October events

Welcome back to another autumn episode of Lost in the Piles of Discarded Leaves. No really, if I had known the nearby Pecan and Ailanthus would conspire to dump their leaves early this episode would have been on time!  Despite autumn difficulties this episode of LITFM will continue. First off some of you who visit the Sustainable Neighbors page at meetup.com will notice a recent posting for the Fall Garden tour. It’s not a mirage nor some autumn trickery, the tour is back, and it’s on the first Sunday of November (the 2^nd) with a rain date of November the 9^th.  Occasionally I get folks at the booth asking why we are doing a garden tour at all and that’s a simple enough query to answer.

The original garden tour was conceived, produced and organized by Sustainable Sandhills as a means to promote urban farming and sustainable practices. The original tour was spread across two counties and featured upwards of twelve tour locations that offered varied means and insights into sustainable agriculture. The tours were generally run on Saturdays and the entire event lasted about four hours. After two years of the Urban farm tour, it was decided to centralize it at one spot down town at the community gardens on Vanstory and Mann Streets and call it the Urban Farm Day. After the second year of the event the concept was dropped with no chance of returning.

The end of UFD/UFT would have been the last anyone would hear until Sustainable Neighbors got the idea to pick the tour back up again and it all began with the “Urban Farm Tour and home grown & Brewed Wine Tasting” even held on October 27^th 2013. We followed suit with the “Sustainable Neighbors Garden Tour” on June 8^th 2014. Respectively the first event drew 21 neighbors (by RSVP) out to see the sights, while the second drew 17. Both events could easily be called successful. At the least it proved that a tour every six months or so could definitely work as the cool season garden is a differing animal than the warm season garden. Since sustainability also champions gardening 365 days a year it makes perfect sense to demonstrate how that works too.

So this year we are prepared to do something a little different, The tour begins at a central location, the Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex with the Bridge garden being the central focus and from there members of the tour radiate outward to our additional locations in any order they desire. As of this writing my test gardens, as well as Melissa Brady’s Celtic gardens are confirmed locations, but we would love to get one or two more locations. You can sign up for the tour at the link below as a visitor or a location.

http://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/events/212065332/

             With the Sustainable Neighbors Garden Tour discussed I do have to talk about the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market. As you might know the farmer’s market is a 365 day affair that runs on Saturdays between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. The Wednesday market runs between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm. The weather this Saturday is supposed to be quite nice so of course there is no real good reason not to show up at the market, certainly the great fall foods and staples make filling your fridge with the best produce of the year an easy thing. Below is the market list for this week.

Southward Skies: A northern guide to southern Gardening

This is the second edition of my book, which was published using data compiled from several years of test garden operations. It’s written to aid gardeners of all skill levels in successful garden methods that are targeted for the south east but had proven to be a valued resource for gardens across the eastern coast. It’s certainly a good gift for that gardener you know or for yourself if you’d like to have a reliable field guide. The book costs $25.00 and we do take checks for this item, you can even have it signed.

Perennial:

1x Grape, Copper Muscadine - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Cold Season Crops

6x Romaine Lettuce, “Rouge d’Hiver” - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Bibb Lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Radicchio, “Rossa di Verona” - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

9x Mustard Greens, India - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

9x Mustard Greens, Japanese Red Giant - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Collards, Georgia Southern Creole - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Kale, Redbor/Red Russian - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Snow pea, Snowbird - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

This brings to a close a somewhat shorter and less colorful episode then normal but hopefully next week we’ll have more enjoyable content for all of you out there to read. Before the month is out we will definitely have a step-by-step guide to planting a tree which should be a first for LITFM and a fun project to record, stay tuned and as always Keep ‘em growing.