Pictured above: Spring 2024 Master Gardeners volunteer group
This amazing group of volunteers meets at the Mission every Wednesday morning!
In June, they finished harvesting the cool season vegetables and planted the warm season ones. Now, there are okra, corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, watermelons, beans, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and squash all thriving. Thanks to two of the gardeners who netted the bushes, they harvested four pounds of gooseberries! Gooseberries and their relative currents were once prohibited in northern states where white pines grow, because they harbored white pine blister rust. Newer cultivars are resistant.
In the native garden, they completely revamped the plants growing there. They relocated iris, grey-headed coneflowers, aster, and spiderwort elsewhere, and evicted a lot of goldenrod. The herbs are enjoying the growing season and blooming in their times. They added a turmeric plant, which resembles a canna. Like canna, because it is a tropical plant, they will have to lift it in the fall. It adds a nice point of interest to the herbs usually grown in the area.
Only a bare spot full of sawdust marks is where the place where the massive mulberry tree once stood; workman removed it in early June due to a storm that destroyed it. Hopefully, the plants it flattened in the butterfly garden will revive, at least next year. They also managed to relocate some plants in that area to make room for a stone path through the garden. This will help facilitate maintenance in the garden without compacting the earth too much. Children will love walking through it as well.
So, here comes July, which they hope is not too harsh in heat or sporadic rainfall. Come join us on Wednesday mornings.
