Saturday, July 26, 2014

Sustainable Saturday - The First Tomato, The Last Garden?

A little peak into our community garden.

Yesterday, we harvested our first tomatoes from the Otsiningo Park Community Garden in Binghamton, New York.  It's finally tomato season here in upstate New York - a fleeting few weeks of tomato bliss.  These tomatoes, incidentally, were consumed as soon as I took their picture.


Our tomato plants are loaded with flowers.

The onions are almost ready for harvest.  This is our most reliable crop, year after year.



Our butternut squash still has a way to go.  But as I watch them grow towards maturity, the cold winds of fall start blasting in my mind, even as the hot sun of summer warms me.  After all, these are - winter squash.

And winter rules here with a heavy hand.  We are out of its grip for a few short months.

Our sunflowers, many of them volunteers, fill our garden plots and fill my vase at home. 

Tomorrow, we plan to plant borage seeds, supplied to us by a fellow blogger.  We haven't seen their blue in our garden for almost 30 years - why?

But our plants are blissfully unaware that they are in danger.

The community garden we've been gardening in for many years may be closing.  This may be its last season.


If this comes about, this is the second community garden that has folded on us in our almost 30 years living in the Binghamton, New York area.

We've suspected this for a while and now it appears the end may be coming.

I will blog about this more another time.  But for now, we enjoy summer while we may.

10 comments:

  1. Oh, Alana! Why is it that your community garden might be closing? What a loss for you all!

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  2. It is nice to harvest. We have lots of tomatoes but still green and forming. We've been eating lettuce for awhile now as well as peas. Too bad about your community garden closing. Hope you can find another.

    Lily

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  3. Alana, whenever I read your posts, I can see Binghamton before me, as clearly as when I was there for a year of grad school in 1975-6. I'm sure it has changed a great deal. What a joy you have had your garden(s) for so long. Is yours so huge that replicating it at your home is out of the question? Does the University have any land that can be used that way? What deliciousness you and yours enjoy, growing and picking your own food! Fantastic.

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    1. We do not have a large plot of land and a lot of it is part to full shade. I will be blogging more about this situation when my spouse and I have more of a plan to deal with it. I want to be positive! (by the way - I'm not aware of any plan by BU - what SUNY Binghamton is called now - to become involved in this situation.)

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  4. Wow, First time I seen a small tomato.My mother used to plants veggies..

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    1. This is a variety called Jasper. It is what we call a cherry tomato - and yes, it is small. Small, but sweet, and blight resistant.

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  5. So sad. It reminds me of the 'allotment gardens' the English used during the war. Without them, many people would have starved. Land is so precious, and the urge to grow food is strong. I hope some solution is found in your community.

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    1. I hope so too, Francene. I will be blogging more about this once I process the news.

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  6. It's sad that you might be losing the community garden.
    Why might it have to close?

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    1. Ah, Sophie - apathy has been a big part of it, along with the retirement of the President of the gardeners association. But there are other factors - always politics are involved!

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