Tools you can use Larry Heather Foglia of Fox Hollow Farm demonstrate use of row cloth to protect plants from insects at June 4 presentation at Gateway Garden. It was a beautiful Saturday morning when Larry and Heather Foglia, co-founders of Gateway Community Garden, came to give a hands-on demonstration of the various organic methods that can protect our vegetables from insect predators. The hand-out, reproduced below, lists the various products and strategies you can use. Most of these products, including a bolt of row cloth that is in the shed, are now available for use on maintenance days ..read more

Time Again for Pot Luck!             It’s safe to be together again outdoors. And haven’t we waited a long time for that?             Saturday, June 26, starting at 6 pm, all gardeners are invited to gather in the garden for a potluck supper. Bring a dish to share and your own utensils and cups so we don’t create a lot of garbage. Save the date for our second potluck, set for July 24 at 5:30. Not only will we share food again, but we will also hear a presentation from gardener Liane B ..read more

Gateway Garden to Grow Hot Peppers for Bang Bang Hot Sauce They’ll send us free seeds. We’ll grow the peppers and harvest them, then send the peppers with pre-paid mailers to the Small Axe Pepper Company’s co-packing facility in New Jersey where they will be made into hot sauce that is sold in more than 200 stores. We get back a piece of the profits. That’s the deal that Small Axe Pepper has figured out as a way to help community gardens like Gateway become a little more self-sustaining. The sauce is named after the song “Bang” by Indie Pop band, AJR, who are collaborating with Small Axe. The ..read more

Everything you need to know to get a repeat performance of your favorite edibles next year without ever buying new seeds again. If left to them their own devices, fleshy fruits naturally fall to the earth, where some of their seeds sprout when spring arrives again. Saving seeds from these plants mimics nature’s way—and it’s not at all difficult to do. But remember that only seeds from open-pollinated, not hybrid, plants will produce the same crop next year. (The packet that the original seeds arrived in will tell you whether the variety is open-pollinated or hybrid.) read full article ..read more

Salt of the Earth Seed Company is unique because the seeds we sell you come from our own farm, Invincible Summer Farms. The seed is in turn used by our farm in fresh production. We go through a rigorous trialling period before things go into seed production. We are pleased to be offering our heirloom tomato, eggplant and pepper plants once again! Our customers include the finest restaurants in the NYC area with critically acclaimed chefs, so we can vouch for the high quality of both our seeds and produce. All our seed is open pollinated or heirloom and made to be freely shared and improve ..read more

Bumblebees in North America are facing pressures of disease, habitat loss, climate change and the overuse of pesticides. Here’s how gardeners can help: https://shar.es/1xFQ3r ..read more

How To Have a Weed-Free Garden With No Work! Thank you to: http://migardener.com/how-to-have-a-weed-free-garden-with-no-work/ Have you ever thought of a weed free garden and thought to yourself,  “impossible!“. Well think those thoughts no more. Hundreds of thousands of gardens go left and neglected because gardeners get discouraged by weeds. What I am going to explain in this blog post just two HIGHLY effective ways to not only grow MORE food in LESS SPACE, but also prevent weeds without lifting a finger! (warning: Some initial finger lifting may be needed.)  If you want a garden li ..read more

Here’s a good question: “What do you do about the cloves where the paper skin comes off as you are separating them? This can easily happen when pulling apart a head of garlic. Part or most of the paper wrapper will separate from the clove. Can you still plant these? The short answer is no. Garlic bulbs naturally shrink as they cure, and then shrink more in storage. This is the natural course of things, because dormancy lasts only so long, and the cloves must get busy changing into new plants. This natural shrinkage makes garlic cloves easier to peel, but naked cloves are not what you want in ..read more

What a team! Irene Moore and Viera Oszlak. Great autumn weather made last Saturday’s garden clean-up a pleasant afternoon for all. Teams of gardeners removed dead flower stalks from the Lowndes Ave. front garden. Others, like me, pulled out the last of their vegetable plants–but I got an unexpected bonus: Swiss chard and a pound of carrots that I planted late in the season, and some more green tomatoes! I covered my bed with straw, including some spinach that just sprouted recently. I’m hoping that next Spring I’ll pull back the straw and find enough spinach for our first salads. Thank you to ..read more