Orwell organizations and municipal departments write a report of the completed year. Continue reading to find out what we are celebrating.
In 2025, we celebrated the many collaborations that make OFL a vital and active community resource. Partnering with a Vermont Master Gardener and Orwell Village School we supported the Orwell Community Learning Garden, a place for local growers to learn and volunteer. Vermont Humanities Council buoyed our early literacy programs with financial support and staff training. Let’s Go Fishing program volunteers brought well attended fly tying and ice fishing classes to our residents. In collaboration with the Platt Memorial Library, we again offered our Keynote Speakers Series which brought a year of quality presentations to our villages. Local musicians have a place to gather and play at OFL because of a dedicated acoustic jam leader. Our space is used by Slate Valley School District staff and other community groups to connect with local residents. And finally, we connected OVS students with Orwell Historical Museum for a 6 week History Club. This list is not exhaustive and we are always looking for new ideas. Stop by and share your talents.
Collection use continues to grow. Digital item borrows rose by over 1000. Within our physical collection, adult fiction use went up by 10%. In 2025 we added an additional digital library and now offer 4 resources to borrow ebooks, audiobooks, movies, tv series, documentaries, and music. These apps and websites are now a fundamental and dynamic part of our operations, and we will continue to respond to use as our budget allows.
Library stakeholders continue to work with a local architect to plan for the future, finding ways to improve accessibility, restore the front door and windows, and reconfigure the space to meet the needs of the community.
OFL thanks the Wright Memorial Library Board for their efforts to maintain and improve the building and for working collaboratively with us.
At the library, we offer:
free 24/7 WIFI.
public computers.
computer, device, and internet help.
a community meeting place.
a public gallery.
online eBooks, audiobooks, movies.
a place to donate used books
VR and 3D printing.
a “Library of Things” including art kits and supplies, an egg incubator, wood moisture reader, projector & screen, podcasting mic, and more.
passes to local attractions like ECHO, VINS & Mt. Independence.
The Orwell Food & Farm Fest events for 2025 were a resounding success, connecting the community with the growers and makers in our region. Held on the Orwell Town Green, the two primary market days—July 6 and September 7—showcased the strength and resilience of our local food system.
The Orwell Food Fest is a project spearheaded by the Orwell Free Library and supported by dedicated volunteers. Its founding mission is ambitious: to boost food system resiliency, raise awareness of our Orwell food growers, celebrate area producers and makers, and ultimately support the local economy. Based on the tremendous support across both dates, the 2025 Fest achieved these crucial goals.
Highlights from the Market Days
The Fest provided a lively marketplace featuring diverse goods from local farmers and artisans including:
Produce and Staples:Singing Cedars Farmstead, Fig Leaf Farm Produce, and Garden Chicks Farm & Yard.
Specialty items includedChamplain Valley Mushrooms, Misty Maplessyrup, and Peter’s Wildflower Honey.
Meats and Dairy: Local protein and dairy were well-represented, including Orwell cheese from Danz Ahn Dairy, turkey from Stonewood Farm Turkey, beef from Lucas Family Farm and beef jerky from Chimera Meats.
Artisans and Services: The events featured art from Orwell Artists, fiber art by Cindy Watrous, and baskets by Maggie Ryan. Attendees could also find useful services like knife sharpening provided by Barb & Joe Callahan. Quiet Valley Fiber Designs offered both fiber items and eggs.
Sweets and Blooms:Poppy Hill Bakery provided delicious sweets and breads, while Taking Root brightened the market with fresh flowers.
Prepared food: Buxton Family put together a delicious and affordable menu for both events. Andrea’s Dance Team offered an array of tasty and crowd pleasing food as a team fundraiser.
Music and Community Connection
The September event ensured a fun atmosphere with live entertainment provided by the Fried Dough Boys, with local fiddler Freeman Corey, Colin McCaffrey, and Dono Schabner. July brought local bluegrass pickers, Bird Mountain String Band, back to the green.
Beyond commerce, the Fest strengthened community connections. The Orwell Free Library provided children’s activities, and local organizations like Elderly Services, Inc of Addison County, Orwell Parks & Rec and Orwell General Store engaged with residents.
We are thrilled with the turnout and participation across both dates in 2025. Your attendance helps ensure the continued success of our local producers and the resilience of our community.
Want to relive the Fest or see some highlights?
Visit the Orwell Free Library YouTube channel!
Thank you again to all vendors, volunteers, and attendees for making the 2025 Orwell Food & Farm Fest a success.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, herbs, celery, zucchini, carrots, beets, broccoli and so much more can be found at the Orwell Community Learning Garden. The garden is located between the Orwell Town Hall and Congregational Church. Each bed is meticulously cared for by Vermont Master Gardeners and used as a teaching tool for local children and adults.
We thank Orwell Village School for working with us to make this garden such a success.
June 1-June 20: Preparing the gardens and thank you’s June 20: What we planted & strawberries are ready! June 26: Seedlings emerging, perennials flowering, mulching & watering July 3: Weeding, staking tomatoes, compost care & a black bear visit July 10: first cherry tomato harvest, replanting, plant labels & yummy dressing recipe July 17: drought conditions, harvest donations begins, and Delicious Dill Dip recipe July 31: Pests, pollinators, harvest & Fried Zucchini rounds recipe August 10: August 14: Height of harvest, no rain, happy perennials & Pico de Gallo recipe August 30: Garden pests including aphids on the milkweed, saving seeds, harvesting & Favorite Dill Pickles recipe September 7: Ukrainian Dill Potatoes recipe, critters snacking, seeds & blooms September 13: OVS students snacking, September 20: Big harvest (100lbs total to date!), blooming asters, HORNWORMS & Peach Pie with Streusel Topping September 27: Green cabbage worm pest recommendations, harvest slowing & Rockwell Family “Bruschetta” October 4: Seed saving, split tomatoes, garden cleanup begins & Braised Cabbage Wedge recipe October 12: October 24: Wrap Up! & Emily’s Butternut Squash Soup Recipe
June 1-June 20
So excited to be back in the Orwell Community Learning Garden (OCLG)! We are off to a great start with three new raised beds, thanks to a grant from Otter Creek Audubon Society, submitted by Jenna Laslocky, 4th grade teacher at Orwell Village School.
Part of this grant was used to purchase bird feeders and seed so the children could watch the birds from the classrooms. We will use these new raised beds to further the Perennial Pathway through Addison County. We have one bed already with native perennials, and will add at least one more. Thank you also to Lazy Dog Farm for supplying compost and mulch hay once again this year.
On 6/5/25, we hosted three Girl Scouts, plus a few extra helpers, so they could earn their gardening badge. They listened to my instructions well, and planted carrots, parsnips, beets from seed, and transplanted onions, and vegetable starts.
We discussed native plants and why they are especially important, as well and an introduction to USDA zones and how you can use this to select plants, particularly perennials, for your own gardens. Thank you for your help, ladies!
I have been back out to the beds here and there, waiting for the compost to be added to the new beds, which are partially filled with new soil. On Thursday, June 19th at 10 am, we had our first official weekly Open Hours—these will continue
throughout the summer, with either myself, or Christina Shaw, (or both of us), in attendance. We will answer any questions from the community, and help with the EMG volunteers and interns, who will gain volunteer hours through this project. In order to continue with our Master Gardener certification each year, we are required to volunteer a total of at least 20 hours. Please look for those of us with name tags on, and we will try to help in any way. If anyone in the community has a topic that you would like us to cover, please let us know, or communicate with Kate Hunter, Librarian at the Orwell Free Library. Once we get all the vegetable starts, seeds, and new native perennials in the beds, we will be there each week to weed, water, and hopefully soon, harvest! The strawberries are already bearing, and anyone in the community is welcome to harvest them.
Providing food, and educating the public about all things gardening are the main goals of this Extension Master Gardener Project. Helping to feed ourselves with nutritious, delicious food, and learning how to best utilize each of our individual gardening spaces is what we’re all about.
In this way, we are helping our pollinators thrive, we are providing ourselves with food security, and helping our neighbors and anyone who may be in need of extra produce. Last year we harvested food that anyone was welcome to take from the garden—it will be at the Orwell Free Library every Thursday afternoon, for pick up through Saturday at 1pm, when the library closes. If there is extra, please let us know if there is someone in need, or we can bring to the local food shelf in Middlebury.
6/20/2025: The compost has arrived! With the help of 2 community members, and much sweating, all three new beds are filled with a mixture of soil and beautiful compost.
We installed the bean towers, planted the rest of the vegetables and flowers, mulched all 11 beds, and watered thoroughly in preparation for the hot weather to come in the next few days. What did we plant, you ask? Here is a list of all the beauty and bounty to come: Bed #1 (the deepest bed)—carrots, parsnips, chives, lavender, basil, Tulsi basil, sage, cocktail tomato, and alyssum. Bed #2—tomatoes (full size), calendula, and bachelor buttons. Bed #3 –tomatoes (cherry), kale, okra, eggplant, yellow squash, and alyssum. Bed #4 –jalapenos, sweet peppers, fennel, celery, calendula, and vinca major. Bed #5 –June bearing strawberries. Bed #6 –scallions, leeks, mixed lettuce greens, arugula, onions, beets, radish, and dill (volunteer from last year). Bed #7 –rutabaga, cucumbers, red Malabar spinach, pole beans (harvested and dried from this garden last year), turnips, and vinca major. Bed #8 –zucchini, buttercup squash, celeriac, kohlrabi, calendula, and alyssum. Bed #9 –mountain mint, heliopsis, beardtongue, echinacea, coreopsis, and foam flower. Bed #10 –red cabbage, cauliflower, kale, broccoli, celery, and verbena. Bed #11 – Brussels sprouts, columbine, baptisia, yarrow, lupine, bee balm, asclepias, blue vervain, and boneset. We focused on a few things this year when planning out the garden:
Striving for native Vermont perennials.
Better spacing in the beds. Last year everything was too crowded, did not allow for aeration/drying out, and made it harder to harvest.
Having a good amount of vegetables that could be harvested in the fall, after the children are back in school. In addition, some of these plants do not need as much attention in the summer months, which can be helpful if someone cannot be there every day (to harvest, water, etc). The next open hours will be on Thursday, June 26 th , at 10 am. I am brainstorming for some good recipes that will feature our harvested plants and herbs. If you have a good recipe to share featuring produce, please let us know.
Happy Gardening, Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Week of 6/26/25
Today, fellow EMG Christina Shaw and I did some routine work on the gardens. All the beds were weeded, with most of the attention needed in the strawberry bed. Luckily, there were still strawberries, so I ate my morning fruit while I was weeding. The remaining beds are mulched nicely with hay. Interestingly, there are obviously still some viable seeds in this mulch, as there was one particular weed that was present in all the beds—it appeared
to be a new plant that looked as if it “could be” something real, but since it was in every bed, and not in any of the rows where we actually planted something, I could safely say this was a weed. We will need to be diligent in weeding this out over the next few weeks, otherwise it could take over in the beds.
I have some pictures with the new seedlings emerging, including rutabaga, turnip, parsnip, kohlrabi, pole beans, and yellow squash. There are also beautiful tomatoes on all of the plants, and lots of flowers with more fruit to come.
Some of the perennials are flowering, and are looking wonderful—echinacea, coreopsis, beardtongue, and the beginnings of asclepias buds emerging.
We watered all the beds, even though rain is predicted in the next few days. As mentioned previously, raised beds usually have such good drainage—this is good for plant root health, but it also means they will dry out very quickly. Even though I watered thoroughly on Tuesday, most of the beds were very dry today.
This is not surprising, given the temperatures of the last few days. With cooler temperatures to come now, the beds should not dry out so quickly. However, as the plants in the beds grow bigger root systems, they will use more water. We will watch for this, even if the temperatures are cooler. We also started cleaning up the compost system that is present already at the school. There are three wooden bins, two of which have some plant material degrading. The third bin just has buckets, and other gardening debris. I sorted through this, discarded trash and broken materials, and saved a few useful things. We will start filling this now empty one bin with the leftover compost that was delivered, and it will be there for next year. We will also do the same with the leftover mulch hay. It will actually be beneficial for this to sit out a bit and age, so the remaining seeds will die, and it will be ready for next year.
If anyone is interested in checking out the herbs, there are some ready to harvest, at least in small quantities: dill, Thai holy basil, tri-color sage, and lavender (a little bit of this mixed with Earl grey tea, vanilla, and steamed milk makes a delicious London Fog drink, which is what I drink every morning!)
Next week, we are hoping to have new hosing that will reach all the way from the school, so we will not have to lug them back and forth. Thank you to the Congregational Church and the Fortnightly Club for allowing us to use your hose and spigot—it was greatly appreciated. In addition, it will likely be time to start staking and securing the tomato plants. As I learned last summer, it is best to do this when they are still a bit small, when they are easier to wrangle, and less chance of breaking the stems. It will be fun to see more growth, and if we are closer to harvesting any other produce. Hope to see you at the gardens!
Until next week, Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Week of 7/3/2025
Today we had our first intern for volunteer EMG hours! This is a wonderful first, and having another individual present made the tedious work of staking tomatoes, weeding, and moving compost from the lawn into the compost bin all much lighter tasks.
(I will also admit, not ALL the compost has been moved—this will be a work in progress, when we have the extra energy, as the summer progresses.)
We have BIG NEWS—not only did we have our first volunteer hours of the season, we were also visited by something entirely unexpected—A BLACK BEAR CUB.
Yes, you read that correctly. A black bear cub was on the grass, right behind the Congregational Church. They took one look at us, and gamboled back into the woods. I am not sure who was more surprised, them, or us! We did not see further evidence of the cub, and/or family. There have been some veggies nibbled on in our garden, but nothing that would suggest a large mammal, or family of them. Unfortunately, no photographic evidence exists. However, everyone be on the lookout, and if you see them, be quiet, and try not to disturb them.
A great job of staking the tomato plants was accomplished by Christina. This will allow better airflow among the leaves and fruit, decreasing the likelihood of fungal infection, or “blight”.
If not staked, the tomato plants will lay on the ground, increasing risk of disease, and loss of usable fruit.
Especially in a raised bed planting, where the plants may be closer together, it is important that they are not lying on the ground, too close to, or on top of, surrounding plants. There are really nice fruit already on the plants—we cannot wait to harvest these!
Our intern volunteer, Jill from Middlebury, was a great weeder! There was an abundance of ONE type of weed in all the beds. Likely, there are some seeds present from either the mulch or the compost—this is not unusual, or really an issue. It actually makes it easier to weed, as you can be sure it is not a wanted seedling that you accidentally have culled. Based on the distribution of the weed, and which beds had new compost added, it is most likely to have come from the mulch hay. The good news, is that we will save the remainder of the mulch in one of our compost bins, and have great mulch, likely mostly weed free, for next year.
That brings us to our final task of the day—moving compost. Thanks again to Lazy Dog Farm here in Orwell, who donated our beautiful compost; and making it easiest to fill the beds, it was placed near the newest beds. After filling these, we had a fair amount left over. We are filling the compost bins with this leftover, so as not to waste any of this “black gold”. We moved approximately ½ of the remaining pile into the bin, so it was a great day’s work.
I uploaded a picture of a chicken, otherwise known to our family as the “Compost Chicken”. It is a fun graphic that helps to remind us to remove the grocery store stickers prior to putting your fruit and vegetables into your compost bin. It may seem simple, and maybe your family does not need any reminding, but my family certainly does!
I have to admit, it is fun to put the sticker on the paper, because stickers are fun at any age! Please see the attached pictures of both an empty chicken (available at the library on the front desk, or can be downloaded here), and our family’s almost completed chicken. We filled this one up very quickly. It will be interesting to see whether it takes longer to fill as the summer progresses, as we are eating more and more of what we produce ourselves? I’ll let you know what I find out about this as the summer unfolds. There are also new ones to be filled in the handout bin at the garden.
Enjoy the pictures of our tasks this week, and see the following recipe for Tulsi Tea—please come and snip a few sprigs of our beautiful Tulsi basil, or other herbs that are ready to harvest, including lavender, sage, parsley, and Genovese basil. Soon there will be other veggies!
Happy Gardening!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Thai Holy Basil (Tulsi Basil) Tea:
4 cups water
12-24 tsp fresh leaves Tulsi basil
4-8 tsp dried leaves Tulsi basil
Optional—ginger, mint, honey, or other fresh herbs or fruit for additional flavoring
Note: should “bruise” the fresh basil leaves prior to boiling for more flavor
Boil all ingredients for 5 minutes.
Simmer an additional 5 minutes.
Strain and serve hot, or let stand to chill and serve over ice.
Another note: Technically this is not “tea”. The definition of “tea” is a brew with the leaves of Camellia sinensis plant only. Any other beverage that is brewed is considered a tisane or infusion, although most people use the term tea for all brewed beverages of this style.
Tulsi basil is known as the “elixir of life” because it has so many health benefits, including improving sleep quality, anti-inflammatory properties, respiratory health, immune support, liver antioxidant, decreases blood pressure, blood glucose control, oral and dental health as a natural oral disinfectant, and is gastroprotective against stomach ulcers. Enjoy!
7/10/2025:
Today was another hot day! We were thankful for the showers on Tuesday, giving the plants much needed moisture, even with the soaking I gave them on Sunday after the very successful Orwell Food and Farm Fest! Thank you to all of the vendors and Kate Hunter at the OFL for making this happen again this summer. There will be another on Sunday, September 7, from 12-4pm. There was an “Ask a Master Gardener” table, sponsored by the UVM Master Gardener program, and it was a busy table, with adults and children asking thoughtful questions—thanks for your interest in this program! Ok, sorry, got off the watering track with the Farm Fest. Even though there was a lot of water from the showers Tuesday, the beds were still very dry today. This high heat is just making any moisture evaporate so quickly. We are helping with having the mulch to cover the soil, but this heat is too much for even that to help 100%.
Christina made sure everything had a good drink today, and I will go down to check our new RAIN GAUGE on Saturday. This will help us determine how much precipitation has occurred. A good range is approximately 1” of water per week, but we have learned that raised beds with good drainage will need more.
We had another exciting first—we harvested the first 3 cherry tomatoes, and they were delicious! EMG Intern Jill joined us again today, so we each had a cherry tomato, and it is just a tease of the good things to come.
There are so many tomatoes on the plants, the cucumber plants are growing and climbing up the trellises with the pole beans, and the buttercup squash is trying to go over to the next raised bed—all signs of the veggies that we will soon be able to enjoy.
Thankfully, the amount of weeding was much less than the week before. We were able to go through and do each bed very quickly. This dry weather is good for one thing—keeping the weeds at bay. This quick weeding job allowed us to move onto other tasks today.
One that was satisfying was placing all the new plant labels, with scientific and common names. They are on metal stakes with weather-proof sticky label tape that will last through the weather. It makes it all look so neat and tidy, easy to read.
Finally, we were able to work a bit more on the compost situation. I cleaned out the third bin in the row—it was filled with growing trees, trash, and full boards and sticks that had not decomposed at all.
I removed the trash and big boards (one of these was a board for the fist compost bin, so that was a good find!), dug out the trees as best I could, and used my spade to dig and turn as much of the remaining organic material as possible. I am hoping to put some of the remaining mulch in this bin, and get some actual composting action happening. The middle bin will be the next task, but it is in even worse condition than this one.
We also discovered that none of the kohlrabi seedlings survived. Unfortunately, it is possible that they were weeded, as I was not 100% sure what they looked like. I used my plant app to look this up, and nothing that was growing in these rows looked like the seedlings on my phone, so we cleared that spot, and will replant. Along these same lines, during the planting with the Girl Scouts, what we thought were radish seeds turned out to be beets, so now we have more beets, which is never a bad thing! I will find some radish seeds and get those started asap, as I have a great radish recipe to share, courtesy of my daughter, Natalie. We have already made this recipe three times since she has been home from college, so it’s a good one. Luckily, these only take 21-25 days to harvest, so they are a really fun addition to any garden. Finally, we noted that the turnips did not have great germination, so I will plan to replant more of these as well.
Please see some of the pictures I have included—a beautiful okra flower, our new rain gauge, beautiful tomatoes on the vine, the first ripe cherry tomatoes, an update on the compost bins, gorgeous Asclepias and blue vervain blooms (native VT perennials!), and some newly noted Japanese beetle and mammal damage to our vegetables.
All in all, despite the heat, we had a very productive day in the garden, and hope to see you next week at 10 am on Thursday, July 17th.
Happy Gardening!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Fresh Baby Arugula with Best Homemade Maple Mustard Vinaigrette
Ok, this recipe is mainly for this fabulous dressing that we ALWAYS have made in our fridge, as it makes even just a bowl of greens special.
Ingredients:
Large bowl of fresh greens of any kind, or mixed
Dressing:
¼ cup maple syrup 1 ½ Tbs apple cider vinegar 1 Tbs Dijon mustard 4 Tbs extra virgin olive oil ½ tsp grated onion ½-1 glove garlic, grated 1/8 tsp salt Pinch black pepper
Place all of the ingredients into a quart mason jar, and shake away until combined. Refrigerate. See note below about refrigeration. Shake well before each use.
Note—I use a microplane for both the onion and garlic, that way you are basically getting “juice” rather than bits of them, and it makes a better texture for the dressing.
Also, I always double this recipe, or even triple it so we do not run out too fast.
This dressing will separate in the refrigerator, so plan to take out and leave on the counter for a bit to warm, so it will combine nicely after shaking.
7/17/2025:
Fellow EMG Christina Shaw and I were there for community open hours at the OCLG today, and it was another HOT day. The beds were dry, but nothing was in distress, thankfully.
Well, except for one perennial that has been struggling since planted at the very beginning of this summer, foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia). This plant prefers part shade to shade, and cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, this location (and this summer weather) is providing none of that. This is a clear example of what not to do, when subscribing to one of the “pearls of knowledge” provided to us in the Master Gardener program—“right plant in the right place”. This is an excellent phrase to live by in gardening, and a good lesson to me. Since it is not fully dead yet, I will plan to transplant this to a better location (likely in my woodlands, which is their preference). I will look around for another plant to replace it with, but that bed is chock full of Vermont native perennials, and leaving this spot empty will leave some room for the others to spread as they normally would. Thank you to Green Mountain Natives for the donation of this plant, and I’m sorry I did not put it directly in an environment where it would thrive.
Ok, back to watering. Sadly, Orwell seems to be in the unlucky spot of drought in the area. While Chittenden County is having downpours regularly, with few spans of 3 dry days in a row to get hay cut, dried, and put up, southern Addison County has not had ANY appreciable precipitation for one month. Yes, one month. When gardens, even heavily mulched ones, benefit from 1” of water per week, having no natural precipitation in that long of a period will put serious stress on the plants. Our garden here is mulched with hay, but an even better system would be to have some newspaper under the hay. This prevents even less loss of moisture from the soil, and greatly decreases the frequency of necessary watering. We have not done this here yet at the OCLG, but may consider it for next year. And needless to say, there was nothing to see in our beautiful rain gauge—it’s still waiting for its first rain!
After watering and weeding, we harvested for donations at the Orwell Free Library. Please see the accompanying pictures for a look at the harvested produce today, which includes: okra, broccoli, cherry and cocktail tomatoes, Tulsi basil, sage, parsley, and dill.
Please keep an eye on the OFL Facebook page where you can see pictures of the harvest, or just stop in any Thursday to see this week’s offerings!
I then moved onto the compost piles again. We are slowly making our way through getting the large bit of leftover compost screened for metal, plastic, baling twine, and rocks, and transferring to the compost bins.
This is a better location for the compost and mulch, so it is not in the way of the groundskeepers as they mow and trim each week at the school, and it will be saved to use next year.
Near the end of the hours, we had a community member stop by. I showed them all the beds and what was growing and nearing harvest. They kindly offered to help water, if needed—I may take them up on this if there are weeks I cannot come by between Thursdays. Thank you to everyone in the community for offering to help, and I hope that people will continue to come by and pick something that looks good, or maybe you want to try something new without purchasing it first, or maybe you just need a little bit more of something for the recipe you’d like to make. These are all great reasons to stop by the OCLG! Please see the map I’ve made—either on the OFL website, or there will be some in the document holder at the gardens.
Happy Gardening, and see you next Thursday!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Delicious and Easy Fresh Dill Dip
1 ½ cups whole milk Greek yogurt OR sour cream
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup fresh dill, chopped, plus a bit more for garnish
2 Tbs fresh parsley, chopped
1.5 Tbs dried onion
½ tsp onion powder
Salt and pepper, to taste
Mix all of the above ingredients well. For best flavor, make and put in refrigerator for at least 2 hours prior to serving. Use with cut up vegetables, or to top a baked potato.
Enjoy!
7/31/2025
Today I am missing fellow EMG Christina, as she and her family are traveling in Iceland for the next few weeks—the change in temperature will be very welcome, I am sure!
I watered thoroughly, even though there was 1.5” of rain collected over the past week. Once again, we did not need to come on any additional days to water. However, I will not be able to come again until next Tuesday, and I know there is no rain forecasted for the near future, so I am hoping this drink will get us through the next 5 days.
Walking around the garden today, I saw a few new things. There was a new garden pest that I have yet to ID—see the accompanying picture. It appears similar to a tomato hornworm, except that it is not green, there is no horn, and the damage is not nearly as spectacular as what a hornworm would have done. I still plucked it off, however. There definitely was damage to both fruit and leaves, so hopefully I do not find any more.
Japanese beetles continue to plague the garden, (see picture with the basil with holes in the leaves, as opposed to the holy Tulsi basil 😊). However, they appear to be lessening, and growth of the plants is outweighing the damage done by the beetles, so we will continue to just live with them for now.
In brighter news, I have been seeing our pollinator friends—see picture with the lovely bee, working hard on the tomato flowers. I took some photos today of the blooming flowers in the garden, both the perennials and annuals: calendula, asclepias, boneset, and heliopsis. I am also excited to see so many vegetables that are close to harvest, such as carrots, butternut squash, sweet and hot peppers, celery, and fennel.
There are flowers on the yellow squash, pole beans, and eggplants, so fruit will soon follow, I hope. One plant that was not thriving in its original location was the kale. It was in bed #3, and was being completely out-competed and shaded by the tomatoes, yellow squash, and eggplant. So I transplanted the 5 kale plants to bed #8, in the area where even the second planting of kohlrabi did not germinate. I am hoping the kale will grow quickly so it will not be over shadowed by the zucchini leaves. In addition, I removed the foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia) from bed #9 where it was not thriving, and replaced it with a perennial green, sorrel (Rumex acetosa). While sorrel is not native to Vermont, it will hopefully add a nice mix to this perennial bed, while also providing interesting lemon flavored greens for our salads. Also, we are finally seeing beautiful seed pods on the arugula. I opened one to see how they were coming along, and they are definitely not ready to harvest yet, but will be soon. Harvesting our own seeds is another way to make home gardens self-sustainable, as well as even more affordable. It is also really fun to share seeds with friends, and gather new varieties that you did not even know you needed!
As you may see from the previous paragraph, I have mapped the garden beds, so that anyone can easily see what is growing in each bed. These maps will be placed in the weather-proof document holder at the garden. Feel free to take one as you walk around and see what is ready to harvest! These will also be available at the Orwell Free Library, as well.
I also moved one of the piles of mulch to the third bin of the compost. I will need to clear the second bin next week to move more of this, to get it off the school lawn. Before I covered them with the mulch, there were some pretty morning glory seedlings making their way up in the compost. They are truly hardy, and very difficult to kill, so I have no doubt they will come back even if fully covered with mulch.
Today was our best harvest so far—8.75 lbs! This harvest included tomatoes (full and cherry), cucumbers, okra, jalapenos, broccoli, kale, red Malabar spinach, basil, Tulsi basil, and dill seed.
I took the dill seed home and dried it properly, and this will be available next week at the OFL for you to take home to plant for next year, or to use in yummy pickling recipes. We had a few community members join us today, and I was able to give them a full tour of the garden. They took home some of the tomatoes that I just picked. Finally, I am happy to say that people have been coming to the garden to pick veggies, which is what we are here for. There were quite a few zucchini almost ready last week, and they are gone, so I sincerely hope someone is enjoying these beauties!
Until next week, Happy Gardening!
Karen DeMoy, UVM Extension Master Gardener
Fried Zucchini Rounds (AKA :”Zucchini Cookies”)
While not the healthiest way to eat a zucchini, it is one of the most delicious, and will hopefully convert even the most skeptical of kids and adults when it comes to zucchini—Yum!
1-3 Zucchini, whole, skin on—slice into rounds 1/8” to 1/4” thick (this is also a good way to use up some of your larger zucchini or summer squash
Bread crumbs (I prefer seasoned, and regular, not panko)
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup milk
Vegetable oil, for frying
Salt, to taste
Once the zucchinis are all sliced, line up two bowls. One will contain the breadcrumbs, and the other will be the beaten eggs mixed with the milk.
Pour ¼ to ½” vegetable oil into a deep frying pan, and heat oil on medium.
Using a fork, dip the rounds first into the egg mixture, letting most drain off.
Then put into breadcrumbs, and pat to cover both sides fully with the crumbs.
Once the oil is hot, so that it is sizzling when a crumb is dropped in, gently lay in one layer of breaded rounds. Flip once when golden brown.
Remove when both sides are golden brown, and let drain on paper towels.
Salt to taste while still hot.
Enjoy!
August 10, 2025
Today was another hot one! While there was a little water recorded in our rain gauge (1/2”), everything was DRY. This is getting to be serious, how hot and dry our summer has been, after the very, very rainy spring and early summer.
I came back on Sunday, the 10th to water again, and the plants were actually wilting—see the attached picture of the cucumber trellis, and the sad, droopy leaves. Luckily there was a community member willing to help water on Sunday, as it took some time to get the beds fully watered. I feel that this has been the theme of the summer—watering, watering, watering.
While I am happy to have our new rain gauge, it has not been put to great use this summer, unfortunately.
I stopped by on Tuesday, 8/5 to water, and was a little dismayed to see some damage to the gardens. Most of the carrots have been pulled out—some with the tops still on, and some with just the tops ripped off. These were strewn around the grass by the beds, some with bites taken from them. Also, there was a pile of veggies left that included an onion, some carrots, a beet, one scallion, and some tomatoes.
There was also some money left with this pile—coins, which has me a little stumped. Anyone is welcome to our garden harvest, and I hope that one would harvest only what one would take home. I am suspicious that some of this is due to critter friends, such as our bear, or raccoons, who may be able to pull the carrots out? Most of this I was able to salvage, and we put out in the library for donation.
So, for the harvest on 8/5, 8/7, and 8/10, there was a total of 14.4 lbs of produce! This is wonderful, and includes: the above carrots, beet, onion, scallion, lots of tomatoes, cukes, zucchini, okra, dill seed, broccoli, and jalapenos.
Please stop by the OFL to see the produce, and take what you may need home. Produce to come includes summer squash, sweet peppers, banana peppers, celery, lettuce greens, and fennel. There is also always basil, Tulsi basil, sage, parsley, and chives to harvest if you are in need. Please see the maps at the garden or the OFL to help you find what you need.
We saw some more pollinator friends this week, including bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies. There is also our special garden spider friend, who is beautiful and striking with her markings. I was able to observe her catching an insect in her web, and spinning it up in her silk—truly a wonder!
Another project this week was fortifying the tomato plants, as well as the dill and bean volunteer plant with new stakes. This helps with air flow, access to sunlight, and will help prevent breakage to the stems. Anywhere there is a break in the stems can allow disease into the plant, which will weaken it. I used metal garden stakes, and twine to gently prop the branches without causing stress. I also replanted radishes. These are such a fun vegetable, because they grow so fast, and are beauties to look at, as well as dressing up a salad or tuna. However, my initial planting did not germinate well, likely due to a lack of consistent water. This second planting will hopefully have more moisture, and have a better chance of good germination. I will keep you posted!
Finally, as mentioned above, I stopped back on Sunday, 8/10, and I am glad I did—the beds were so dry. Thankfully, a community member was willing to help water, and we were able to get this done efficiently. While they watered thoroughly, I was able to harvest, and do a nice weeding of the strawberry bed (which we have mostly neglected after the harvest in June).
Please stop by the gardens to have a look, taste a delicious tomato, or come on Thursdays from 10-12 noon to see what we are up to. Until next week, happy gardening! And next week we will welcome Christina back from Iceland, yay!
Karen DeMoy, UVM Extension Master Gardener
Quick Sweet and Sour “Pickles”
½ cup water
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
¼ cup maple syrup
Dill weed, +/- dill seed
Cucumbers, sliced—enough that they are all covered by the brine.
Mix all of the above ingredients together, and let sit in the fridge for 1 hour, to overnight, to let the flavors meld together.
Recipe courtesy of Jennifer Elliott, DVM
August 14, 2025
This was a super productive week at the OCLG. We welcomed EMG intern Jill back, and she was a tremendous help finishing up transferring the compost to the bins (see picture).
I worked on moving the mulch hay to the compost bins, and did most of this on Thursday, then finished up on Saturday, with watering and harvesting help from Natalie. We had to make a fourth “bin” to the right of the compost bins already in place, to fit all the mulch hay in. This is going to be super helpful for next year, as the seeds that were still present and viable this year will hopefully be dead or inactive, which will result in even less weeding than this year! Our beautiful, dark brown compost material will have another season to work its magic in the bin, helping to convert the material under it into usable compost, as well. Ideally, this would be turned, and have some worms digesting the compost, but we will start with these bins and see how they do for next spring.
We harvested 5.45 lbs of produce that went directly to the Orwell Free Library. All of last week’s harvest was taken, which is exactly what we are hoping for! This week we harvested cucumbers, zucchini, okra, tomatoes (full/cherry/Campari), basil, banana peppers, jalapenos, and broccoli.
On Saturday, 8/17, we harvested an additional 6.25 lbs of tomatoes, yellow squash, and okra. These harvests bring our total pounds of produce harvested and donated up to 45.25 lbs! This is a wonderful contribution to our community, and we appreciate the interest, as well as the community members that are harvesting on their own each week. (This helps me, so I do not have to go up there every day, so keep helping yourselves!)
I included a picture of the rain gauge with the very sad amount of water this week—less than 1/10th of an inch. This is not even close to what these raised beds need, especially as the root systems grow for each plant. It takes approximately 1 hour to water these 11 beds thoroughly, and I appreciated all the help this week.
I will be gone all of next week, and fellow EMG Christina is back from Iceland, and will be taking over for the week. This will also be our last (I can’t believe the summer is already over!) Thursday Community Open Hours for the season. School will be back in session starting Wednesday, August 27th, so our Open Hours will move to Saturday mornings at 10 am until we shut down the beds in October. Hopefully our focus on these weekends can move a bit away from simply maintaining the beds (and the never ending watering) to more educational topics. Please let us know, or you can mention to Kate Hunter at OFL, if there is a topic you are hoping to learn more about. This can be anything from weed identification, to native perennials, to deadheading, to processing, or anything else. So far we have had 23 community member interactions at the OCLG this summer, and I would love to see that number rise before we put the beds to bed for the winter.
Please see some of the pictures from this week—they include some of the perennials that are blooming (blue vervain, swamp milkweed, and boneset), and the veggies that we are getting ready to harvest (eggplant, lettuce, radishes, red cabbage, and beautiful bean and cucumber towers). I tried to capture a picture of some pollinators on the blue vervain, as the yellow of the bees contrasted so nicely with the blue/purple of the flowers, but I could not snap them quickly enough to capture them in focus. I will try again next week. Thank goodness for our pollinators!
Happy gardening, and we will see you with Christina on Thursday, 8/21, then again on Saturday 8/30 at 10 am.
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Pico de Gallo
This is the “classic” fresh salsa that is best immediately after putting all the ingredients together, and pairs perfectly with tortilla chips. All of the amounts in this recipe are approximate, as you know what you like best. We choose to have a bit less fresh onion in ours, as we feel the onion sometimes overtakes the other flavors, and we literally cannot add enough cilantro. But choose how your family likes it best!
Tomatoes—chopped—can use paste type for the least amount of liquid, but we just use whatever types of tomatoes we happen to have on hand, and then drain the juice out as I chop.
Sweet pepper—chopped—again, use whatever you have on hand, green, red, yellow banana, lunchbox type. I love when there are multiple colors to make it even more beautiful.
Onion—chopped very fine, to taste. The onion flavor will only get stronger the longer it sits.
Garlic—finely chopped, to taste
Jalapeno pepper—finely chopped, to taste—this will also depend on how hot your jalapenos are
Cilantro—chopped, to taste
Lime—juice of ½ to 1 whole lime, depending on the amount of pico being made (we do not always add this, but I love the flavor it adds)
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix all of the ingredients above, adjust the amounts to your specific tastes, and enjoy!
8/30/2025
Well, what an unbelievable, wonderful surprise to come and see the rain gauge with water in it—0.6 inch on our first Saturday of open hours! The beds were all damp under the mulch, so we did not have to water today.
This was a first for us since June. More time to harvest, deadhead, weed, and do general maintenance of the beds. Thank you, as always, to the grounds crew at OVS for trimming around the beds and keeping things so nice. Also, now that school is back in session, we have switched back to using the water from the Congregational Church, and we thank you, as well, for allowing us to use your spigot and water. We’ve rolled the hose up on the edge of the woods where we saw the bear in the beginning of the summer, but no sightings since.
Today fellow EMG volunteer Christina and I, along with a community volunteer, dead-headed the calendula (Calendula offincinalis), bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanus), and Genovese basil (Ocimum basilicum). I did leave some of the flower heads on the calendula for future seed collection, but these readily self-seed from the season before, and while some of this can be welcome, we don’t need to have whole beds filled with calendulas.
And speaking of seed saving—the arugula (Eruca vesicaria) is finally ready to collect (see picture with opened pod and seeds within). Our volunteer cut off the stems with the dried seed pods, placed them all in a bag, then walked around shaking the bag to dislodge the seeds from the pods.
These, along with more dill (Anethum graveolens) seeds, will be available at the Orwell Free Library this week, with some envelopes, for you to take home. The arugula will be great to plant next spring, and the dill can either be used for planting next year, or in your favorite recipes. See the end of this post for a quick and easy dill pickle recipe. We’ll let you know when the calendula seeds will be ready, later this fall.
The other topic that we were not aware that we would be discussing today is PESTS in the garden. We have seen evidence of likely a mammal (judging by the height of the damage, as well as how much “pulling out” of the beds has occurred) on the Brussels sprouts (Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera), carrots (Daucus carota), and chomping of entire broccoli (Brassica oleracea var italica) and celery (Apium graveolens) plants.
However, we have a few other critters and damage noted this week. On our fennel leaves there was a caterpillar that at first glance looked like a monarch, but it is in fact a black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. He was not doing much damage (to our ONE lone fennel plant), so we left him alone.
There was another caterpillar, of the fuzzy variety, on the basil. We had to look this one up, and it was a banded tussock moth caterpillar. There was a fair amount of chewed leaves on the Genovese basil, so we removed this guy.
The stems of the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) were covered with an orange aphid of some kind. Interestingly, many aphids are species specific, meaning that they will only be attracted to one type of plant, and will not damage the plants around them. This appears to be the case with these.
However, I did remove the affected stems so that the plant would not be damaged as it is putting effort and energy into its root systems at this time of the year, in order to be able to withstand the winter and come back next year. Preventing the plants from stress allows them to be as healthy as possible.
Finally, our one beautiful buttercup winter squash (Cucurbita maxima) was half eaten. The inside and seeds were exposed, otherwise I would have harvested and just cut the chew marks away, but a full one third of the fruit was gone.
As this was the only fruit set on this entire plant, and there is not enough time left in our season for any new fruit to ripen, we removed this entire plant from the bed.
The forecast is not calling for more rain soon, so I will be back down to water every 2-3 days as needed. The other nice thing about this time of the year is that with the temperatures dipping low at night, and the days not as hot, the beds will not dry out as quickly, even without as much watering.
Continue to watch for posts and pictures from the Orwell Free Library with the harvests and also to see what is ready for harvest in the garden itself. As always, this is a garden for the community, and everyone is welcome to come and pick what you might need! (I even came and got some cherry tomatoes when I found I did not have quite enough from my home garden for a recipe I was already in the middle of making!)
Happy Gardening and we’ll see you next week, Saturday, 9/6 at 10 am. Also, don’t forget about the Orwell Food and Farm Fest happening next Sunday, 9/7, from 12 to 4pm. We will be there representing the UVM Master Gardener Program at the “Ask a Master Gardener Table”, so come with your questions, or stories. There will also be a GIANT vegetable contest—can’t wait to see what people have been growing!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Favorite Dill Pickles
From The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving, by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
Makes four 2 cup jars of pickles.
16-20 small pickling cucumbers, approx. 3 lb
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
2 Tbs pickling salt
1 Tbs granulated sugar
4 large heads of fresh dill, or 2 Tbs dill seeds
4 cloves of garlic
2 tsp mustard seeds
Cute a thin slice from the ends of each cucumber.
Combine vinegar, water, salt, and sugar in stainless steel or enamel saucepan and bring to a boil.
Into each sterilized jar, place 1 clove of garlic, 1 head of dill or 1 ½ tsp dill seed, and ½ tsp mustard seeds.
Pack cucumbers into jars well, then pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, leaving ½” space at the top. Use a sterilized knife to make sure there are no air bubbles in the jars. Wipe the rims clean, and place tops and rims on the jars, tightly seal. Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes, making sure the tops of the jars have 1-2” of water over them. Once removed from the canner, let sit for 24 hours, and make sure the tops are sealed properly before storing. If they are not, place pickles in the fridge. Enjoy!
9/7/2025
Well, we were planning to have Community Open Hours on Saturday, 9/6, but there was wonderful RAIN all day long, so we changed the open hours to Sunday, 9/7, right before the Orwell Food and Farm Fest. What a great day this was! The weather was perfect, the turnout for the fest was wonderful, and there were amazing and talented vendors This was a celebration of all things to do with farming, raising our own produce, making cider on the spot (thank you, Cliff!), seeing fellow Orwellians (and neighbors) hone their crafts, and listening to local music perfection. Thank you to the Orwell Free Library for making this event happen, and we look forward to it again next year! At our “Ask A Master Gardener” table, we had 26 meaningful interactions and discussions about fruit trees and diseases, what people are seeing thrive (and not!) in their gardens this year, what fellow gardeners are planting in NJ, and much more. Thank you to each and every person who stopped by for a chat, to ask a question, or to take home a peach from my trees that are gracing us with plentiful fruit this year.
Fellow EMG Christina and I harvested tomatoes of all sizes (cherry, full sized, and cocktail type), yellow squash, a cucumber, celery, jalapenos, green beans, beets, scallions, the remaining onions, as well as some Tulsi basil and apple mint today. (Earlier in the week, I also harvested tomatoes, and collected/sorted dill and arugula seeds.)
All of this was put out at the OFL tent, and it was all taken home. Thank you to the community members who continue to harvest during the week at the garden—we are so glad that the zucchinis are finding people who will use them!
Now, for the critter who has decimated our cabbages—this is not so welcome. However, this is to be expected with a garden that is not fenced. I wonder if this is the same critter that dug up and flung all of our carrots about the grass. Hmmm. There has been considerable chewing of the broccoli and Brussels sprouts, as well. This is new for us this year.
Last year was the first year that we had the OCLG, but the first of these beds have been here for years. I helped with the Orwell Village School Gardening Club in the 3-4 years prior to Covid Spring of 2020, and there was certainly no damage like this. Unfortunately, it may mean that we have to put some type of fencing around some of the beds next year. We shall see.
This was a bit of a quick week—harvesting on Thursday 9/4 and 9/7, with no watering needed, as we collected 0.9” in our rain gauge. We did a bit of dead heading of the flowers, saw some lovely pollinators, and a second bloom on our native lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus).
We pulled the cabbage plants, as there is nothing to harvest, and leaving the plants with dead leaves will just be a source of fungus, bacteria, and potential insects to the rest of the remaining plants. We also collected some calendula (Calendula officinialis) seed heads that are just about ready to harvest. I am hoping the lettuce (Lactuca sativa) will be a nice fall crop, as it is coming along nicely.
Next week open hours will be on Saturday, September 13th at 10am with Christina. Please watch the OFL Facebook page and posts from Kate to see when we will be there on the weekends this fall—there are some weeks where it may be on Sunday morning, instead. Also, be sure to put Saturday, September 27th on your calendars—it is the Annual Harvest Sale at the Library, from 9 am to 1pm. Come join us for delicious baked goods, soups, pumpkins, gourds, books, and more!
Happy gardening, and happy harvesting!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, or other oil of your choice
½ cup finely chopped fresh dill
Measure 2 lbs new potatoes. If they are around 1” in diameter, leave whole. If they are larger, cut into 1” chunks, so they are approximately similar in size, for even cooking.
Place the potatoes in a large pot and add enough water to cover by about 2”. Add 2 tsp kosher salt, cover, and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low, and gently simmer until the potatoes can be pierced easily with a fork. Do not overcook. May take approximately 10-15 minutes.
While the potatoes are cooking, finely grate the garlic cloves on a microplane, or run through a garlic press and put into a small bowl. Add ½ cup oil and stir to combine. Finely chop the fresh dill until you have ½ cup.
Drain the potatoes and return to the pot. Add the garlic oil, dill, and another pinch of kosher salt. Toss to combine. Taste and season with more salt if needed.
September 13, 2025
This week we went back to some dry weather. On Thursday I harvested 3.7 pounds of produce and dropped it off at the Library—including all sizes of tomatoes (full, cherry, and cocktail), okra, beans, rutabaga, scallions, and a beautiful bunch of radishes (see recipe below) .
I was happy to see a patron at the Library that was waiting to take some of our green zebra tomatoes. A few weeks ago I had encouraged him to try this variety, as it is my favorite for its slightly different, but still deliciously tangy and familiar bite of tomato. He has been back two weeks in a row for more. I also had some fun news from Librarian Kate—the kids missed picking the green beans at recess on Friday, because I picked them clean on Thursday. This has apparently been a fun recess treat at the Orwell Village School, picking green beans and cherry tomatoes. We are so happy for this news, and I will be mindful of what I harvest, leaving most of those on the plants from now on. Both of these anecdotes exemplify what this garden brings to our community, and how gardening can bring joy to gardeners and anyone enjoying the fruits of our labors.
I did have to water on Thursday, as I am hoping to keep the beans, beets, tomatoes, peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, and herbs producing until the first frost. The basil, parsley, and sage are all thriving—the Tulsi basil is especially fragrant as one works in that bed. This variety does not seem to do as well with cutting and placing the stems in a jar of water, as the regular Genovese variety. I will plan instead to harvest and dry some at the end of the season, and experiment with teas and other recipes over the winter. I also collected bachelor button (Centaurea cyanus) and lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) seeds. I will let them dry over the next few days, and see if they will be ready to share next week.
A few nice surprises include the crop of lettuce that is coming along with this new, cooler weather. This is in the farthest bed to the west, nearest the church. It has afternoon shade, which also helps with many varieties of greens, as they will get bitter if they are in too much heat. There is also a picture of our bed where we cut and harvested the arugula seeds (now available at the Library for you to take home!)—there are many new arugula seedlings that have self-sown. We will see if they have enough time left in the season for some nice, tender, young leaves for our salads! Also to add to our salads are some beautiful radishes. These are such a fun vegetable to grow, with one of the shortest days to harvest at 25. It is nice to plant these periodically throughout the summer to keep the harvests coming.
Now for the equally interesting, but less exciting news: I think we have definitively determined who our pest may be—the BEAR. Please see the pictures from the first bed with the previously planted carrots and parsnips. The carrots were all pulled and flung about earlier this summer. Now ALL of the parsnips are gone, and there is a print with what looks like claw marks in the bed. Ahhh. This is the bane of gardens without fencing, as discussed last week. Parnsips (Pastinaca sativa) have a very long growing season, with approximately 100-120 days to harvest. It is recommended that they be harvested after a few light frosts to concentrate their sweetness even more, so I was consciously waiting to harvest these for a little longer. But, I waited too long, as they apparently were just ripe enough for the bear to enjoy. There have been no further sightings of said bear by us gardeners—has anyone else seen it, or evidence of it, in town?
On Saturday, Christina and a new EMG volunteer, Carrie, along with a community member, worked on the beds. The veggies are beginning to look a bit tired, and some plants are just about spent for this season. They pulled out the broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cucumbers, since there are no more flowers, and cleaned up the leaves and rotten bits, adding them to the compost bins. Carrie also worked on pruning back some of the tomatoes, as they are very crowded. They are still producing well, and the plants are healthy, with no sign of disease, so they should continue to produce fruit until the frost, (fingers crossed the bear does not decide to eat those, too!). They harvested a small amount of beans, and celery. Next week we’ll plan to continue with bed maintenance, any harvesting, and hope for more seed collection.
See you next Saturday, and happy gardening!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Miso Brown Sugar Braised Radishes
This is a recipe pieced together by my daughter, Natalie Rockwell, from a few different recipes she found and played around with. What is so surprising, is that this cooking process changes the flavor of the radishes to something completely new and unexpected. Hoping you will give this a try!
1 Tbs miso paste
1 Tbs brown sugar
Radishes, with the tops (remove young leaves to use, and chop slightly)
Butter
Water
Sesame oil
Soy sauce
Garlic, grated
Halve the radishes and place cut side down in buttered large sauté pan.
Dissolve the miso paste and brown sugar in a small amount of water and add to the pan.
Sauté on low to medium heat until the liquid is all absorbed, and the radishes are fork tender.
While the radishes are cooking, blanch the cleaned, young radish tops for a few minutes, until tender. Squeeze out as much water as possible, then mix with a few drops sesame oil, soy sauce, and grated garlic, to taste (this will depend on how many greens you are using).
Mix the cooked radishes and greens for a delicious side dish, or use to top rice for a main dish.
September 20, 2025
This week we continued with sunny, dry, and hot weather. While it is beautiful, and there is always so much to do outside when the weather is nice, we really need some rain. I had to go down and water both Tuesday and Thursday this week, and we watered as well during open hours on Saturday. The up-side of this was that three kids helped me after school on Tuesday, with harvesting and watering. They shared how much they loved picking and eating the green beans at recess every day, which I loved hearing. Hopefully they leave me a few pods with seeds that I can dry in order to plant next year! This variety is interesting in that it takes all summer to bear fruit—this is actually a perfect situation for our garden. By fall, most people’s bean harvests are waning, unless they did a second sowing. During the height of summer, it is hard to give green beans away, but in the fall, people may be looking for them again, like these kids.
I harvested almost 5 pounds of veggies and herbs on Tuesday, and brought them over to the library. Dale was the happy recipient of some tomatoes and our beets. I also spoke with the new head chef for the Abby Group at the Orwell Village School, Heather Ryan. I am hopeful that we can work together to make a meal, or part of a meal with some of the produce from the OCLG—if not this year, then it is something to plan for next year. This is why I love to plant some of the root vegetables, onions, and herbs that are harvested in the fall, and not just the things ready throughout the summer. This was always a goal for the OVS Gardening Club before COVID, but it never came to fruition in the fall. It is good to have goals for the future, and this is a good one! Stay tuned and we’ll see how it goes.
Between Thursday and Saturday’s harvests, we netted over 6 pounds of produce, bringing our total harvest to OVER 100 POUNDS DONATED so far this summer. This is amazing for our small project! We still have a few weeks to go, now that this past weekend of near frost weather is behind us. We’ll keep an eye on the forecast, but our beds are too big for us to cover in any practical way, so we will have to roll with what Mother Nature deals for us. Harvested this week: celery, yellow squash, zucchini, beans, beets, all sizes of tomatoes, okra, basil, parsley, scallions, and radishes. There are still a number of zucchini, yellow squash, beets, tomatoes, red Malabar spinach, and beans that will continue, and the new crop of lettuce is just about ready to pick. We tried some of the sorrel (Rumex acetosa), which is doing great in its new location—try a few leaves of this mixed with salad greens for a nice, lemony flavor. (see photo)
Our EMG volunteer, Carrie, was back again with us, helping to tidy the beds. She will continue to help through the week with watering—thank you, Carrie!
Please see some of the photos attached to see what is blooming in the perennial bed: verbena (Verbena bonariensis), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpura), and beautiful flowers on the okra and summer squash plants.
We also had some visitors: on our beans, a HUGE grasshopper that startled me; and the dreaded tomato hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata ) on our cherry tomato plant (see pics). The interesting thing about this hornworm is that it was parasitized with the eggs of a wasp (Cotesia congregates).
It is important to leave these worms in the garden, as the wasp eggs will hatch and kill the hornworm as it emerges from its cocoon, thus stopping it’s life cycle. I did remove it from the tomato plant, but left it nearby to munch on something else.
Next week, the Garden open hours will remain the same, but it will overlap with the OFL Harvest Sale. Please join us from 9 am to 1 pm for wonderful food (baked goods, egg sandwiches, lunch items, and delicious soups to enjoy there or take home for later), books, puzzles, DVDs, fresh flower arrangements, and pumpkins/gourds/winter squash of all kinds.
I am including a recipe below that was inspired from my harvest at home, rather than from the OCLG—PEACHES! It was finally a decent year for most of our trees, and after two kinds of salsas, jams, freezing, and canning of the rest, I had some leftover for pies. Enjoy, and see you next week!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Peach Pie with Streusel Topping
Crust:
1 cup AP flour 1/3 cup shortening or butter (I usually do a mix of the two ½ tsp salt 3-5 Tbs cold water
Filling:
4 cups peaches, peeled and sliced ½ cup powdered sugar 1/3 cup AP flour ½ tsp cinnamon (more to taste) ¼ tsp nutmeg (more to taste)
Topping:
¾ cup AP flour ½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed ½ tsp cinnamon 1/3 cup butter, melted
Cut the butter/shortening into the flour and salt until looks like coarse crumbs. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough just holds together. Form into a ball and put in refrigerator until ready to roll out.
Heat oven to 375 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix all of the filling ingredients gently.
In another bowl, combine all the topping ingredients, until forms coarse crumbs.
Roll out the dough for a 9” or 10” pie plate. Spoon the filling into the pie shell, and top with the streusel crumbs. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the peaches are tender and the topping is golden brown.
Adapted from The Complete Book of Baking, Pillsbury, 1993.
9/27/25
This week we shared OCLG open hours with the Orwell Free Library Harvest Sale, and the Silver Heist 5K Fun Run that raised money for the Orwell Village School Booster Club and the Orwell Historical Society. Both events were very successful, bringing in people from all over the state of Vermont, and beyond. Thank you to everyone who came out in support, whether baking, volunteering, running, or purchasing the baked goods, pumpkins, flower arrangements, delicious soups, egg sandwiches, pulled pork, and books!
This past week we received glorious RAIN. See picture for the 1” mark in our rain gauge—we are very thankful for this slow, steady rain that fell for us this week all around Vermont. Volunteer EMG Carrie came out to water for us early in the week after we gave it a good dousing last Saturday, but she did not need to come back during the week, nor did we have to water this weekend.
The harvest is slowing down with this fall weather. This weekend we picked some nice, large zucchini, tomatoes (cherry, full sized, and Campari), beans, and some beautiful lettuce greens. With the weather appearing to hold above the freezing mark, we will continue to harvest and slowly remove plants from the beds over these next few weeks.
We did have another pest sighting today—the green cabbage worm, which is the larval form of the cabbage white moth (Pieris rapae). We saw this small, white moth quite a bit this spring and summer, and it was the main reason we used the covering over the bed with the brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale).
This bed no longer has any of these plants remaining, as they were being completely eaten, likely by the bear. So, since the plants have all been removed to the compost bins the larvae still need to find something to their liking, and they found this columbine (Aqualegia spp.) leaf. There are multiple ways to try to prevent or mitigate the damage caused by their larval form—these include: protective coverings so they cannot lay their eggs, manual removal daily (although they are often hard to find, especially in the shoots of broccoli and cauliflower), encouraging natural predators/beneficial insects like paper wasps (Polistes dominula), organic pesticides, such as BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), and crop rotation. The first and last methods are the ones most important in a garden like ours—trying to prevent their egg laying capability on our plants, and then moving the plants to another location the next growing season. This is something we will note in our “To Do” list for next year. Because the life cycle of this moth is so fast, the protective barrier is the BEST method from keeping this pest from destroying your plants completely—an entire life cycle can be repeated every 3-6 weeks! This means multiple hatching of eggs into destructive larvae every summer. It is important to note, however, that even if you see holes in the leaves, or droppings from these worms, the leaves and vegetables are still safe to eat after washing—they may just not look as pretty!
We are also continuing to collect seeds from the garden. We have had great success with dill and arugula (still some arugula at the library to take home, and more dill seed to come), and we have been harvesting both calendula and bachelor button seeds. They have been drying and will be available soon at the OFL for next year’s garden. I have also been collecting seeds in my home garden and will bring some of those down to the library to share, as well. If anyone has any seeds they would like to share, this could become a great resource for the community, and one that other libraries are already utilizing—I’m looking at you, Brandon Free Public Library! Libraries all over Vermont (and beyond) are such great resources for SO MANY things and we literally could not survive without them (nor would we want to!).
Please see below for one of my family’s favorite recipes for a side dish, using tomatoes, basil, and dill from our gardens. Enjoy this lovely weather, and see you next Saturday, October 4th at 10 am for the next open hours. The week after that, we will be there on Sunday, October 12th.
Happy Gardening, and Happy Fall!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Rockwell Family “Bruschetta”
1 loaf French bread, cut slightly on the diagonal, ½” thick
1 Tbs butter, softened
Tomatoes, any kind, sliced—enough slices for the number of bread slices
Dill weed, dried is easiest, but fresh would work as well
2-3 Tbs Parmesan cheese, grated
Basil leaves, fresh, either torn or whole, depending on their size
Cheddar cheese, sliced thinly, enough for each slice of bread
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Put the sliced bread on a cookie sheet, getting as many as possible on there. Use a scant amount of butter on each slice of bread. Put in preheated oven for 5-10 minutes, to get a good “toast” on them. This will prevent the bread from getting too soggy.
While the bread is toasting, slice the tomatoes and cheddar cheese.
When the bread is done, start to assemble: Put on slice of tomato, then shake of dill weed and Parmesan cheese. Follow with generous amount of basil, and finish with cheddar cheese.
Put back into the oven until the cheese is melted, 5-7 minutes.
Enjoy!
10/4/2025
This week began very nicely with rain holding over from the previous week. Fellow EMG volunteer Carrie watered for us on Thursday, and we followed up with a bit more on Saturday.
I harvested 2.75 pounds of produce on Tuesday, consisting of a few beans that the OVS children missed, all sizes of tomatoes, a rutabaga, a zucchini, scallions, and beautiful bunches of Genovese basil and tri-color sage. On Saturday, we harvested a number of tomatoes, as well as both curly and flat leaf parsley.
These latest harvests bring our total of donated produce to over 116 pounds! What a nice achievement for our small garden plot, and for our town. And, this does not include what townsfolk have harvested on their own, nor the tons of beans and cherry tomatoes that are going straight into the mouths of the OVS kids.
On Saturday during open hours, we had fellow EMG Carrie and EMG intern Carol with us. Carol helped weed, but spent the majority of her time sorting seeds. This is such a time consuming and meticulous task, so I was grateful for her help!
Soon we will have nice seed packets at the Orwell Free Library, free for the taking. I am hoping to have dill, arugula, bachelor button, multiple different varieties of marigolds, columbine, pole beans, and Tulsi basil. Please consider sharing if you have any extra seeds from your gardens. We will be happy to supply envelopes, if needed.
We did a bit of weeding, removed the spent arugula plants, as well as dead leaves from the beans, turnips, and rutabaga areas. The arugula plants dropped so many seeds that have been growing on their own in the bed where the onions have already been pulled. With our continued growing season, I anticipate we will be able to harvest this in the upcoming weeks—a treat that came about because we let the plants go to seed. This, along with the new mixed greens and sorrel, will make some nice salads this fall.
We do plan to pull some of the spent plants next week, and could have done more this week, but we will be hosting the Junior Girl Scout Troop 58187 early next week, and I am saving this project for them. We will plan to discuss the different flowers, vegetables, and herbs that we have, and I would like as many plants left as possible. After that, we will begin to remove the plants in earnest.
We have noticed some cracking on our full sized, and cherry tomatoes. This cracking is seen with big changes in either temperature or moisture (or both). For us, I suspect getting a couple of inches of rain all at once after being in a drought all summer could be the culprit.
Even with these cracks, the fruit is safe to eat, although they are more susceptible to rotting more quickly, so best to use those up first. For more information about different types of issues in your tomato plants, see the following link: Key to Common Problems of Tomatoes | University of Maryland Extension.
There appears to be a nice weather week ahead for us, with temperatures in the 70’s during the day, and only a chance of frost one night. So, we will plan to continue our open hours until our final weekend of October 24/25. Next weekend, the open hours will be on Sunday, October 12, from 11 am to 1 pm. There will be NO open hours on the weekend of October 17/18, as Christina and I are both away. The final weekend will be a longer workday on Sunday, October 25, from 11 am until we are finished.
We will concentrate on putting the beds “to bed” for the winter, a final harvest, including green tomatoes to ripen on our windowsills, collecting final seeds, and putting all the remaining plant material into the compost beds. We will also take down the stakes, supports, and plant labels.
Please see below for a wonderful cabbage recipe—it highlights a different way to use cabbage than the more traditional uses, and is so delicious! I know we didn’t actually get to harvest our cabbages, thanks to the critter that ate them all, but this is the time of year to be harvesting them in your own gardens, and a good way to use some up, as they take up a lot of room in the fridge. They do store well for months in the cool of a root cellar or fridge, if you do have room for them, and it can be a treat to have your own harvested veggies in the dead of winter, especially in this savory recipe. For more information about storing vegetables from your garden, see WinterVegetableStorage.pdf
See you next week, and happy autumn gardening!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Braised Cabbage Wedges
1 cabbage, outer leaves removed, and core cut out– cut into 6-8 wedges, depending on the size of the cabbage
3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil, divided
¾ cup vegetable broth
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs chili garlic sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, grated
Scallions or green onions, for garnish
Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Heat large, oven safe sauté pan over medium high heat, and add 2 Tbs oil. Add the cabbage wedges and sear for approximately 2-3 minutes per side. Remove from the pan using tongs, and set aside.
To the same saute pan add the broth, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, chili sauce, garlic, and ginger. Whisk together and cook for about 3 minutes. Add cabbage back to the pan, and drizzle with remaining Tbs of oil.
Place the pan in the over, uncovered, and back for 25-30 minutes, until the liquid has reduced to about 1/3 of the original quantity and the cabbage is tender. Do not flip the cabbage.
Serve the wedges with some of the remaining liquid from the pan drizzled over the top. Can sprinkle scallions or green onions on top, to garnish.
Enjoy as a delicious side dish
10/26/15—Wrap Up
Here we are, the end of another successful, though quite challenging, growing season. With the supremely wet spring, then full-on drought from June to August, this season was not for the fainthearted. Also, if this was your first time attempting to garden, please do not give up! While the weather is always surprising, it is not always quite this hard. It was interesting to see what plants tolerated the changes in extremes the best, and which ones struggled the most. I saw different things in my home garden versus what we saw at the Community Garden, even though the weather was the same. One thing I noted that was probably the biggest difference between the two, was the need for water. Early on in June while watering our home garden, our well was drained. Luckily this was when we were putting down the final mulching of layers of newspaper and straw. We made the decision to not water again, so as not to stress our water supply. We were then alarmed at the lack of rain, but basically decided that what was going to survive would survive, and we would see. The paper and straw mulching, although labor and cost intensive at the outset, basically saved our garden. Not everything thrived (I’m looking at you, eggplants, that never grew at all!), but some things actually did quite well like the carrots, parsnips, and zucchini/summer squash—these never got the powdery mildew they usually succumb to in wetter years. In the Community Garden, we basically could not keep up with the need for water due to the nature of raised beds, and such porous soil. This is great for drainage, preventing roots from getting waterlogged if it is a wet year. The tomatoes and zucchini were the stand out best producers for this year. Interestingly, the cucumber and climbing beans had the most beautiful and healthy plants, but did not produce as much as I expected—too much energy into the plant growth. Next year I will plan to prune these to try to encourage more fruiting.
This past week, fellow Master Gardener Carrie helped us put the garden to bed on Saturday, and then I went on Sunday, which was the final open hours for this year. I removed all the remaining plants, with the exception of the perennials: sage, lavender, and chives in bed #1; the strawberries in bed #5; all the perennial flowers in beds #9 and #10; and the baby arugula in bed #6. This arugula is from the original planted in the spring that we allowed to go to seed. It is now harvestable, and I cut a large bag, along with the mixed greens, before pulling those plants. Between Carrie and myself, we harvested an additional 6 pounds of produce this weekend. I also cut the last of the sage and lavender to dry, took the final beets, and found one last onion. Finally, I harvested lupine, bachelor button, and more calendula seeds. In addition to the harvesting and pulling the plants, I cut back all the perennials, and weeded the beds so they would be as weed free as possible for the spring. It took some time getting all the bean plants from the trellis—they were on there and not letting go! The stakes and trellises were cleaned and put away for storage. It is important to clean all of your equipment and tools before storing to prevent rust, and to keep everything in good working order, and easy to just pick up in the spring, ready to go when you need them!
As I mentioned earlier, this truly was a successful year for the Orwell Community Learning Garden. It was our second year, and we learned things from the previous year that we put into play this year, and have learned more again that we will use in the future.
Here are our stats for the year:
Pounds of produce harvested and donated: 143
Community member interactions: 29 adults, 18 children
Master Gardener and Intern volunteer hours: 112.75
What is not included in these stats are the pounds of produce collected by people in the community, nor what was harvested by the kids during recess—we love both of these so much!
Thank you to everyone who supported this effort, whether by volunteering, donating plants and seeds, harvesting, reading the blog, or just walking by and noticing that there is a garden project in our community! Please let us know if you have suggestions for next year—plants or veggies you’d like to see, topics to discuss, comments on open hours, etc. You can email or drop by the OFL and speak with Kate. Also, keep an eye out for seed packets to come later this fall (they are currently taking up all my counter space, which is being used as a giant drying rack).
Please see below for a delicious, warming soup from those late fall beauties, the butternut squash. Until next spring, happy gardening! (It will only be 2 months until those beautiful seed catalogs will come in the mail and get us excited again!)
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners
Emily’s Butternut Squash Soup
1 large butternut squash, peeled, deseeded, and cut into cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
Vegetable or chicken stock, enough to cover the above veggies in the pot, and maybe a little more
8 oz cream cheese, cut into a few pieces
2 Tbs (or more) dark maple syrup
Thyme, salt, and pepper, to taste
Bacon crumbles, croutons, etc, for toppings
1. Place the veggies and broth into stock pot, bring to a boil and then let simmer until they are soft.
2. Add the cream cheese pieces, let them soften a bit, then use immersion blender or transfer to regular blender that is safe for hot liquids, and blend until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the syrup, thyme, salt, and pepper to taste.
In 2024, OFL was awarded $10,000 to do accessibility updates to the library building and grounds from the ALA Libraries Transforming Communities Accessible Small and Rural Communities Grant.
After many conversations with library patrons and community members at the library and elsewhere, we decided to use the funding to install an outdoor, parking lot adjacent, book return and add a paved walkway to the library ramp. The Fair Haven Select Board donated a stack of sidewalk slates that fit the walkway space perfectly and the look of the building and village. This generous donation left room in the grant funds to work on small but important accessibility updates inside the library.
These updates include coat hooks by the ramp door, a smoother threshold between rooms, widened doorways, fold-up grab bars for our very short toilet, and a raised accessible meeting table to fit a wheelchair.
Incredible what $10,000 can do for a small and rural library like OFL. This accessibility work has been in process since 2022 when we worked with Preservation Trust of Vermont to do an accessibility audit with a Vermont architect. Many parts and pieces lined up to make this project a success.
OFL is grateful to ALA for the fantastic funding opportunity, the owners of the library building (Ethan M & Eliza T Wright Memorial Library Board), the Fair Haven Select Board and the Orwell community.
With the help of the great and dedicated Green Mountain Library Consortium, OFL patrons now have access to thousands of hours of TV series, movies, and documentaries. The new resource, Biblio+, is available to all library patrons with an active account. Download the app on your device or TV or watch on your computer.
All Orwell residents are encouraged to become a library patron. It’s free!
Here’s a sample of the newest additions to the site.
July 11, 2024 – Bed prep and mulching July 18, 2024 – Early weeding and first harvest August 1, 2024 – Surprisingly dry beds, more harvest & Misty’s Cream of Broccoli Soup recipe August 8, 2024 – Staking tomatoes, beans & Summer Succotash recipe August 13, 2024 – Strawberry plant care, heavy harvest, & Baked Eggplant Parmesan Rounds recipe August 20, 2024 August 22, 2024 – Pollinator garden clean out, Panzanella Salad recipe August 27, 2024 – Soil testing and planning for perennials, Maple Glazed Root Vegetable recipe September 3, 2024 – Water water water! And Dilly Bean recipe September 14, 2024 – Planted perennials for our pollinator garden with consideration for our bloom calendar September 21, 2024 – Garden bounty and clean up, Tomato Pie recipe October 29, 2024 – That’s a wrap! Putting the gardens to bed
July 11, 2024
Welcome to the brand new Orwell Community Learning Garden! We have been working behind the scenes to get the garden of raised beds planted and up and running before beginning the community service portion of our summer gardening series.
We started preparing these beds in April. The beds were already in existence from the Orwell Village School Gardening Club, and we will have the help of Ms. Valley, first grade teacher at the OVS when school starts back up in August. We received donated beautiful compost from the Lazy Dog Farm here in Orwell, to amend the organic material that had been sitting in the beds for the past few years.
At the end of May, a few things were planted–eggplant, a few tomatoes, beans, carrots, broccoli, summer squash, and onions, thanks to donations from Singing Cedars Farmstead in Orwell. In mid and later June, I weeded the beds, and planted more seedlings, including both sweet and hot peppers, scallions, celery, winter squash, cauliflower, watermelon, lots of kale, sage (a beautiful tri-color variety!), rosemary, more broccoli, and more tomatoes. Thank you to both Golden Russet Farm in Shoreham, and Virgil and Constance Home and Garden in Brandon for generous donations of plants, as well.
Last week, I mulched the beds with hay donated from the Lazy Dog Farm to help prevent excess weed growth, as well as to help prevent their drying out. Raised beds will dry out much faster than traditional in-ground beds, so to help conserve resources, keep the plants more uniformly damp (extremes of desiccation or too much water will put too much stress on a plant making them more susceptible to diseases, pests, and early death), and to conserve man hours of watering, mulching is very important. Mulching can be done in a variety of ways—we can discuss these at one of the weekly education sessions!
Today, 7/11, I did some spot weeding (although there were almost none since the weeding and mulching last week!), planted the last of the seeds—carrots and beets. Unfortunately, the previously carrots were so heavily weed infested, that with weeding, many of the seedlings were sacrificed. This illustrates the need to keep weeds under control, in whatever way works best for you. (I have a handout with the most common weeds we see here in VT). I also tied up the tomato plants as best that I could. These plants are so healthy, but there are multiple branches that were interwoven with the neighboring plants, making it a little hard to separate them—again, another illustration of some of the reasons why we do things like “tie up” tomato plants. I am happy to discuss some of the reasons why this can be helpful in your gardens.
Sadly, a deluge of rain had me leaving the gardens after only an hour, but we will be at the Learning Garden every Thursday, from 10am to approximately noon, working in the beds, maintaining them, answering questions from the public, and harvesting produce. Please join us during this time, or if you have a few minutes to peruse the gardens during the week, feel free. The harvest is open to anyone, and indeed, we alone cannot maintain these gardens, and welcome your help! If you are unsure if something is ripe, or ready to be picked, feel free to ask. There are some fruits/veggies that will continue to ripen after they are picked, and some that will not. This is another topic that we can discuss during our Thursday morning sessions.
Our goals in creating the Orwell Community Learning Garden are to educate, help people understand the path of food from the ground to our homes and tables, get more people gardening, and help decrease food insecurity in our communities.
7/18/2024 Today is our official second week of community learning! This week I was only there for a short time, as my family and I are headed to Ireland for the next 11 days. Kate Hunter, Librarian of the Orwell Free Library, will be at the garden next Thursday in my absence, and then I will resume Thursdays at 10 am for the remainder of the summer. I was happy to see the bounty of veggies today, and especially happy with the rain, as it has meant less manual watering. Thank you to the First Congregational Church of Orwell for allowing us to utilize their water/hose this summer. I can’t express how grateful I am not to have to carry watering cans back and forth from the spigot at OVS! Things that are ready to pick are broccoli, an eggplant, cherry tomatoes, banana peppers, and in 1-2 days, summer squash. The watermelon is also looking good, happy on its bed of hay. I did the very little weeding that needed to be done, thanks to the mulching a few weeks ago. The seeds that were planted last week have sprouted–carrots, beets, turnips—turnips were a new addition that I snuck in there on Thursday evening during the first Orwell Town Band Concert. (Please join them for the next 3 Thursdays for a wonderful concert with local musicians of all ages!). As we are deciding what vegetables to include in our raised beds here, I wanted to include some plants that would produce all summer long, to provide food, and a fun treat to community members that could stop by, but I also wanted there to be some vegetables that could “set” all summer, for a fall harvest. Root crops are wonderful for planting and then leaving alone. When the new shoots emerge from the soil, they are very susceptible to insect feeding, and often are in danger of being plucked out with early weeding (see last week’s post). It is best to mulch around these plants, then leave them be until they are big enough to clearly see what is vegetable, and what might be a weed. (Please see the handouts in our new weather-proof handout holder. This week’s shows some common weeds in our area.) If you are having trouble with insects, and find the shoots are being eaten as fast as they emerge, I would recommend exclusion netting. This can be accomplished with different types of fabrics with varying sizes of “holes”. For this purpose, very fine mesh would work best—it is lightweight and will not crush the new growth, while still allowing light through for continued plant growth. Exclusion netting is one part of the IPM (Integrated Pest Management) pyramid that we can use to minimize pesticide application our gardens. Practices like exclusion netting and hand picking insects off our plants are just two of the more common parts of the IPM pyramid that are safest for plants and people.
I will delve into some more of this pyramid in the weeks to come, showing how we can be mindful of not only the safety of what we choose to consume, but also for saving our beneficial insects—the pollinators!
Ok, I went on a little sideshoot there. To get back to the root vegetables—these veggies are happy to sit undisturbed all summer, and hopefully, can be picked in the fall by the OVS Gardening Club, and utilized in the cafeteria, or taken home for children to eat with their families. I hope this garden will introduce children to some new veggies that they did not know they liked!
See you in 2 weeks! Karen DeMoy, 2024 Extension Master Garden Intern
7/26/2024
The Orwell Free Library Story Time crew attended to the garden today. We read books about gardening and vegetables next to the Learning Garden then went on a hunt for treats among the leaves. None of the participants (3 families) gardened so it felt like a true adventure with treasures at the end. The children gathered broccoli, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes to take home.
Kate Hunter Librarian
August 1, 2024
Welcome to August in the Orwell Community Learning Garden! Things are heating up, growing (plants and weeds!), outgrowing the beds and spilling into the in between walkways, and we are seeing an increase in harvestable veggies. It has been two weeks since the beds have been weeded, and while there were some, it was not overwhelming, and easily accomplished, thanks to the mulching. Interestingly, the beds were fairly dry, even with the heavy rainfall earlier in the week. The reason for this is likely twofold: raised beds are more shallow, with more porous soil than traditional “ground”, and the rain washes through them more quickly; and, the root systems from the plants that are in the raised beds (and yes, they are planted with too many plants for the size of the beds—that is always a hazard, I always crowd plantings and overestimate what they can hold!) are filling up the entire bed, and the plants are utilizing the water as fast as they can. This is another good lesson—PROPER SPACING is very important. When we plant those small seedlings, or seeds, we must account for the mature size of the plant. This is not only important for water and nutrient absorption from the soil, but for air flow. Proper air flow allows for sunlight to get where it needs to be for photosynthesis and growth of the plant; it prevents excess moisture buildup on the leaves to prevent some diseases such as molds and fungi that thrive in wet conditions; and it helps prevent the spread of pests and bacterial diseases from plant to plant contact. Alas, this is an area where I will strive to do better next year, especially in these raised beds. Today, after weeding, I harvested cucumbers, eggplants, both hot and sweet peppers, summer squash, broccoli, kale, and many cherry tomatoes. Please come by the OFL and help yourself while they are fresh! I was happy to see that multiple stalks of broccoli had been harvested, as well as some eggplants—this is wonderful, and the purpose of our Community Garden! One other area that I noted will need attention in the future is further tomato staking. The bamboo stakes that I used initially are not strong enough. This is ultimately good news, as it means that are tomato plants are very healthy, growing both in stature, as well as producing fruit. I will plan to bring metal stakes next week to provide additional support to these plants. Remember, tying these up will help with the air flow, help prevent disease, and will make it easier to harvest those tomatoes! Looking into the forecast, there is not much rain predicted, so I will plan to water once again over the weekend. If anyone is interested in helping us water, please let me know, or ask Kate at the Library, and we can get you set up! As a new, fun addition, I will be sharing a delicious recipe featuring one or more of the harvested produce for everyone to try. Please see below. See you next Thursday, August 8th, 10 am—happy gardening!
Karen DeMoy, 2024 EMG Intern
Misty’s Cream of Broccoli Soup (a very quick recipe, easy to prepare after work in 30 minutes!) Ingredients: 1 ½ lb chopped broccoli, discard tough stems 2 ½ cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 cups water ½ tsp salt 1 stalk celery, chopped ½ cup heavy cream, half and half, or milk 1 medium onion, chopped pepper and dash ground nutmeg, to taste 2 Tbs butter shredded cheddar cheese, and cooked,
chopped bacon for sprinkling
Directions:
Heat 2 cups of water to boiling. Add broccoli, celery, and onion. Cover and boil 10 min, or until softened.
Place all ingredients into heat safe blender, or use immersion blender–blend until smooth consistency.
In original pot, heat butter until melted. Add flour and stir until mixture is browned, bubbly, and smooth.
Stir in chicken broth. Heat to boiling, and cook for 1 minute.
Stir in vegetable mixture, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Heat until just boiling.
Stir in heavy cream, half and half, or milk, and heat until hot, but not boiling.
Serve with cheese, bacon bits, croutons, or whatever you fancy!
August 8, 2024
Today was a day where both Kate and I were there for open hours and garden maintenance. We both did some weeding, both around the beds, as well as in the beds (although this is still minimal, thanks again to mulching!). The crew who maintains the OVS grounds are truly helpful to us, weed whacking around the beds, while being really mindful of the veggies that are spilling over. Thank you very much!
I brought in much more substantial stakes, green metal, 6’, to help the tomato plants be more stable, and separated. Trying to do this after some of the plants are entwined is truly a lesson in why it should be done BEFORE the plants become unwieldy. However, it is still a help now, especially for harvesting, getting to all the beautiful, ripe, sweet, cherry tomatoes.
I also began to tackle the raised bed that is filled to the brim (and overflowing) with healthy strawberry plants. While I did find one or two ripe strawberries, I am fairly confident that these are “June bearing” strawberry plants. There are no other flowers visible, where I would expect some if these were “everbearing” or “day neutral” strawberry plants. However, I will be able to tell for certain by the end of August—if there are flowers present starting late in late August and September, this is the indication that they are not reliant on day length to set a crop. Thus the “day neutral” title. The “June bearers” are “short day” plants; this means that the roots and flower buds are initiated in the short days of the fall, and will be stimulated to bear fruit after the dormancy of winter. They will supply only one crop of fruit, in mid to late June in our area. The day neutral strawberries will set three crops: June, a small crop in mid-summer, and a larger crop in late August to frost. This raised bed of strawberries is really too full, and I will be thinning the plants each week as I clean out that bed. Either come by while I am there to get some strawberry plants for your home, or let Kate or I know that you are interested, and I will set them aside at the library. This timing is fine for planting, as long as they are established by frost.
I am a little stumped by the bean plants that were planted by the OVS Garden Club in the farthest raised bed. They are pole beans/climbers, and are VERY tall, but have yet to set any beans. There are some flowers, so I will continue to monitor for produce. They are sharing the trellises with the cucumbers, and both plants appear to be thriving with very green, beautiful growth.
Today I harvested eggplants, kale, cucumbers, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, Green Zebra tomatoes, as well as clippings from our rosemary, and tricolored sage. Produce is available at the Orwell Free Library, first come, first served! In addition, please stop by throughout the week to harvest on your own anything that is ready.
Next week, I will be at the Community Garden on Tuesday, 8/13/24, at 10 am, instead of Thursday. Please see below for this week’s tasty recipe, featuring the herb, sage. This recipe is a tried and true one that I make often in the summer.
In a large skillet, over high heat, melt butter. Add onion and cook until translucent.
Add garlic, and all the remaining vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.
Cook, stirring intermittently, until vegetables are tender.
Add sage, stir, and simmer 1-2 minutes.
Serve over rice, or as a vegetable side dish. Enjoy!
August 13, 2024
Today was another beautiful day here in Orwell, perfect for working in the garden beds. There has been a good amount of recent rainfall, so no watering was necessary today. Very little weeding was needed, so I was able to get right down to business harvesting, and continue tackling the strawberry bed.
The harvest today included summer squash, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, a green zebra tomato, one hot pepper, and multiple beautiful eggplants. These two spectacular eggplant plants came from Singing Cedars Farmstead, and are truly thriving—they clearly love the conditions in our garden bed, and are approximately 5 feet tall, and about 3-4 feet wide. I picked only 3 large fruit today, but there are at least 10 or more almost ready, and more to come. Please come by the library to take home some of the veggies in the next day or two, before they are all gone! Of course, throughout the week, feel free to stop by and harvest on your own–there will be more summer squash, cukes, eggplant, and tomatoes ready every day, likely. The tomatoes were so much easier to pick today after the updated staking last week.
Today I focused on continuing weeding and thinning the plants in the strawberry bed. I am about halfway done, as it is slow work picking through all the plants and the runners they have put out. I am thinning the plants to one every 3-4” and selecting new runner plants. Ideally this would have been done directly after harvest in June, so the plants could have the best growing conditions during the summer. This canopy of new leaves and growth will determine the quality of the flower buds, and thus the fruit, during the following spring. However, because I am unsure of the type of strawberry plants that we have growing here, I am not being as aggressive as I might be if I knew these were June bearers. In addition, the original “mother” plant should be culled after 4 years, to keep them producing to the fullest. Strawberries are one of the many plants that benefit from heavy mulching in the fall, with straw working the best. We have leftover straw/hay mulch from the Lazy Dog Farm which I will use this fall to put this bed “to sleep” for the winter. Today I potted up 21 strawberry plants that I will keep watch over, (plan to have more after next week) and then have them up for grabs in the weeks to come, available at the OFL.
Next week I plan to be at the garden both Tuesday (8/20) and Thursday (8/22), from 10am to 11am, when I hope to finish up on the strawberry bed, and begin work on the native pollinator bed that is outgrowing its space.
Today’s recipe will feature our highly prolific eggplant—enjoy!
See you next week, Tuesday and Thursday, 10 am, and happy gardening!
Karen DeMoy, 2024 EMG Intern
Baked Eggplant Parmesan Rounds
Ingredients:
1 large eggplant, cut into ¼ to ½” thick rounds 2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp salt 1 Tbs vegetable oil
2 cups breadcrumbs, panko or traditional 2 cups marinara sauce
½ cup parmesan cheese 1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 tsp Italian seasoning 3 Tbs fresh basil, chopped
1 cup flour
Directions:
Before you cut up the eggplant, some prefer to peel the skin, but I prefer to leave it on. If the eggplants are not overgrown, the skin should not be too tough.
Place the rounds in a single layer, sprinkle with salt, and allow to sit for 30 minutes. This allows the bitter and excess juice to drain. Pat them dry and transfer to baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Combine breadcrumbs with parmesan cheese, and Italian seasoning.
Place the flour, beaten eggs, and breadcrumbs into 3 separate bowls—bowls should be shallow, for ease of dipping.
Dredge each slice of eggplant in the flour, tapping to remove excess, then egg, also letting the excess drip off. Finally, coat with the breadcrumb mixture. Brush or spray both sides with small amount of vegetable oil.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown, flipping halfway through baking time.
Remove from oven, top each round with tablespoon of marinara sauce, and mozzarella cheese. Return to oven for additional 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted and browned.
Sprinkle with chopped basil before serving. Serve with additional marinara sauce for dipping, if desired.
August 20, 2024
Thank you to the community member who came to the open hours on Tuesday! I’m so glad the word is getting out there. It was nice to have some help weeding the strawberry bed, and to begin to evaluate the native pollinator bed. The strawberry bed is done, finally, and we have 45 new plants to share with you. They have been potted up, and I’m letting them get adjusted for a bit, and then they will be at the OFL, free for the taking! Since there are still no flowers to be seen, I think these are a June bearing variety. This means that they will set flowers based on the dormancy of winter, and planting these in the fall will hopefully give at least a small crop next year, and an even better one the following year. Plan to pick these up either the first week of September, or at the Food and Harvest Fest on September 8, 12-4 pm on the Orwell Town Green. (Come also for the great food, Orwell vendors, and horse drawn carriage rides!)
Today, we harvested cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, broccoli, kale, a hot pepper, the first of the beets and turnips, scallions, and celery. What a bounty!
Next, I began to evaluate the native pollinator bed. This bed started a number of years ago, through the OVS Gardening Club, led by yours truly, with plants donated by Vermont Wetland Plant Supply, from right here in Orwell. Not surprisingly, these native plants have thrived, but it has become basically filled with two types of plants—New York aster (Symphotrichum novi-belgii), and with a non-native mint, Mentha longifolia, also known as horse mint. (NOTE—this non-native mint was not supplied by Vermont Wetland Plant Supply, and I am unsure if this was planted on purpose, or came in with something else.) There is also swamp milkweed, (Asclepius incarnta ), which is a great native pollinator plant, but it is being crowded out by the aster. The first job will be to clean out the non-native mint—this will be a big job, as they spread by long runners underground, and are very hard to get rid of fully. This will definitely be a project for another day. In the meantime, I will begin to think about what species to plant in this bed. (Please see our garden friend from this week (photo below) —she is truly beautiful!)
I will be back this week again on Thursday, 8/22/2024, from 10 am onward, and then again for a final weekday open hour on Tuesday, 8/27/24, at 10 am. After this, school will be in session, and the new open hours will be on Saturday mornings at 10:30 am, at least through September. Hope to see you there!
Today was the big day for cleaning out the native pollinator bed. It took approximately 2 hours to remove all the horse mint, including the roots that were growing through the raised bed seams and into the surrounding sod. I know that they are not all gone, and will be vigilant through the fall and next year to keep weeding them as I see them pop up. I left the aster in completely, for now, as this is a fall bloomer (see the few beautiful purple blooms that are just beginning), and it is an important food source for our pollinators late in the season, as many of the other blooming perennials are waning. The swamp milkweed is also blooming right now (the orange flowers), and I left that in, as well.
For pollinator beds, there are a number of criteria that you want to take into consideration. Finding food (either nectar or pollen) is the number one reason for pollinators to visit flowers. (And by “pollinators”, we mean bees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds, including hummingbirds, butterflies, bats, and ants.) It is important to try to provide food (ie, flowers) for the entire season, from May through October—this means there should be variety in your plantings where there will be blooms out this whole time. For pollinators, it is good to have a “clump” or “swaths” of flowers together of the same type, but you also need variety for the extended bloom time. If you have limited space, it is better to provide diversity over quantity. To make it easiest, think of the growing season in terms of early summer, mid-summer, and late summer. You also want to provide a variety in height, color, and type of flower, to attract different types of pollinators.
For our bed that currently is only approximately 4’ x 8’, we are limited greatly by space. However, I am hoping that we can increase this space by a large amount in the years to come, and become a part of the “Pollinator Pathway” across the US, and beyond (www.pollinator-pathway.org). I will write much more about this plan, and pollinator plants in the weeks to come, as this is a true work in progress.
Today I harvested cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and eggplants. I also have been watching our watermelons, and logging their (very slow) growth. Sadly, one of the two succumbed to a pest, but the other is healthy and still growing.
As I mentioned in the previous post, our final weekday open hours will be on Tuesday, 8/27/24, at 10 am. After this, school will be in session, and the new open hours will be on Saturday mornings at 10:30 am, at least through September.
Please see below for this week’s recipe, Panzanella Salad, which uses lots of cucumbers and tomatoes, so it is perfect for this time of year, and is such a great side dish. Enjoy!
**Note—this recipe requires toasted bread, as well as sitting after it is all mixed for at least an hour, so take that into consideration prior to preparation.
Ingredients:
Crusty bread, 1 loaf 6 tomatoes, diced
½ onion, chopped 1 (or more) cucumbers, diced
¼ cup olive oil, plus more for toasting bread 1 Tbs red wine vinegar
Salt/pepper, to taste fresh basil leaves, shredded or chopped
Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded
Directions:
Cut bread into 1” cubes, place on cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toast at 275 degrees until crispy, approximately 20-25 minutes.
Mix olive oil, vinegar, s/p well.
Add bread, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and basil to dressing, mix well, and let sit for at least one hour. Garnish with parmesan cheese before serving.
August 27, 2024
Today was the last weekday community open hours that we are doing for the summer. I apologize for having to change the time at the last minute, but was there at 1pm today. Things are looking fairly good for late summer raised beds. However, as often occurs, the cucumber plants are yellowing. They are still producing flowers, and there are still some small cucumbers growing, but they have certainly slowed down their production in the past couple of weeks. The yellowing of the leaves can be due to a few different causes: 1. Too much or too little water; 2. Too much or too little sunlight; or 3. Nutrient deficiencies. I suspect that the recent lovely weather we’ve been having has robbed these cucumbers of the amount of water that they need. With this veggie having the highest percentage of water of any other, they require a lot of water to grow best, about 1″ per week. With raised beds and the excellent drainage they provide, they likely need even more than this. So, with rain predicted for tomorrow, I am hoping they will get the drink they need. If not, I will plan to water them on Thursday. It is also possible that the nutrients in the raised bed soil are not optimal. As with all gardens, soil testing is the single most important thing a gardener can do to optimize their harvest. Soil test kits are available through UVM Extension. Follow this link to get information on soil testing: Agricultural and Environmental Testing Lab | UVM Extension Cultivating Healthy Communities | The University of Vermont. You can download the form, or request a kit. This analysis will tell you what your soil consists of, and what is lacking. For help interpreting results, you can look on the UVM Extension website, or call for guidance for amending the soil. The best time to take samples is either spring or fall—if done in the fall, you can make amendments that can slowly take effect over the winter for spring planting. I will plan to do this testing of our beds this fall, to optimize our results for next year. I will keep you updated with our results!
Today I harvested beets, turnips, celery, scallions, yellow squash, eggplants, sage, rosemary, tomatoes, broccoli, kale, and the first crop of our filet beans! It was a banner day for harvesting.
The perennial bed is ready for new plantings. Vermont Wetland Plant Supply/Green Mountain Natives has generously offered to donate plants to complement our New York aster (Symphotrichum novi-belgii) with other flowering perennials that will flower at different times. We will be planting those in the upcoming weeks.
In other news, the strawberry plants (43!) are almost ready to go to their new homes! We will have them for people to take at the Orwell Food and Farm Fest on Sunday, September 8, from 12-4 pm. Any left over will be available at the OFL during open hours.
Starting on September 7, community open hours will be on Saturdays, at 10:30 am, continuing through the fall harvest, and cleaning up of the raised beds and perennials.
Please read below for a delicious recipe for roasted root vegetables—this one is a keeper!
Karen DeMoy, 2024 EMG intern
Maple Glazed Root Vegetables
Ingredients:
Assorted root vegetables: turnip, beets, rutabaga, sweet potato, parsnip, etc.
Extra virgin olive oil, approx. ¼ cup
1 Tbs chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
½ cup maple syrup
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wash, peel, and dice veggies to a consistent size.
Combine salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, garlic, and ¼ evoo in a large bowl. Add veggies, and toss, to coat.
Spread veggies in a single layer on a sheet tray. Bake until golden, about 45-50 minutes, turning periodically
Remove from oven, transfer to serving bowl, drizzle with maple syrup, toss to coat. Serve immediately.
9/3/2024
Today I worked in the beds after school, but the Community Open Hours will still be on Saturdays, 10:30 am. However, the beds were quite dry and needed a good watering. The weather forecast had predicted rain for last Wednesday, and again for a large rainfall over the weekend, neither of which occurred. So, I gave them a nice long drink today. The cucumber plants are very tired, quite dried up and yellowing, but there are still a few flowers on them. We may see a few more cukes in the upcoming weeks. However, if they do not perk up with the watering today, and predicted rain over the weekend, then I will plan to pull the plants out of the beds to try to prevent mold or other disease from spreading—if that is why they are dying off. There are still some nice summer squash coming along, and of course, the eggplants are producing like I have never seen! I picked two beauties today, but there are many more in all stages of development.
I did not do any other harvesting today, as I will save that for this weekend during the open hours. In addition, people are welcome to walk over to check out our garden beds out during the Orwell Farm & Food Fest this Sunday, September 8th, from 12 noon to 4 pm, on the Orwell Town Green. Bring a reusable bag for garden produce from our beds! Also, we will have the strawberry plants to give away then, as well. Stop by the UVM Extension “Ask a Master Gardener” table for your free plants, as well as some free seed packets.
The bean towers are growing very well, and the plants are looking healthy. There are a ton of beans for you to pick—remember, they are most tender when picked on the smaller side. I saw a lot of bees on the flowers from these bean plants, as well as on the New York aster in the perennial bed. I will be picking up additional pollinator plants from Green Mountain Natives and Bloomer’s Garden Design later this week and will keep you posted on how they are doing.
My other project for this week is to put in “official” labels for all the vegetables, with both their common name, as well as their scientific name. Be on the look out for these (hopefully!) weather proof labels that we can use again next year. See below for a super easy, super delicious way to use up those extra beans!
(Put Em Up, A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, Sherri Brooks Vinton)
Ingredients:
4# fresh beans (any color), washed, topped, and tailed
1 Tbs black peppercorns
6 garlic cloves, sliced 4 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup fresh dill weed 2 cups water
2 Tbs dill seed ¼ cup white sugar
2 Tbs salt
Directions:
Wash 8 pint jars. Cut beans into lengths 1” shorter than the pint jars. Pack the beans into the clean, hot jars vertically, quite tightly. Divide the garlic, dill weed, dill seed, and peppercorns evenly into the eight jars.
Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, and salt into a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Pour the hot brine over the beans to cover by ½”. Leave ½” open headspace between the top of the liquid and the lid. Release any “trapped air” by using a clean butter knife and gently going around the beans in the jar.
To preserve these beans safely, they will need to be “canned” using the boiling water method. Wipe the rims of the jars clean; place lid insert onto jar, then screw on jar bands. Process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Turn off heat after 15 minutes, remove cover, and allow jars to rest in water for an additional 5 minutes. Remove jars, allow to sit on counter, undisturbed for 24 hours. Make sure the lids are secure and sealed before storing. Can be stored for up to 1 year. If the lids did not properly seal, put in fridge and enjoy soon. To learn more about preserving and canning foods safely, go to: Food Safety | Consumers | UVM Extension Cultivating Healthy Communities | The University of Vermont
9/14/2024
Today was a busy day in the Orwell Community Garden. It has not rained since last week, and the beds were dry. After I harvested beets, turnips, rosemary, sage, tomatoes, eggplant, yellow squash, cucumbers, broccoli, kale, and LOTS of beans, I watered heavily. There is no rain in the forecast for the upcoming week either, so I will plan to come down to check mid-week after school to make sure everything is looking ok.
I was excited that I was able to plant perennials in the newly cleared bed, to add to the pollinators of NY aster and swamp milkweed that are already present. As I discussed previously, we want to try to space out the flowering, so the pollinators will have food from spring through autumn. The autumn months are a bit harder for flowering plants, as many perennials are spent, done with flowering, storing energy and food to improve their root systems to make it through the winter. However, there are some fun autumn flowering native perennials, if you know what to look for. Thank you to Vermont Wetland Plant Supply/Green Mountain Natives, and Bloomer’s Garden Design, both from right here in Orwell, for the donation of the plants that I put in today. As I also mentioned previously, it is important to have clumps of the same plant, but we are limited with our space right now, so we will be aiming for diversity, so there will hopefully always be at least one species of plant flowering at any given time. In addition, the different pollinator species (bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, bats, wasps, and flies, to name a few) prefer different types of plants—ideally there would be a variation of height, color, flower shape, etc., to attract different pollinators. Did you know that native bees are 2-3 times better pollinators than the introduced, non-native honeybee? Honeybees are still important, but when species evolve together, they are the most efficient and effective!
Today I planted mountain mint (Pycanthemum virginianum), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpura), beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), false sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides), and columbine seeds (Aquilegia canadensis) from my own garden. There is a wealth of information on native plants on the UVM Extension website, UVM Extension Community Horticulture Programs | Extension Community Horticulture | The University of Vermont. There are many links to follow, and this is a nice list for our area: Native Plant List for New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont – PlantNative.org . In addition, Northeast Pollinator Plants in Fairfax, VT has a wonderful website (Northeast Pollinator Plants: A mail order pollinator plant nursery.) with lots of info, and a very useful chart called The Vermont Pollinator Habitat Plant Palette. It groups plants by their type, and lists them with their bloom time, in order, as well as their color highlighted–so it is easy to look at this chart and pick some from each bloom time with overlap.
So, for our blooming plan: flowering will begin in May with columbine (these may not flower the first year, as we are starting from seed); next will be beardtongue and coneflower in mid-June through early to mid-August; swamp milkweed will overlap, beginning in mid-July to the beginning of September; false sunflower will also overlap, beginning in in early to mid-July, and with deadheading, will bloom into the autumn; and, lastly, New York aster will begin to bloom in mid-August, and go through to October. Since these are all new plantings, they should not be allowed to dry out in this September hot spell, so I will plan to water these every other day. This is a bit more than what they would need if they were not in a raised bed, but the drainage is so good in our beds, that they dry out more quickly, as we have mentioned previously.
I will plan to be in the garden for open community hours next Saturday, September 21, at 10:30 am. Hope to see you there! Please enjoy the harvest from this week—it will be available at the OFL, first come, first served! Or pick from the beds that are there for our community! There are still healthy strawberry plants available at the Library, as well.
Sorry, no recipe this week, but I will come up with a delicious one for next week!
9/21/2024 This Saturday was once again a beautiful day. There was a bit of rain on Friday night, but not enough to penetrate our beds fully, so along with harvesting produce, most of my morning involved watering all the beds fully. Ideally, these established plants would like approximately 1” of water per week, so I used the hose and gave them a thorough fill. With eight raised beds, this takes a bit of time!
For a harvest this week: broccoli, the last of the turnips, beets, eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash, beans, and one lone, beautiful hot pepper. The lone green zebra tomato plant is finally almost ready to harvest—this plant was shaded out by the cherry tomato plants, but should be ready to pick this week. As always, these are at the OFL, free for the taking, as well as more available at the garden itself all week long.
The newly planted perennials are doing well, even in this heat. I watered this entire bed on Tuesday and Thursday, as well—these new plantings need much more water than established plants, so their roots do not ever dry out fully, otherwise the plants will die. This happens much more quickly when they are newly planted, so I will continue to water these plants every other day through the next few weeks.
There were a few weeds, but still not many. Another area of maintenance for this time of the year includes ridding the ground of diseased/fallen materials. This is especially notable around the broccoli and tomato plants. There are yellowed leaves that fall, then mildew. Continuing to pick these up will prevent further disease spread to the remaining, still healthy, plants. I continue to do this each time I work in the beds. The cucumber vines are just about completely spent, and clearing this bed will be a project for the upcoming weeks.
Next Saturday, from 9 am-1 pm is the Orwell Free Library’s Annual Harvest Sale, with used books, pumpkins, garden produce and canned goods, baked goods, soups to take home, and flower arrangements. We will have someone here at the Learning Garden at 10:30, and will be happy to give a tour, and share the produce. There may still be some free strawberry plants left to give away.
See below for a delicious tomato pie recipe. I have only made this with Roma tomato slices, but there is no reason not to use cherry or cocktail sized tomatoes, if that is what you have on hand.
5 Roma tomatoes, sliced (or substitute equivalent cherry/cocktail tomatoes)
10 fresh basil leaves, chopped
½ cup chopped scallions, (or can substitute regular onions)
Pie crust for 9-10” pie, partially baked (cover with parchment and pie weights, bake for 10-15 min, to slight brown)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded other cheese (I use Swiss, or you can use mozzarella)
¾ cup mayonnaise (can use half mayo and half Greek yogurt)
2 Tbs grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place sliced tomatoes in a colander in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Then, use a paper towel to pat them dry to remove most of the excess moisture.
Layer the tomato slices, basil, then onions into the pre-baked shell. Season with Salt and pepper.
Combine the cheeses and mayo or Greek yogurt together, and spread on top of the onions. Sprinkle parmesan on top.
Bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to rest for at least 15 minutes before cutting and serving. Store leftovers in the refrigerator for 3 days. Does not freeze well.
Courtesy of: Tastes Better From Scratch, Lauren Allen
10/29/2024
Today I had help with cleaning up the garden beds for winter—Christina Shaw, Certified Master Gardener from Benson, came to help with this project, and will also be helping with the Community Garden next spring and summer. I am grateful for her help, and look forward to collaborating and getting new, fresh ideas next year! Today, we emptied almost all of the beds, with a few exceptions. We left the sage, as some varieties are perennial and hardy. While I suspect our tri-color variety will be more tender, and will not likely survive the winter, there is no harm in leaving it in the bed. The Brussels sprouts are coming along nicely, even with the fairly hard hit by the cabbage worm. These actually should not be harvested until later into the fall, when they have been weathered by a few frosts. Kale is similar to the sprouts, and is quite hardy—so if you need some greens to spice up your fall salads, please come and harvest some kale to supplement your salads! The strawberry bed was left as is, with its good layer of mulch. And finally, the perennials were cut back, but nothing was removed from the bed. As you can see from the pictures, there were still a few things to harvest, prior to pulling it all out—really nice broccoli, scallions, a few shallots, some hot peppers, and some of the filet beans to dry—we can either use these as dried beans, or can use to plant again next year. We were very conscientious of cleaning the debris thoroughly from the beds, including the rotting broccoli leaves, and the abundance of cherry tomatoes that had dropped previously. These are great sources of diseases that can be held over from one year to the next, such as blights, and molds. We were also careful to do a thorough weeding—we do not need to give any weeds a head start for next year. So, that’s a wrap on the inaugural year for the Orwell Community Learning Garden. Thank you to the Orwell Free Library for its support, as well as all the businesses that supported our efforts: Bloomer’s Garden Design, Green Mountain Natives, Golden Russet Farm, Lazy Dog Farm, Singing Cedars Farmstead, and Virgil and Constance Home and Garden. Thank you also to the community members who came to the garden and enjoyed the bounty—we hope you will join us again next year. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, or have a particular vegetable that you would like to see in the garden in the future.
Happy winter, and see you in the spring! Karen DeMoy, 2024 Extension Master Garden Intern (although soon to be certified!)
Connecting our community with the growers and makers right next door.
The first year of fun was wonderful. Thank you to the community for showing up and our vendors for sticking with us. Visit our YouTube Channel to watch shorts about these summer events.
Continue reading for more information –
The Orwell Food Fest is a monthly summer farmers’ market designed to boost food system resiliency and celebrate Addison and Rutland County growers, producers and makers. By connecting area residents with local farmers and artisans, the Food Fest will raise awareness of local food systems, provide a new market and food source, and support the local economy.
This event is rain or shine. Visit our Facebook eventto view updates before the event.
Featured musicians, community groups, and more included: Live music by Dick McCormick, Patti Casey, and Bird Mountain String Band CARRIAGE RIDES with Driven by Drafts Tea and cookies with Orwell Fortnightly Orwell Authors table Orwell Artists table Mimzy’s Shop – decorate a bat house and bat crafts, free! Most Outsized Garden Vegetable competition Apple Pressing Demonstration Ask a Master Gardener Table
The Orwell Food Fest is a project of the Orwell Free Library and Farmer’s Haven, made possible by a grant from the Association for Rural and Small Libraries through the generosity of the Manton Foundation.
Celebrate Local Agriculture
The Orwell Food Fest is a monthly summer farmers’ market designed to boost food system resiliency and celebrate Addison and Rutland County growers, producers and makers. By connecting area residents with local farmers and artisans, the Food Fest will raise awareness of local food systems, provide a new market and food source, and support the local economy.
The Orwell Food Fest is a project of the Orwell Free Library and Farmer’s Haven, made possible by a grant from the Association for Rural and Small Libraries through the generosity of the Manton Foundation.
“Vendors from all over Addison and Rutland counties are welcome to join us,” said Kate Hunter, Orwell Free Library librarian. “We look forward to showcasing the exceptional and diverse products of our region, including tomatoes, mushrooms, flowers, beef, pork, and dairy and CBD products.”
The Food Fest is scheduled for July 14th, August 11th, and September 8th. In addition to local produce, the Orwell Food Fest will feature live music, kids’ crafts and market, a food making contest, and an apple pressing demo.
“The real heart of this project is connecting our community with the growers and makers right next door,” Hunter added. “The range of what is available is much wider than we realize. I hope the connections made will extend beyond these markets and assist in building a more resilient food system and economy.”
Visit the library website to learn how to participate in these events.
Shelburne Free family admission up to 2 adults and the children of one household. Includes walking trails, children’s farmyard, an environmental education center and working farm on the shores of Lake Champlain. Open daily year-round with seasonal hours.
Burlington Provides reduced admission of $4 per person for family of up to 2 adults and 3 children. Some special exhibits require an additional admission fee.
Vermont Historic Sites Across the state. Free entry for up to 8 people in 1 vehicle into any VT Historic Site. Includes Mount Independence Historic Site!
More ebooks and audiobooks are now available for Orwell residents through The Palace App!
Palace is special – it combines e-content from multiple sources into one app. You will find items purchased by the Vermont Department of Libraries, public domain items, and the entire collection from Overdrive (Libby).
Download the Palace Project App on your device and start reading today! All you need is your patron barcode number and PIN (last name or your password from the library catalog).
Questions? Call the library. We are happy to help get you set up.
