Hello, Growing To Give Community!

Let’s take a moment for the flowers! Our annual flower beds have just started producing the first blooms of pale pink cosmos, fanciful white orlaya, strawberry blonde calendula, and a few early bright zinnia heads. In our hedgerows and wildflower gardens, the regal purple spiderwort, magenta ninebark, wild foxgloves, cheery shasta daisies, and yarrow in ombre sunset tones are still in bloom. Under the direction of our wonderful volunteer Dodie, we have started our weekly flower harvest (Tuesday mornings at 8:00) for the newly named “Bouquet Brigade” project that she pioneered in seasons prior. A group of volunteers at People Plus, Brunswick’s senior center, helps to arrange the buckets of flowers we harvest into farm-fresh bouquets to be delivered to three organizations that provide services to community members who need help with daily routines, or meals: Neighbors, Aging Excellence, and Meals on Wheels.
Flower Team volunteers Sally and Dodie with their colorful haul!
As for vegetables, all but three of our 37 plots are fully planted in summer crops! The remaining three will be planted with overwintering leeks, a fall succession of Swiss chard and celery, and more beets. Our spring peas, lettuces, salad turnips, and cabbages have come and gone along with a plot of buckwheat cover crop that is being solarized. In the next few weeks, those four plots will be cleared out and planted with fall kale, cabbage, lettuces, storage carrots, collards, and kohlrabi. It’s wild how we can be just harvesting our very first zucchini while tending to the beet and leek seedlings that we’ll be harvesting when leaves are falling and frost is in the air!
Farm staff member Meghan crimping buckwheat (left) before we solarized the plot (right)

Besides planting and harvesting, our main work this time of year is keeping our ever present insect companions in balance. We’re hand pinching cucumber beetles, Colorado potato beetles, and squash bugs from our plants while searching for and squashing their eggs. Our interns are a bug-fighting force to be reckoned with and they’re assisted by a veritable army of ladybugs. We’re always heartened to see ladybugs’ bright yellow clutches of eggs on the undersides of the leaves as we’re searching for other, less welcome caches.

We are also always working on keeping unwanted plants out of our garden beds. Bindweed, dandelion, plantain, thistle, clover, grass are a powerful regenerative host of plants that send deep roots into compacted, clay soil and help transform soil. While these plants are welcome in the lawn, we do remove them from our cultivated beds. Since we’ve had to discontinue use of compost mulching due to our very robust soil nutrient profile, we’ve started managing weeds with a deep layer of straw which also helps build soil and increase biological activity as it breaks down. Even with the straw mulching, we have a LOT of weeding to do and could not keep up without your help!
Garlic weeding: before and after.
Besides weeding, much of our late July work will include trellising/suckering tomatoes, harvesting (the carrots and beets are finally ready along with our first zucchini and cucumbers!), and transplanting all of our fall crops. We have fall cabbage, kale, collards, kohlrabi, and several more plantings of lettuce coming up! We’re looking forward to seeing you all out on the farm! We can’t do this important work without you, and this will become increasingly true as we move into August since our four lovely interns will be leaving us to start classes again. If you’d like to meet our interns before they leave, hang with the farm crew, or just socialize, you are heartily invited to join us for our Friday potlucks. These start at 12:30 on Fridays throughout the summer and are loosely themed. Please reach out to our volunteer coordinator, Meghan, or myself for the weekly theme and dietary restrictions.
Some of the colorful dishes from our recent Midsummer themed potluck.
Please mark your calendars for our “Dancing to Give” fundraiser event which will be held at Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport on October 11th from 7-10pm. This event – for those aged 21 and over – will take the place of our Farmyard Jam this year. Please stay tuned for more details of this fun-filled dance party and silent auction!
With great care,
Lindsay Wasko
Farm DirectorP.S. Wondering how to support our work? Our Wish List includes the items that help us grow and give more to our community. Every bit counts!