Alternately, do an in-ground garden (with no border holding up the soil) and simply mound up the soil.

The Merrimack Garden includes a growing army of wooden raised beds.

Many towns offer free compost (usually from yard waste or leaf pick up). Or purchase compost, loam mix, or topsoil (in bags or a large delivery) to build up a bed. 

Container gardening can be done in pots, five gallon buckets, grow bags, reusable grocery bags–even a repurposed kiddie pool! Just make sure whatever container you have has good drainage. 

One additional thing to remember is that the container garden growing medium should be light and fluffy. Regular soil is too heavy for containers and doesn’t drain well. Find a bagged container potting mix or make your own with one part compost, one part vermiculite or perlite, and one part coco coir (a more sustainable alternative to peat moss).

Watering

If starting seeds indoors or in tiny pots before putting them in the garden, water the young seedlings daily. Container gardens also dry out quickly. Giving container gardens a soaking (at the base of the plant, not at the foliage) once every day or two is generally wise. 

If you’ve recently put baby plants outside into the garden (or you’ve planted seeds directly in there), give them a good daily watering about every day or two for about two weeks. Once they’re established (maybe 2ish weeks in their new spot) they can go longer between waterings–a soak every 3 days or so in the absence of rain. 

Trouble with Garden Pests? Check out this post.

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Ursula’s Garden and Black Butterflies

Written by Jerry Pierre

The following blog post is a story from the mother of a good friend of mine at Merrimack College. I would like to call her by her real name, which is Ursula, for this. Ursula has a backyard with a lot of plants and flowers, which are bound to attract creatures such as Butterflies. Last year she planted an herb garden in pots in the months of May and June of 2020. While planting these herb gardens she included herbs such as dill, parsley, and white sage. Soon July would arrive, and she would see a black butterfly flying around the pots.

Now, the eggs of these butterflies are tiny and light green, and it’s very rare for them to survive and become caterpillars because of predators. Also it was pretty surprising for Ursula to see the eggs grow up in potted plants and not in a bigger garden. So at the end of their growing stage, the Caterpillar based on its colors will become an “Asterius” or a Black Butterfly as it’s called. This wouldn’t be the only time an Asterius would make an appearance in Ursula’s garden though.

In August of 2020 Ursula would find a green and black caterpillar on her white sage plant on her deck outside. She would name her new Caterpillar friend “Guilbert.” Her kids would ostracize her for having Guilbert as a pet and for having them greet the animal. The Caterpillar would start changing, and would eat for about a week, and would thread a chrysalis as well as Cocoon for 2.5 weeks. Finally, the chrysalis would turn black on the morning of August 21, 2020, and the process of Eclosion would occur. This is a long process in the development of a Butterfly, as it can take up to an hour for their wings to strengthen. Fortunately, the butterfly would finally sprout its wings and make its place in Ursula’s garden. Based on the wing colors, the butterfly was a female.

In conclusion, I think Ursula’s experience teaches us a lesson we shouldn’t forget. It’s always the little things that matter. Having a butterfly grow in your garden may not mean much to others, but I think Ursula naming it and making her children greet it is very telling about how something so little can bring so much joy. I think this happiness is the essence of what gardening is.

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Why Compost is Crucial in our Garden

Composting is a very crucial and beautiful piece of art in our gardens. This is something that I was personally extremely drawn to and wanted to take the opportunity to learn more about it. To start us off what is compost? From the article Composting At Home they stated that “Compost is organic material that can be added to soil to help plants grow. Food scraps and yard waste together currently make up more than 30 percent of what we throw away, and could be composted instead. Making compost keeps these materials out of landfills where they take up space and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.” Compost is something that is available to everyone and can be done in your own home or even apartment! Not only can composting be a positive attribution to our world but also a new hobby for you to enjoy as we face our worldwide circumstances right now. With that being said we are able to reduce massive amounts of waste in our world with this quite simple task. Composting our leftover foods is an amazing way to make your personal contribution to nature and use what you already have at your fingertips. I personally find this astonishing that with just a simple task how much of an impact on the environment you can make. With just seven easy and brainless steps you will be on your way to composting as well. Attached at the bottom is a link on specifics to how you can achieve your attribution towards your garden. I hope that this inspires you to join me and my classmates in beginning a new hobby and adding positivity to our environment. 

Written by Colby Paolo

https://www.leduc.ca/composting/7-easy-steps-composting

An example of what a compost will look like!
How your compost will look in the beginning.
Compost success!

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Gardens and Quahogs

By Sam Boyden

From a very young age I remember driving roughly an hour from Pembroke MA to Yarmouth MA where my grandparents lived. I would go almost every weekend until high school and help out around the property. My aunt and grandmother would tend to the flowers near the front of the house while my grandfather and I dug for quahogs in the river behind the house. In the backyard next to the house my grandparents cultivated a glorious garden. It was full of tomatoes, cucumbers, abnormally large squash, zucchini, lettuce, the whole 9 yards. I was tasked with picking the fully grown produce and washing it off from the rain collector barrel attached to the garden. It was a large blue barrel that all the gutters from the roof led to so the produce could grow while also being cost efficient.

Times not spent in the garden were spent downriver in knee deep water and mud hunting for quahogs. My dad, grandfather and I would hop in the metal boat and race downriver to our spot for catching quahogs. We would rake through the mud looking for the most XL quahogs the river had to offer. If any seemed too small we had a tool to measure the size of the shell to see if it was the legal size to take. My grandfather, Dad and I would see who could scoop up the biggest quahogs as well as the most. The cooking of the quohogs was left to my mother and grandmother who had genuine experience with the shellfish. My time spent down the cape was always surrounded by nature whether it was on the beach or in the river which I will always remember.

(Not my picture but it’s a picture of the hotel down the rover from my grandparent’s house)

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Carver Cranberries

Throughout my childhood, I was often at my grandparents house in Carver, Massachusetts. At their house, they had many acres of land that my sisters and I would always love to explore. We would ride the golf cart my grandfather owned around all day to find something new to discover. On top of all the land they had, there was also about seven cranberry bogs. Every year, up until I was around fourteen or fifteen, my entire family would help harvest the cranberries.

My dog, Gronk, at my grandparents’ cranberry bogs. Credit: Pamela Snow.

Cranberries are harvested through a process called flooding. Each of the bogs is entirely flooded with around 15-18 inches of water the night before they are set to be harvested. Once the day came, my family would use these devices called water reels to help separate the cranberry from their vines. Then, my grandfather would climb aboard this giant harvesting machine and drive around the bogs scooping up all the cranberries. I can remember being amazed at the entire process and not truly realizing how much work went into it until I saw it with my own eyes. I usually only watched my dad, grandfather, and uncle really do all the work to gather the cranberries, but it was something I definitely looked forward to every single year. After all the cranberries are collected, they are loaded into crates, then shipped to Ocean Spray, the company my grandfather sold his crops too.

Workers harvesting cranberries at a bog. Credit: PublicDomainImages

This tradition was something that was always a long but fun day with my family. We would always end the day with a big dinner, and it was usually had a lot to do with cranberry flavored items. This is really the first memory I had to anything garden related really, but it was something that was kind of unique to me. Not a lot of people get to experience and see the actual process of this harvest, and it was always a great time.

Forest Fruit Harvest Cranberries. Credit: MaxPixel