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And That's a Wrap!

2010-10-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe Timber Rattler baseball ended almost a month a go already. It's also hard to believe the growing season is pretty much over. It sounds like we could see some temperatures at the freezing mark this weekend.

I headed down to the plot yesterday to gather up the remaining produce. There was a zuchinni that had gotten way too large, along with a few roma tomatoes and the last couple jalapeno peppers. It's surprising how quickly you can tear down something that took so much longer to get started.

I rallied up the troops this morning (Ann, Isaac & Brandon) to help tear out the garden. Lakeshore Cleaners, the landscape company who helped prepare the space for us, will be coming by next week to till everything under. It should be interesting to see how much better the soil will be at the start of next growing season...after have a lot more nutrients added in from the mulch and compost this year.

A BIG shout out to to everyone who contributed to this successful undertaking this year (sponsors/donators, green thumbs, grunt workers, etc.). I certainly couldn't have done it without you.

Below are a few photos of the tear-down today. Happy off-season!

Zucchini grows quickly?

2010-08-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday and St. Joe's Food Program will be joining us prior to our home game this evening...along with our friends at WVBO.

So, I took a quick walk to the garden to gather up any produce that was ready. Quite a few more beans and tomatoes were ready for harvest. I pulled out the last of the kohlrabi. And the zucchini was out of control, really. Last week the large yellow blossoms only had tiny vegetables coming from them. Fast forward about 8 days and wah-lah, a rather large outcome. Maybe I just missed this one last week.

Salvation Army's Community Garden

2010-08-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

So, when I dropped off the box of produce at the Salvation Army yesterday afternoon, a noticed a row of burlap sacks and some car tires along the fence lining the parking lot. The sacks were plump full (with dirt and compost I suppose) and had all sorts of different plants protruding from them.

The Community Garden Partnership has some great programming and established gardens in our area with a main purpose being to teach folks how to grow their own food, sustainably. They have several gardens in the area, but I wasn't aware of the Salvation Army location until yesterday.

I happened to have a camera in the car, so helped myself to a few photos. Robb Waugus, Development Director for the Salvation Army, probably grew curious as to why someone would be hanging out in the parking lot photographing the garden. He joined me outside for a brief chat about his garden... and mine.-

This is creative, space-saving gardening at its best...

Beans Galore!

2010-08-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

Finally, after quite a stint of patience, we have green beans!

The pole bean vines have been slowly winding their way up the strings that form a tee-pee structure around the center pole. They had such a slow start that I wasn't sure we'd even get any results from the plants. But alas, they're here! They helped fill up another box of produce on its way to the Salvation Army this afternoon.

We're Rolling!

2010-07-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today we went down to bring back our first sizable harvest. It has rained a lot this past week, so the mosquitoes are thick back there. We gathered tomatoes, kolrabi and a handful of radishes. Things look pretty good over all. The pole beans are almost reaching to the top of their structure. I also see another round of weeding in the near future.

The plan is to take this bunch to the Salvation Army tomorrow or Tuesday.

The First Fruit!

2010-07-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

After kind reminders from several staff members that we have ripe fruit, I ventured out to the garden to harvest the first few tomatoes. I took in one of the big boy variety and four romas. They looked great...healthy, meaty and bright red!

On Wednesday home games, one of our radio partners, WVBO joins us out in front of the stadium prior to the game. A representative from St. Joe's Food Program joins them as well, encouraging fans to bring produce or non-perishable items to donate to the pantry. Those donating are then entered into a drawing for a Timber Rattlers autographed item that day.

Unfortunately we didn't play last night (it rained a little :-). Actually, as you may know, we had three major storms pass through in a seven hour period. So, I wasn't able to send the produce with St. Joe's. I'll be making a trip down there today to drop it off.

Progress...

2010-07-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

A peek at how things are coming...

Almost-ripe Tomato

Kolrabi & Onions

Zuchinni

Weeds & More Mulch

2010-07-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Since we planted one month ago, its been exciting seeing the garden start to take shape. I'd say it's doing okay over all. We had a lot of rain in June, especially early, and the weather was a bit on the cooler side, so in general growth seems a bit slower than normal. But temps are picking up, and we should be able to harvest some things in the next couple weeks.

I've had a lot of game day staff members ask about the garden, including why we're doing it. I think the most rewarding part so far has been the opportunity to explain the project to interested people and chat about the good that it will do in the end. We recently placed two banners (Thank you, Ann, for designing it!) at the garden site, so fans understand what the project is about and who helped make it possible.

Yesterday we did our first thorough maintenance of the garden. The weeds were getting pretty bad, so it certainly took us a while to get from one end to the other. Mary Lee Lehr (ballpark customer service), Sarah Heth & Ann Mollica all turned out for the big event. Thanks ladies!

We thinned out the radishes and beets. I planted a couple small rows of chard in an area where some radish seed didn't take. And, Isaac and I got another load of mulch to add in, which meant another lesson in gardening from the attendant (Ali...otherwise known as Vladimir) at the Whitman Avenue yard waste site...good times.

Beets are slow but sure.

Another layer of mulch should help with the weeds.

Kolrabi is going strong.

Pole beans are on their way...

Planting Day

2010-05-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

So, by May 26 (yesterday), the danger of frost should be pretty much gone, although you never know in these parts. I've always vowed to plant my garden at home before Memorial Day Weekend, so I pushed for the same in this case. It feels like today was the hottest day of the year so far, so we should be clear.

I had a handful of things to finish up in the front office in the morning before digging in. Schroeder's delivered the plants around 10:30 am. I had to make a quick run to the garden center for a few last minute things and I was ready to go around noon.

We had to install a couple poles in which to grow 'pole beans.' Karri at Lakeshore cleaners gave me some tips on how to construct them. With a few modifications and fill-in materials, we ended up with one 6-ft pole and one 5-ft pole. I used starter plants around the 6-ft pole and seeds around the 5-ft pole. I'm excited to see if this works for me as well as it has worked for Karri in the past.

After the poles were set, the rest moved along fairly quickly.

I big thank you to Ann Mollica and Alli Jensen for helping with the planting. It was quite a warm day, so thanks for lending a hand ladies! Ann is also responsible for most of the photos I'll be posting on this blog. She's pretty amazing with the camera.

From west to east, the planting order is as follows:

Pole Beans, Peppers (bell & jalapeno), Tomatoes (big boy & roma), Onion (red & yellow), Kolrabi, Beets, Radish, Zuchinni and Eggplant. The beets and radish were planted from seed. And... thanks to the Lehr Family, we had nice bright colored paint sticks to label our rows.

After planting I recruited Isaac Bray, another front office staff member, to assist me with some 'grunt' work. We headed over to Appleton's yard waste site on Whitman Avenue to round up some mulch. The attendant gave us quite an eduction in gardening as he's been doing it for 40 years. 45 minutes later, we left with a trailer full of rich mulch to top dress our garden.

Much to our dismay, the skies opened up as we were pulling into the ballpark, so we ended up storing the load of mulch in the shed for the night to keep it from getting soaked.

This morning, Isaac was kind enough, on his off day, to help me spread mulch before heading to the Brewer game. Thanks I-Money! We laid it down thick in hopes of keeping out as many weeds as possible, which is a challenge when gardening a plot of ground for the very first year.

Lastly, we put the fence in place and then stood back to admire the work.

The grounds crew was curious about the whole project. The garden is somewhat in their territory behind the fence. They are used to seeing overgrown weeds in that space. Adjacent to the garden is their sod farm, used to patch the field as needed. The grounds crew received a pallet of fresh sod today, and rumor has it, they'll be laying the excess around the garden, to give it a nice finished look.

Here's a shot of me explaining our finished work.

Should we or shouldn't we?

2010-05-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

The idea jumped into my head after chatting with a business owner that I ran into this past winter. We chatted for a while about how a growing number of companies are planting gardens on site for all sorts of reasons. What about a garden at the ballpark? Would it be too much work? Would our staff be on board? What would we do with the produce?

The decision was basically made on two facts:

1. I really enjoy gardening.

2. This would be a great community-based project for the Timber Rattlers.

So, we moved forward and the project was made possible with the help of a few staff members and a couple generous contributors. A special thank you goes out Ron & Karri of Lakeshore Cleaners (N. Richmond Street, Appleton) for preparing the garden plot and for providing us with their special mix of compost, which I'm told grows some of the best tomatoes around! Shroeder's Fox Valley Greenhouse, De Pere...Thanks Kevin!... provided us with all the starter plants to get the garden rolling. And Home Depot (Westhill Blvd.) chipped in by donating the garden fence.

The garden space is located just outside the fence off the left field corner of the ballpark.

Here's a look at the space with preparation in progress on May 20, 2010.