volume 19 issue 3 the newsletter that helps you grow...
TRANSCRIPT
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From the Ground Up
Volume 19 Issue 3 The Newsletter That Helps You Grow Fall 2014
Lord of the Gourds
THE FLOYD BENNETT GARDENS ASSOCIATION
Contents
Lord of the Gourds
Halloween Party Held in Ryan Center
Fort Mason Community Garden
Tips for Growing Garlic
Fall General Meeting
Halloween Party Photos
Nirmala Nanes
If you are new to the garden, you may not know
who he is. But you’ve surely seen his work. He rolls
in on his bicycle very unassumingly, yet assuredly, to
maintain one of the focal points of the Floyd Bennett
Gardens: The Children’s Pumpkin Patch. He has
transformed the Pumpkin Patch into a scientific
exploration of gardening practice while still
managing to produce a substantial fall harvest of the
family Cucurbitaceae. This year is no different.
Joe Nerone, committee chair, and members of
his 30-person volunteer committee, harvested 16
pumpkins with names like Howden, Expert and
Charisma in early September. On November 1st, at
FBGA’s Halloween Party, children decorated these
pumpkins (keeping the skins intact so they can be
eaten later), made crafts, got their faces painted and
ate good food with their garden families.
Located near Plot I56, the Pumpkin Patch
manages to draw the eyes of passersby with its
variety of lush and colorful wares. This year it was
the eruptions of large green pumpkin vine leaves,
voluptuous fruit of the Birdhouse Gourd, the deep
burgundy of the Moulin Rouge sunflowers at the
corners and the heady scent of the pastel sweet peas
climbing the fence.
If you are lucky, Joe will be in the Patch when
you pass by and if you talk to him, you’ll learn
something you never knew. For example, did you
know that he rotates where he grows the pumpkins
every year to avoid the Squash Vine Borer? This
oddly beautiful moth lays its eggs in the dirt next to
the base of the vine. The caterpillars that hatch
burrow into the vine and eat it - dooming the entire
vine. Because the caterpillar pupates in the soil,
relocating the following year’s crop can give you a
head start on this pest. Joe has done extensive
Joe is rightly proud that one of the pumpkins grown in FBGA’s
Pumpkin Patch took second place at the Queens County Fair.
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FBGA Contacts
Adriann Musson – President 917-446-3764 [email protected] Bob Halligan – Vice President & Education
718-338-4255 [email protected] Judy Tropeano – Treasurer
718-444-7210 [email protected] Clara Villanueva – Corresponding Secretary
718-782-5694 [email protected] Lynn Halligan – Recording Secretary & Special Events
[email protected] Sylvia Tsingis – Champions of Courage Garden
[email protected] Lynn Graham – Children’s Garden
[email protected] Alan Rassner – Conflict Resolution 718-209-4838 [email protected]
Carl Arendt – Operations & Maintenance 917-681-3624 [email protected]
Gail Schneider – Fundraising [email protected]
Tom Ingram – Landscape Maintenance 917-209-6452 [email protected]
Karen Orlando – Elections [email protected]
Tom Marange – Help A Gardener 718-382-4216 [email protected]
Marie Artesi – Landscape Design 718-256-4480
Frank Gentile - Habitat [email protected] Barbara Pearson – Newsletter
[email protected] Joe Nerone – Pumpkin Patch
718-789-2713
Floyd Bennett Gardens Association Newsletter
Floyd Bennett Gardens Association Inc. is located in Floyd Bennett Field, a
unit of Gateway National Recreation Area.
Editor: Barbara Pearson
Contributors: Deborah Heckert, Nirmala Nanes, Shereen Rosenthal, George Tsingis
Proofreaders: Paul Moses, Shari Romar
Photographs: Frank Gentile, Deborah Heckert,
Nirmala Nanes, Rita Pearl, Tom Shaw, George Tsingis
Website: fbga.net Contact Louis M.: [email protected]
Contact us: FBGA News • PO Box 340986 • Ryder Retail Station Brooklyn, NY 11234-9993 • e-mail [email protected]
Our Policy: All submissions to the newsletter may be edited for grammar, spelling and length. We reserve the right to reject entries.
Disclaimer Required by the National Parks Service
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and
should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the United States
Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute
their endorsement by the U.S. Government.
research on garden pests stating, “I want to know my
enemies well.” He recommends that you cover any
yellow holes in the base of your vines with compost
and deter the moth by planting white Icicle Radish,
the flower of which repels adult moths.
The assault on our cucumber, squash, pumpkin,
gourds, etc. doesn’t end with the Squash Vine Borer.
There is also the Squash Bug that emerges in the
second week of July and sucks the sap out of the
leaves. Look for its metallic copper-colored egg
clusters under the leaves. Other threats include the
‘wilts,’ a fungus spread by the Cucumber Beetle and
powdery mildew in mid- to late July.
There were some interesting uncommon plants
in the Pumpkin Patch this year too. Solanum
integrifolium (pumpkin tree) produces orange
pumpkin-like fruit on an eggplant-like stem with
similar flowers and thorns. There was also the lovely
lupine, a legume, fertilizing the soil with nitrates for
next year’s crop. Did you see the Birdhouse Gourds?
Even though many gardeners may be familiar with
its delightfully curvaceous fruit growing on a vine,
most people have only seen the end result, at a
Pottery Barn, perhaps. The Pumpkin Patch provides
a service for visitors to FBGA, as a kind of a living
museum, with the Lord of the Gourds as curator.
Of course, there is so much more to learn. Stop
by The Children’s Pumpkin Patch and talk to Joe.
Maybe he’ll explain why there’s a bee sleeping in
that pumpkin flower over there.
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Halloween Party Held in Ryan Center Deborah Heckert
The bad weather held off long enough on
Halloween to allow children to trick-or-treat without
being soaked through, but unfortunately for our
FBGA Halloween party on November 1st, the next
day brought strong winds and heavy rain. Instead of
a party outside in the garden, Plan B led to a cozy,
warm get-together in one of the big, ground floor
rooms at the Ryan Center, thanks to the Events
Committee’s forethought and planning.
A large group of members had volunteered to
plan and help with the party, and they arrived early
to decorate the room; streamers were put up across
windows, tables were set out, and activity areas
arranged, while the volunteers and early arrivals
were fortified with coffee and donuts. Some
ingenuity was required – for instance apples were
hung by strings from coat racks for the apple-
bobbing! Then, the minute the general meeting was
adjourned, the volunteers again sprang into action,
putting out masses of food, supplies for the
children’s activities, and putting away chairs.
Congratulations to the volunteers! The place looked
great!
Last to arrive were the pumpkins, which had
been stored down in the Ryan Center’s basement.
The table groaned with the weight of the beautiful
pumpkins produced in our own pumpkin patch by
Joe Nerone and his team. Place of pride was given to
Joe’s prize-winning pumpkin, a 19-pound beauty
which won second place at the Queens Farm
Museum County Fair! Joe’s secret for a winning
pumpkin: lots of water (at least an inch a week),
plenty of compost, and an obsession with searching
out and destroying any appearance of squash bugs
and their eggs, particularly in June.
Once everything was set up, out came the food,
and the fun and the activities began. The adults
enjoyed themselves chatting and catching up with
each other, while the children decorated pumpkins,
colored, and ran around having a good time. During
the most crowded part of the afternoon, there were
about 20 children, from young babies on up. The
costumes were great! We had little gangs of pretty
princesses and mighty superheroes, but some more
unusual costumes as well. Little Baby Emily was
adorable in her pumpkin outfit, as was the little
mouse and the butterfly. There was a pirate, a
fireman, a leopard, among other imaginative
offerings. And Daliyah made a fantastic Dorothy
Sithavinn Sepp managed the pumpkin decorating. At
one point all the children lined up to bob for the
apples on strings, and there was a Halloween goodie
bag hunt, with each child searching for the bag with
his or her name on it. Later in the afternoon, Adriann
led a much-contested game of musical chairs.
With a rainbow-colored wig on his head, Derek
Pearl acted as the party clown, making people laugh
with his jokes, and everyone seemed to be having a
good time, with a friendly sort of hubbub filling the
room.
There was more than enough food, with
everything from yummy deviled eggs, crackers and
cheese and dip and chips overflowing the tables. Of
course there were plenty of sweets – it was a
Halloween party after all! Cupcakes, cookies, candy
were mounded on the tables, looking tempting and
tasting yummy. Some parents were perhaps
concerned about how much sugar their children were
consuming, but it was all in the spirit of Halloween
fun.
As the conversation began to lessen, and as
parents started looking at their watches and
collecting their tired children, Adriann drew the
winning name for the 50-50 raffle. Chrissy Spano
went home happy, having won $78! Everyone
applauded Adriann and her wonderful group of party
volunteers for a great occasion. And, as Adriann put
it, “It’s great! I love it!”
See page 7 for more Halloween Party photos from the Wizard of Oz! Christina Shaw was in
charge of the face painting, and Lily Piligra and
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Fort Mason Community Garden George Tsingis
Early this summer my wife, Sylvia, and I went
to San Francisco to visit our daughters and we took
the opportunity to visit our west coast counterpart –
the Fort Mason Community Garden – with whom we
share many similarities. It is one of the largest
community gardens in California, situated on Federal
land as we are, overlooking the bay on one of San
Francisco’s many hills, separated from the city
proper only by the width of a city street.
The garden is comprised of about 125 individual
plots measuring 5’ x 10’ with annual dues of $80.00.
Members garden year round but are limited in
what they can grow – primarily flowers, cacti and
some drought and / or cold resistant vegetables such
as cabbage, kale, artichokes, occasionally cukes and
zucchini - not a sign of a tomato or other hot weather
crop! It is plagued by San Francisco’s cool micro-
climates where turning the corner can result in a drop
in temperature of a couple degrees. They are in an
ongoing battle with raccoons, skunks and birds.
As of the time of our visit they had a waiting list
of approximately 200. People on the waiting list are
permitted to groom and take care of the perimeter of
the garden which is a wildlife habitat and consists of
indigenous flowers and bushes, and is where various
cacti are cultivated and grown. It is encircled by
wind-blocking trees and bushes with many citrus,
loquat, pear and plum trees. There is a “workday”
every 3 months followed by a barbecue for the
volunteers.
A small greenhouse is maintained by the
Greenhouse Committee where they start and
maintain seedlings for the general membership. They
have city water at their disposal for which they pay
the city $7,000 - $8,000 / year. The use of plastic
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bottles for root-watering is encouraged in order to
conserve as much as they can, because of the
ongoing drought and to save on the expenses.
They have a maintenance shed and 2 storage
sheds, 5 wheelbarrows, other gardening and hand
power tools, plus an entire building (in good repair)
for offices, meetings and lectures. Their Education
Committee arranges for (usually paid) lecturers from
local universities and horticultural associations.
General usage of the Fort Mason Garden is
quite similar to that of FBGA but there are some
significant differences in our favor – namely, size,
cost and availability as well as well-planned and
executed workshops by our knowledgeable and
dynamic Education Committee!
Tips for Growing Garlic Shereen Rosenthal
It’s approaching November - garlic planting
time in the New York City area. Many of us saved
some of the extra garlic we grew this year, ordered
online or went to the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival
to make sure we had garlic to plant right now.
My trip to the Garlic Festival last year provided
me with many pointers from the Garlic Seed
Foundation. They stated that you should move
around the bed where you plant your garlic, to avoid
the garlic bloat nematode and bacteria that attack
garlic. We have small plots at FBGA, but perhaps
even small adjustments would be beneficial to next
year’s crop of garlic.
Choose large bulbs to grow large bulbs next year
(it’s all genetics!). Use only the largest cloves; the
smallest cloves of the bulb can be used for cooking.
If the bulb has spongy, discolored cloves, don’t use
them. A piece of personal advice: if you are growing
different varieties, use pencil to mark them on a stick
or masking tape because pencil doesn’t wash off in
the snow; or even better, make a diagram. Last year I
grew six or seven different varieties and the ink
washed off in the snow so I could only differentiate
softnecks and hardnecks, not specific varieties.
I consulted our very own garlic goddess and
FBGA president, Adriann Musson, for pointers on
growing garlic and below is our Q&A.
Q: When is it preferable to plant garlic, early or
late November? Is planting in October a problem?
A: Garlic can be planted anytime from October
until the ground freezes. Earlier planting may result
in the garlic starting to grow and then freezing. I
haven’t found this to be a problem, but others feel
that it can result in smaller bulbs.
Q: How should garlic be planted?
A: Garlic cloves should be planted 2 inches deep
and about 4 inches apart.
Q: Do we water the garlic when we plant it?
A: Water them the day you are planting. After
that it seems to do okay with just the rain.
Q: Can we plant both hardneck and softneck
garlic in this area; do they do equally well?
A: Hardnecks do better in areas with colder
winters. Softnecks, by the way, do not have scapes.
Q: Why do we cut the scapes and how far down
do you cut them?
A: Cutting the scapes encourages bulb growth.
Cut them back to where they come out of the main
stem when they have curled.
Q: When do we stop watering garlic?
A: Once the scapes form cut back on watering
the garlic. Water only when the soil is really dry.
Q: When should we harvest the garlic?
A: Garlic should be harvested when the bottom
third of the stem is brown.
Q: When we harvest the garlic, should we wash
the dirt off of the bulbs?
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A: Do not wash the bulbs. The soil will dry and
can be brushed off.
Q: Where should the bulbs dry?
A: Dry the bulbs in a cool, dry spot.
Q: Do you cut the roots off of the drying garlic?
A: I do, but others don’t.
Q: How long can garlic last in storage?
A: Usually about 4-6 months, depending on the
variety and storage conditions.
Q: Should garlic be kept in the refrigerator?
A: Refrigerating garlic destroys its flavor.
Q: During drying, my garlic split. Why is that?
A: You let it grow too long.
Note: Adriann’s recipe for making homemade garlic
powder can be found in the Winter 2012 edition of
the newsletter on fbga.net
Fall General Meeting Deborah Heckert
Despite the wind and rain on November 1, about
60 people made their way to the warm, dry room in
the Ryan Center for the 2014 Fall General Meeting,
braving the weather to celebrate the community at
the heart of the Floyd Bennett Gardens Association.
President Adriann Musson began the meeting a
few minutes after 1 p.m. by announcing there wasn’t
much to say! The summer was a good one in the
garden, and generally everything ran smoothly. That
being said, FBGA is a big organization, and there is
always business to discuss and information to pass
along. Items in Adriann’s briefing included:
1. There seemed to be less theft this year, though
purple eggplant seemed to “disappear” the most
regularly. Of course, we had our summer’s “flower
girl,” who was actually caught, prosecuted, and
fined. (See the summer newsletter for details.)
Adriann emphasized that all members need to help
prevent theft, by non-aggressively confronting
strangers, asking them where their plot is, and, if
they don’t have a good answer, warning them that if
they don’t leave you will call park police.
2. FBGA helped the Park Service with a project
designed to encourage and support the monarch
butterfly migration by planting milkweed in a large
planter. The plants grew well, and monarchs did
indeed visit the planter.
3. NPS wanted us to remove the containers where
we store our equipment. We arranged a compromise
by which we placed large planters up against the
containers and planted them with flowers. Next year
we hope to train vines up the sides of the containers
to help further disguise them. It is important that we
do whatever we can to cooperate with NPS.
4. Our relationship with NPS was a recurring
theme. The specter lingering behind a lot of these
issues is the open question of whether we will need
to begin to pay NPS rent and usage fees for our
garden. The garden officers are hopeful that the
situation will be resolved in our favor.
5. Adriann commended the many people who took
on projects that benefited the garden. Gardeners
donated their labor to rebuild tables and benches, and
one metalworker donated 4 more barbeque grills that
he had made to our picnic area.
6. Tom Ingram has been color-coding the trees in
the garden, and is in the process of augmenting the
kinds of shrubs by the flower clocks. Frank Gentile
has done a great job in the Habitat, which now boasts
a new underground watering system. There was
something in bloom in the habitat all summer, and
everything is looking wonderful there.
7. To help with the continued development of our
common areas like the Habitat, if you have a
perennial plant, bulbs, or a shrub that has outgrown
its space in your plot or for which you have no home,
please donate it to the Habitat. They can use
anything! (Donate it – do NOT plant it yourself!)
8. We had a very good workshop series this year –
each year members offer 12-16 different workshops.
Please support them by attending!
9. Joe Nerone had a stellar year in the pumpkin
patch. One huge, beautiful 19-pound pumpkin won
2nd place in the Queens County Farm Museum Fair.
10 Adriann requested that we make sure our email
addresses on file with FBGA are current and please
look for FBGA emails at least once a week as there
have been some communication issues lately.
11. Adriann advised gardeners to clean up their
garden in the Fall. It’s easier, and lessens the places
for rats and other vermin to find homes
It felt good to come together at the end of the
year and look back at what we had accomplished as a
community. As Adriann went through her list of
items, it seemed clear that, no matter what issues and
problems had arisen, the generosity and spirit of the
people who make up the garden solved those issues.
If we continue to be involved, we can continue
making the garden better and better. Adriann made
sure to thank everyone for the garden’s success this
year, and it hit home how many people it takes to
make this garden work year after year.
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Halloween
Party
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Polyphemus Moth Seen at FBGA
Photo by Tom Shaw