Join us Saturday morning 10-12 in the garden to harvest, fertilize, and tie up our vegetables. ... See MoreSee Less

A lovely blue lobelia that we added to the native pollinator garden last weekend. #pollinatorgarden #schoolgarden ... See MoreSee Less

This year we are trying growing beans on a net instead of up twine. I’m not sure whether or not it’s a resounding success yet, but it’s fun to see the beans hanging through the part of the net between two rows like in this photo. #schoolgarden #beans #organicgarden ... See MoreSee Less

This morning, these squash were white with powdery mildew. We are spraying a few test plants with diluted apple cider vinegar (2.5T/gallon of water) to see if it can clear the powdery mildew without burning the leaves, then we will do the rest on Saturday. #schoolgarden #communitygarden #squash ... See MoreSee Less

This is what 110 pounds of squash, zucchini, okra, beans, tomatoes, and peppers looked like at drop-off yesterday! It’s the combined harvest from Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (since @afacfeeds was closed for the holiday). #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger #communitygarden @arlingtonfoua ... See MoreSee Less

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We’ve been struggling to keep our raised bed full of squash sufficiently watered in the past few weeks. The squash in the ground has hardly needed any water at all, so we are planning on opening up our last unplanted section of the garden and transplanting these seedlings tomorrow morning. These are our “second generation” squash and zucchini plants, after a whole row of zucchini was decimated by squash vine borers last month. In the past, we haven’t had great luck getting a second generation of squash to produce much, but this year the ones we transplanted from the raised bed to the ground are already huge and starting to bear. If we can keep these babies alive after we transplant them, we may boost our total garden yield by a few hundred pounds— we are getting close to 50 pounds a week from our current generation of squash, and if they don’t die they will bear until almost Thanksgiving. We will plant these with plastic cup “cuffs” at the soil line to discourage squash vine borers. #squash #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger ... See MoreSee Less

Passionflower in the pollinator garden. This fall, we plan to transplant some of these to the arch over our gate, so we can see how they do for us in full sun. #schoolgarden #nativeplants ... See MoreSee Less

We spoke too soon— it’s actually squash-eggplant-tomato-pepper-okra o’clock. It would have also included beans if we hadn’t run out of time. Happy August! Tomorrow these will head over to @afacfeeds #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger ... See MoreSee Less

It’s squash o’clock at the TJ garden. I think this is our biggest single-day squash harvest yet. #squash #schoolgarden ... See MoreSee Less

Visiting the County Fair on Saturday morning between 10-noon? Drop by to say hi to our volunteer gardeners! ... See MoreSee Less

We've been tracking our harvests for five years now, which gives us some interesting data. You can see here that last year was an outlier-- we really pulled out all of the stops to maximize our production (and got a little burned out in the process). This year, we scheduled a few extra vacation days for our garden managers, and our harvest is roughly in line with a standard year's harvest. This is actually pretty good news, because the weather is getting more and more challenging every year (thanks, global warming!). We had a very wet spring that cancelled a lot of garden activities, then alternating drought/heat waves and flood all summer long. Like a lot of other community gardens in the area, we've been hit with more pest issues this year as well-- we lost most of our zucchini to squash vine borers (who fortunately ignored our yellow squash), and we tried out a few new varieties of tomatoes that haven't been as productive as some years. And some varmint sheared off several rows of beans every time we replanted them. But our okra is taking off, and our squash is holding its own, and we're starting to see beans really come into their own, so we've got our fingers crossed for a strong finish to the garden year. Drop by the garden on Sunday between 10 and noon, and you can check it out for yourself! ... See MoreSee Less