vegetables

Fourth Year - December, 2009

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Overview

In 2009, the Sunnyvale Teaching and Demonstration Garden completed its fourth summer in its garden space at Sunnyvale’s Charles Street Community Gardens.We continued our popular series of free gardening classes in the garden and continued to grow seasonally appropriate, organically grown vegetables and ornamentals in our demonstration beds.

Teaching

This year our monthly free public classes covered topics ranging from the design and use of drip irrigation systems to garden bed preparation and planting vegetable seedlings to ways to renovate an aging home landscape. We taught seven of our classes outdoors in the community gardens’ growing circle meeting space. These classes were followed by rounds in our garden where class participants could see examples of what was taught in class, try their hands at techniques taught or learn about ways our project gardeners were meeting various gardening challenges. Two classes were taught in the Sunnyvale Public Library. Overall, 432 gardeners attended our nine project classes.

McClellan Ranch Home page

Overview

The McClellan Ranch Community Gardens are bounded by oak woodland and riparian habitat.  Gardeners have challenges to successfully grow crops.  The alluvial soil is extremely fertile.  However, vagaries in the microclimate occur because of its location at the base of a canyon.  Wildlife abound, especially gophers, squirrels, rats, and rabbits.  Deer are often present in the park but the garden perimeter is fenced to keep them out. 

Our garden plot was surrounded by other garden plots before the realignment of the gardens and the 4H facilities to accommodate a new hiking and biking trail.  The surrounding plots insulated ours from major pest damage.  Now the south and west sides of our plot are bordered by 4H livestock enclosures.  This provides easy access to garden pests which attributed to the 2008 crop failure.

The goal this year was to plant a variety of soy beans (edamame) that local gardeners could grow in their home gardens or in their community garden plots.  We could then have a tasting so the public could determine which varieties suited their specific palate.

Third Year, 2008

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Nine Palms Ranch Trial, 2008

Team members: Many Nine Palms Ranch volunteers

Summary

Peaches & Cream corn was reliably productive over an extended harvest period.

Overview

In 2007 we planted four varieties of corn with different maturation times, but they all matured within a week of each other anyhow, not two to three weeks apart as predicted. So this year we planted three varieties of corn at three and a half week intervals to see if we could get corn to mature at different times over the summer. We also tried four different winter cover crops to improve the soil and see if there were differences in a variety grown in the different cover crop areas.

We used three varieties of sweet corn (Latin name, Zea mays). They were standard, not super sweet varieties. Silver Queen is white, Jubilee is yellow and Peaches and Cream is bi-color. See the chart below.

Santa Clara County is one of the best places in the world to create a year-round garden, whether you want to grow vegetables or a beautiful sustainable garden full of trees, shrubs, perennials and flowers.  Come learn the basics about our climate and soil and the best practices for creating your ideal garden.  If you are a beginning gardener, you will learn how to get started successfully.  If you have some experience, you'll learn about sustainable practices and appropriate plants to introduce into your garden.  the goal of this class is to enable you to have a successful and sustainable garden in our time and place.

There are six classes on six consecutive Tuesday evenings from October 7 through November 11 from 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Register at http://www.ci.campbell.ca.us/Recreation/communitycenter

Nine Palms Ranch Trial, 2007

Leads: Betsy Fischer and Gil Patrick

Team members: Carole Reek and Suna Herder

Summary

Under challenging weather conditions, Silver Queen and Peaches & Cream ranked highest among the four corns tested. Golden Bantam is not recommended.

Overview

We compared four varieties of sweet corn (Zea mays) to determine the best production and taste. All the varieties were standard corn, not super sweet. Silver Queen is white corn, Golden Bantam and Jubilee are yellow, and Peaches and Cream is bi-color.

This fall, plant a crop in your vegetable bed to feed the SOIL instead of you and your family. We'll talk about what a cover crop is, why they are useful and which ones are good to plant here.

Followed by Grand Rounds in the Community Garden.

Join other gardeners in learning how to save seeds from your favorite summer vegetables and flowers. Followed by Open Garden until 1 p.m.

Is your tomato really ripe? When do you pick corn? Don't let all your efforts go to waste by harvesting too soon or too late. Come learn how to know when to harvest and how to extend mid-season production.

Followed by Grand Rounds in the Community Garden.

Second Year, 2007

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