News from Grow Oak Ridge and its markets.

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Counting Backwards to Move Forward

Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update

On September 7th, we had our end of season potluck. One of our gardeners brought a propane griddle and cooked outside. We gathered around the griddle, gathered around the table, making connections, having fun conversations, moving indoors and outdoors. Our gardeners swapped stories about canning, pickling, and what we are doing in our fall gardens. It was a great time to gather and build community. I loved hearing people share with each other what they have done this season, for instance, different varieties of tomatoes and trellising techniques. Our gardeners received water bath canners, cover crop seed mixes, and onion bulbs!  

During the remainder of our August garden visits and this September, we have been discussing what we are planning to season extend, where to plant fall crops, and how to make the transition into a fall garden. It is hard to let go of the warm season crops that have given us so much! Sometimes it feels like it's best to just rip the bandaid off and wish them well in order to welcome something new. 

We added 4 more families to the Grow Your Own program in partnership with the Y12 Gives Foundation, which will strengthen our program for the coming year by allowing 4 more families the space and supplies to get growing in the Welcome Garden at First Presbyterian Community Garden. We had a workday where they got their fall gardens planted early this September. 

For the fall, our gardeners got carrots, radish, kale, broccoli, turnips, beets, lettuce, and spinach seeds. I’ve been keeping track of the days until our first expected frost around October 27th and reminding our gardeners that it is not too late to plant several of their fall crops! As I am writing this, we are 42 days away. Drawing close, but not too late to plant radishes, lettuces, and other crops with shorter days to maturity.  

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Stepping into fall gardening

Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update

Here at Grow Oak Ridge, we are starting to plan for our cool season gardens. We are continuing to welcome the harvest, especially tomatoes! I have loved seeing our gardeners find and use techniques for trellising. At my last garden visit, one of our gardeners is doing an upright trellis for their tomato plants where they built a tall structure and wrapped tomato twine around the stem of the plant, leading it upright. This method and the Florida Weave have definitely been my favorite methods to see for trellising. The upright trellis has allowed one of their tomato plants to grow at least 8 feet tall and for all of them receive a lot of airflow!

At our last workshop of the season (besides our Potluck), we talked about Season Extension and Fall Gardening. We had two guests from the Master Gardener program stop by and share their experiences with growing and cool season gardening. I think people are excited to try out cool season gardening. The timing of it all presents a challenge as far as when and what to season extend and where to plant, but we are definitely embracing it. During our latest garden visits, our gardeners are showing up with their fall garden map, planning out what they want to extend, where they can start their cool season seeds, and where they can plant cover crops. For cover crops this year, we are doing a mix of tillage radish (to break up Oak Ridge’s notoriously heavy clay soil), winter rye (to create a natural mulch and increase biomass), crimson clover, & hairy vetch (to add nitrogen back into the soil). Cover cropping is probably one of my favorite topics as I love learning about and teaching ways to improve soil health. 

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Welcoming the Harvest!

Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update

This last month, our gardeners were delighted to welcome some of their first harvests of the season. We experienced lots and lots of rain, which led many of our squash plants to bloom and take off overnight. I made zucchini lasagna with my Green Tiger Hybrid Summer Squash harvest. It was delicious. Recipe linked here.

On July 15th, we had our Food Preservation class, which has been much anticipated throughout the season. We talked about food safety, canning, freezing, and dehydrating (which proves to be rather difficult due to the humidity in our area). We had guests from UT Extension and Susan, a home canning expert, help lead this lesson! 

I also asked that our gardeners share photos of their garden through their eyes for virtual garden tours. At our meeting, they shared their experience, lessons learned, and progress so far. I have included all their photos below! 

one of Casey’s Gardens

Kylie’s Oasis

Bray’s Bounty

Garden of Eatin’

Cloudless Sky Gardens

Lavender Lane

Our Crazy Little Garden

Ellis Garden



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Moving, grooving, and heart healthy cooking

Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update

Things are picking up and we are moving! We are active, the bees are active, and everything seems to be in such a constant state of motion. This past month our gardeners have started to see their plants sprout and grow larger. They have been applying mulch and setting up irrigation systems. They have started to see some pest problems and have seen pressure from deer and rodents (although one of our gardener’s cats wanted to take matters into her own hands–no chipmunks were actually harmed!) This past month, our gardeners also received a Panicled Aster, which blooms July - October and will complement the bloom time of the Red Bee Balm to keep encouraging pollinators. 

Our June 1st workshop was super engaging and informative, as Heidi, who is soon to be a registered dietician (woohoo!), presented on Heart Healthy Habits and gave a cooking demonstration for a Quinoa Veggie Salad Recipe that utilizes ingredients from our summer season gardens. Heidi gave me permission to share the recipe (below). Inspired by her demonstration and presentation, I made this exact same salad this past week and dusted off an old (new) cookbook, from which I have also been pulling some recipes. There is so much creativity that happens in the garden, and in the kitchen as well!

 

Quinoa Veggie Salad Recipe 

  1. Gather your salad ingredients

  2. Combine all your salad ingredients 

  3. Make your lemon vinaigrette (see instructions below)

  4. Drizzle with the lemon vinaigrette  

Quinoa Veggie Salad Ingredients - 8 portions

3 cups Quinoa, cooked

1 can Chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 medium Cucumber, seeded and chopped

1 medium Red Bell Pepper, diced

1 medium Zucchini, diced

½ cup Red Onion, diced

½ cup Basil, finely chopped

1 recipe Lemon vinaigrette

Homemade Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe 

  1. Gather your ingredients.

  2. Juice your lemons.  Feel free to zest them as well and add the zest to the dressing. 

  3. Combine all ingredients together in a container with a tight fitting lid. A mason jar works great!

  4. With the lid on tightly, shake the contents of your jar vigorously for 30 seconds.

  5. Drizzle vinaigrette over the salad. Store any leftovers in the fridge.


Lemon Vinaigrette Ingredients - 1 portion

2-3 Lemons, juiced (@ ¼ cup)

¼ cup Olive Oil

2 cloves Garlic, pressed

½ tsp  Sea Salt


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Syncing Up with the Spring Season!

Grow Your Own: Backyard and Community Garden Program Update

A lot has happened in the last month! Finally the last spring frost date in East Tennessee passed, our gardeners got their first packages of seeds, starter plants, and more seeds for their warm season gardens! Each family received 12 tomato, 4 bell pepper, and 3 basil plants distributed from Beardsley Community Farm. They got instruction and experience in hardening these plants off prior to planting. We handed out bean, cucumber, and squash seeds too! 

This month, our gardeners learned all about Garden Maintenance at our latest workshop, led by our local extension agent and Master Gardeners from Anderson County. Over potluck snacks and dinners, we talked about beneficial insects, how to identify insects, and how to encourage pollinators to come to the garden. For this session, we also focused on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices and how to prevent plant diseases. Oak Ridge has a lot of deer pressure, which our gardeners are all too aware of. During this meeting, we talked about ways to relieve deer pressure, which has been a highly anticipated topic. We also went over trellising and how to give our happy little plants support during their growth! 

At our latest meeting, our gardeners also received a Red Bee Balm plant, which will attract many bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, donated by Tennessee Naturescapes. In addition to having beautiful pollinator attracting flowers, red bee balm is also known as the herb bergamot, which can be used in teas among other applications. It will bloom all through May and June. Then after it is cut back, again in August. Tennessee Naturescapes is a local, native plant nursery, where we will also be headed tomorrow for a field trip to learn more about pollinators and pick out another plant! 

Most of our families have their trellises set up. During last month's garden site visits, I brought around the post driver to set the 6 foot TPosts we have for trellising. We synced our breathing! “In” on the lift up and “out" when we hit the posts. I felt like things were becoming real for our gardeners this past month, when they stepped back from the TPosts and thought “hey, I did that!” in addition to receiving plant starts and seeds. Needless to say, our gardeners are excited to get planting this month. 


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