Sooo cunnin'

My tomato plants are nearly 10 inches tall under growlights, and these Asian eggplants, planted just a few days ago, are already up. Their colleagues the lipstick peppers--peppers are slow to germinate--have yet to appear. After viewing the amazing success my neighbor Mary Roy had in her ripstop grow tunnels with wintering over greens and the early growth of seeds planted in the fall, I planted out my cold frame this week. After I installed the digital thermometer, I discovered that even on a cloudy day the temperature of the soil was 67 degrees. To avoid cooking the seeds and young plants, I propper the cover open slightly and covered the whole bed with remay inside. I am hoping for the first appearance of seedlings by weekend.

Schoolyard greening at East End Community School

On Monday March 12 students, parents, staff, and community volunteers gathered at East End Community School for a school grounds design workshop. Funded with a grant from Portland Trails, the process began by assigning participants to teams, who brainstormed ideas for activity centers, fitness equipment, and nature study areas around the school. Kids, including one fifth grader who arrived with a carefully constructed model for a fish pond complete with waterfall and safety fence, did the brainstorming and adults assisted with recording and facilitating. There were great snacks available to help fuel brain cells and design professional volunteers helping with technical matters like how to read a three-dimensional model and site plan.
Then each of the design teams located its suggestions on a large plan of the grounds. Plans have been hung in the hallway between the East End lobby and the cafeteria for review by the public and the East End school community. Next steps: the East End parent teacher organization, the school's landscape architect, Carroll Associates, and Portland Trails will develop a plan for bringing some of the ideas to life.

Flower show delights

This year's Portland Flower Show on March 8-12 at the Portland Company property was a definite improvement over last year's. Several local garden centers, missing from last year's show, were back, with lovely and instructive displays on the theme of All Around the World. We especially liked the increasing attention to educating customers, with plant matter carefully identified and staff available to explain cultural information. Some displays won numerous Flower Show awards, and Best of Show went to Seko's Garden Design of Buxton for a tea house in a Japanese moss garden with reflecting pool nearby.

Also winning several awards was O'Donal's Nursery of Gorham which recreated plantings at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Worcester, MA, using Cary Award-winning plants. This flowering cherry tree is readily grown in southern and coastal Maine, and to its right is a small Centennial magnolia--very early flowering, very hardy, eventually about 12 feet tall.
As usual, there was some stunning stone work, and one stoneworker was building walls and cutting stone in a fascinating exhibit. This arch and meditative stone plaza was created by Aronson stoneworks. The least satisfying feature of the flower show was the development of the theme All Around the World by some exhibits. A few included the kind of lush escapist tropics that many winter-weary show visitors came for; others looked unsatisfyingly like Maine gardens.

Time to buy a CSA share

This is the season for purchasing CSA shares, and last weekend the Portland convivium (chapter) of Slow Food, along with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners' Association and the First Parish UU Church on Congress Street sponsored a fair bringing together consumers and farms offering CSA shares this year.
A CSA share is a prepaid voucher for locally grown produce from a nearby farm--CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

I bought a share from Rippling Waters farm in Standish, which is offering the perfect deal for a home gardener. While most CSAs require you to take a bag of groceries selected by the farm each week, Rippling Waters allows you to buy what you want, when you want, from the Portland Farmers' Market or Rippling Waters' own retail market. For me, this means I can grow salad and stirfy greens, tomatoes, garlic and herbs in my own garden on North Street, and buy the crops I don't have space for--squashes, corn, root vegetables--from Rippling Waters later in the season. And I can buy a box of tomatoes for canning in the fall. Check it out.