Hello gardeners!!
I hope you’ve had a wonderful winter and are ready for another great season!
If you are interested in having a community plot, the application forms will be available soon, but are not yet available.
I will post them to this website, send them to previous plot-owners, and send out a campus-wide email. Those who had plots last year will have first priority on their plots again this year.
I will be in touch soon!
Ok folks,
Sorry for the delay! The shed is READY.
Here’s the deal…
We could make a long list of rules and such for keeping things in the shed, but instead I’m just gonna ask that you please just be considerate!! 🙂 There is a small amount of space for all of us to share, so try to limit what you keep inside. I would recommend writing your name on your tools, ect. that you choose to keep in there.
One thing: Please do not use anything that does not belong to you unless you have permission.
Community Gardeners will have access to 2 walls of the shed: 
When looking inside the door, the short and long walls to your left are available for your use.
The combination to the lock will be sent to you via email. You can start using it today!
Also, we will be painting the outside of the shed. If you’re wondering about this interesting choice of color for the floor…we bought high quality (but oddly-colored) paint 70% off. We will be painting the outside of the shed this color as a base and then painting brown on top. We’ll be doing this next week so beware of the bright green shed! This will only be temporary, I promise! 🙂
Late Blight Blooms for Area Tomatoes
Here’s the news story that Dave referred to below from the Morning Call this morning reporting the continued threat of the Tomato Blight.
Here is a picture of a “hornworm” that we found yesterday munching on our potato plants (Jodie Frey found one last week on one of her tomatoes). Hornworms feed on plants of the nightshade family (tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant), and are the larvae of several large sphinx moth species, aka hawk moths.
Thankfully, still no sign of late blight that we can find – see front page story in the Morning Call today – it sounds truly devastating
3-inch caterpillar of the Carolina Sphinx (a "hornworm")
Hey everyone!
You may be wondering about that awesome-looking shed out at the garden! It mysteriously popped up on Saturday (July 12th). This shed was designed and built by a student, Scott Stinner, in the Sullivan Trail parking deck on campus. Then John Wilson brought a big platform truck and we brought it over and assembled it over the weekend.
This shed WILL be available for your use to store things like garden tools and other small items by next week. About half the space inside will be designated for the community garden and half for the student-run garden. We will keep it locked, probably with a combination lock (and I’ll send you an email with the combination).
We will be painting it in the next week or so, and I’ll post again when it’s ready for use.
Hi all, returned to our garden patch after a week at the beach – wow, how things change! We are about to be inundated with cucumbers, beans, squash, tomatoes, etc etc. Any of you growing potatoes need to keep an eye out for Colorado potato beetles (Google it for pics) – we found some little ones muching away on ours, which we destroyed by squashing or clipping off the infested parts and bagging them. No sign of the late blight though
Finally, there are a few plots that are about waist-high in weeds – please hack these down before they go to seed – see the terms and conditions of your plot agreement
Dave the Enforcer Brandes
We caught a groundhog on Saturday in one of the Havahart traps. Andy Smith, Mike Jordan, and I then took him in a ride in Mike’s van and let him go across a field. The poor thing was terrified!! But hopefully he’ll be fine now and won’t be munching on our veggies.
The trap is NOT set right now, but if you see signs of groundhogs, let me know and we’ll set it again.
Left: The little guy in the trap. He looked so sad!
On the Right: Andy Smith and Mike Jordan getting him ready for the ride over to the field (and Andy’s videotaping him too, of course! 🙂 )
Wow, great webpage. I wish I had a nice looking garden as well as a nice webpage!!!!
Kney….I hope this post works
Hey everyone,
Please check out these websites for more information on this disease that could be effecting your tomatoes and potatoes. Please watch your plants carefully, as this could easily spread around to other plots!
Here’s a couple websites with more information on the disease and what to do if you find it…
From the Morning Call: Penn State Master Gardeners Late Blight
Penn State Website: Serious Disease Threatens Home Gardens, Commercial Fields
Hey everybody, check out this new documentary currently in theaters called Food, Inc.
Here’s the review:
Forget buckets of blood. Nothing says horror like one of those tubs of artificially buttered, nonorganic popcorn at the concession stand. That, at least, is one of the unappetizing lessons to draw from one of the scariest movies of the year, “Food, Inc.,” an informative, often infuriating activist documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You’ll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch. — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Unfortunately it’s not in theaters too close to Easton, but it’ll be playing at the Pocono Community Theater on July 24th. Check out the website for more info!
If you get a chance to see it, please comment here about your thoughts!