Dunwoody Community Garden Plant Sale @ Sandy Springs Farmers Market

If you are looking for a place to buy some edible and ornamental plants this weekend, please stop by the Dunwoody Community Garden booth at the Sandy Springs Farmers Market.  They will have a wide variety of plants for sale.  The proceeds will be used to support the garden's various eco-friendly, charitable and community-building missions.

They will be selling this Saturday (5/7) from 8:30 am to noon at the old Target.

Here is a link with more details about the market including the address and participating vendors -->  Click HERE!

When Words are not Enough

How do you say thank you?  I mean, when you really mean it.  When you feel gratitude with every heartbeat.  When you are so full of it that it spills over your eyelashes and renders you incapable of truly explaining what it means to you.  When the giver, maybe, doesn't even realize the depth of what they have given you.  I am not completely sure, but I imagine it has to have something to do with being the best caretaker of that gift.  Of being able to recall what that gift meant to you on the day it was given even as time passes -6 months from now, 12 months from now, 2 years from now- and acting accordingly.  Treasuring it as you do the ones that gave it.  Over the past several weeks, I have been the recipient of many gifts.  Truth is, they weren't necessarily intended as gifts for me, but it felt like it to me none-the-less.  Some bore gifts of time and knowledge.  Others bore gifts of plants, hoses and fertilizer.  Many others reminded me to laugh along the way.  Mostly, I received the gift of friendship.  And out of that friendship, the new bonds formed and the old bonds strengthened in clay and biodynamic planting mix, came something incredible, inconceivable and truly good.  Here it is:

2 raised beds, 3 in ground beds at the new Spruill Art Gallery Garden

So, thank you!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Even though it is not 100% finished yet and there is still work to be done.  I want to take a moment to say thank you for not chalking it up to a lost cause and walking away when so little money was raised.  Thank you for finding a way around the obstacles.  Thank you for your faith in this garden and your trust in me.  Thank you for making this fun.  And, thank you for being my champion.  I will honor your gifts by putting my heart and soul into our new mutual friend, The Spruill Art Gallery Garden with harvests of tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes which will be donated to feed the hungry.  It's many gifts that keep on giving!

GREAT Events: Container Gardening and Home Depot/GiGi's Cupcakes/Master Gardeners Events

Two great gardening events coming up this weekend in the area:

Urban Gardening Program Presents: Vegetable Gardening in Small Spaces

There is no need to have a yard or farm to grow your own veggies.  Grab a container and soil, and start growing!  Learn everything you need to know about growing and harvesting your own food on a patio or back porch.  View the PDF of the event -->here<--.

Speaker: Sarah Brodd, Program Educator, UGA Cooperative Extension in Dekalb County
When: Saturday, April 2nd @ 11 AM
Where:  Brookhaven Library, 1242 N. Druid Hills Road, Atlanta, GA 30319
Contact: Brookhaven Library, 404-848-7140

Home Depot and GiGi's Cupcakes teams up with Fulton County Master Gardeners

Stop by your local Home Depot this Saturday and ask Master Gardeners your gardening and landscape questions.  This is a free event sponsored by GiGi's Cupcakes.  Yum!

When: Saturday, April 2nd, 10 AM - 2 PM
Where: Home Depot, 6400 Peachtree-Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA 30328 (next to Costco)
Contact: Cyndee Lucia, Home Depot, Horticulturist, 770-804-8065

In the Garden: Hello, Asparagus!

I almost missed it digging through the bed.  In fact, I found it by nicking it with my fingernail.  Oops!  I can't wait for fresh roasted asparagus... 

There she grows again: The Great Pumpkin Experiment

For me, gardening is basically one experiment after another. Some are successful and some are, well, they don't end in an "oh, wow- I can't believe that worked" moment.

Anyway, last fall, I did an experiment with pumpkins where you put pumpkins, seeds and all, outside and have them wait until spring to send up volunteers. This is something I had read about on the Internet and decided to try thanks to the lovely owner of Indigo Bath & Body, who completely inspired me with the following, which she posted to her Facebook page:

Last year we held our green wedding at our dearest friend and maid of honor's farm, Blossom Hill. As part of the decorations, we used a plethora of pumpkins. After the wedding was finished and guests toted home all the pumpkins they could carry, farmer Melissa took what pumpkins remained and saved them for us for next season. Once spring came, sprouts of pumpkin vines started poking their heads through the grasses in the field. Now we've come full circle, and harvest time is here. This is the last crop ever to be grown by Blossom Hill, and they'll be be harvested and used in our Harvest Pumpkin soap.

(It sounds so romantic, doesn't it? Now, I should warn you that if you absolutely must have pumpkins for fall, I do not recommend this method. I would go with more traditional methods. The jury is still out on my untested, accidental-at-best method.)

Inspired, here's what went down:

• We carved our pumpkins. And, as usual, that was fun. Normally, we'd roast and eat the seeds. This year, we just dumped all the seeds into a large, white bucket. That's it. No rinsing. No separating. Just dumping. And, then they lived on the back deck for a spell.
  
• Shortly after Halloween, I retrieved the carved pumpkins from the front steps. Now, to be totally honest, I have no idea how much time went by. I know it was longer than I had intended, but before Thanksgiving. Long enough that it had rained and I wondered what that would do to the seeds since they were now floating in the bucket.
  
• I took those pumpkins and placed them on what I like to think of as the slippery slope of the backyard. I call it this because it is sloped and nothing really grows there except some daylilies. But, it gets a decent amount of sun and could be useful if I gave it some attention. Also, it is a not-so-subtle reminder of what the entire yard could look like if I don't give it the attention it needs. This alone scares me right into action.
• I filled the pumpkins with seeds from the white bucket. Let me just say that I recommend rubber gloves for this. It was not entirely unpleasant, but it was not pleasant, either. I don't think the aforementioned rain helped.
  
• Then, because there was a lot of extra space remaining in the pumpkins after I added the seeds, I decided to cover the seeds inside the pumpkins with peat and sort-of mixed it around feeling very witch-y all the while. My very scientific explanation for why I did this- it just seemed like they would be more stable on the hill if they were sufficiently filled in and weighed down. And, because I had peat in the garage, I used that. This is really ridiculous when I think about it now because peat weighs next to nothing. But, whatever, it's what I did.
• Then, I walked away, braced myself for winter and prayed for an early spring.

This morning, I went out to the yard to do a quick assessment. I decided to check out the slippery slope. And, in an area that was once a pumpkin, seed and peat pile I found this:

Could it possibly be a pumpkin seedling?
It looks similar, but it can't possibly be one, can it?
In March?
Only time will tell...