Greetings From the Garden

Every year there's a slightly different story to tell about the garden.  This summer's biggest hero by far was the cucumber.  Thanks to our new trellis system, we had a bumper crop with an average weekly harvest of 40 pounds of juicy cukes.  Diced up with some fresh onions, cherry tomatoes, and basil, that made for a lot of tasty cucumber salad. 

Another pleasant surprise has been the butternut squash which turned out to be one of our most prolific garden volunteers.  (We use the term garden volunteer to describe the plants that seed themselves and show up in one of our beds without formal invitation.) This summer the butternut squash volunteers turned out to be particularly productive, giving us more than 140 pounds for St. Rosalie's Food Pantry.                                                                    

Meanwhile, it's already time to begin doing the groundwork for the 2027 growing season.  Over the next few weeks, we will be cleaning out the beds, adding compost and planting garlic. Fall is the new spring!  Although as a final touch, we must then mulch the garlic with straw to tuck it in for the winter months.                 

For now, though, we're still trying to hold on to a few memories of our glorious East End summer.  This year we seeded multiple varieties of zinnias and cosmos, along with some marigolds, all of which grew in profusion. The garden reached peak beauty in late July and August, but we've continued to enjoy a long

extended bloom right through Halloween.  We hope this kept the honeybees and other native pollinators fat and happy, but we've also learned that the flowers provide some additional benefits. Companion planting the zinnias with the cucumbers turns out to have been one of main reasons we ended up with such a great harvest this year! 

Enjoy the fall weather. Don't forget to lay down some fresh compost in your garden beds and consider making a planting guide to get ready for your spring planting.

Maribeth Fuchs

GGHG Manager