The Lewis Ginter Community Kitchen Garden is now shut down for the winter. Volunteers in the garden produced 9,913 pounds of high quality produce for FeedMore’s Community Kitchen.

Weight distribution by type:

Tomatoes – 5,594.5 lbs.

Zucchini/ yellow squash – 3,035.5 lbs.

Cauliflower – 460 lbs.

Cabbage – 235 lbs.

Broccoli – 220 lbs.

Green Peppers – 18 lbs.

While falling just shy of the 10,000 pound goal, the 2011 yield represents an 8 percent increase over 2010 production. This excellent yield was made possible by the hundreds of hours of sweat equity volunteers invested in the garden throughout 2011.

The oldest red cabbage leaves produced a kaleidoscope of color.

The red cabbages were a bit of a disappointment by not fully maturing even after 100 days in the field. It’s probably due to getting them planted too late in September.

It’s a bloomin’ cabbage! After the primary heads were harvested, we left the cabbage plants in the field and the plants produced these wonderful clusters of rosettes.

While not heavy or dense, the rosettes were tender and fresh.

We’re still truckin’ along in the Lewis Ginter Community Kitchen Garden. Although it’s now nearly a week into November, the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are not quite ready to harvest en masse. We harvested 26 pounds of beautiful broccoli and cabbage on October 31st, but only the few that were fully ready. The recent spate of relatively cold nights is retarding growth, but these vegetables should mature in the next couple of weeks as the weather warms a little. Today our nice group of volunteers focused on liquid feeding the crops with fish emulsion, dividing and transplanting some kale, and garden clean up. The volunteer crew included three generations of the Hooks family.

The mature zucchini plants showed nominal signs of frost burn, but it was clear the row cover fabric wouldn't suffice for any more sub-freezing nights.

We ended our “fall zucchini trial”, as the sub-freezing nights had burned most of the plants. The experiment was based on expecting the row cover fabric to add ten degrees to the zucchini bed air temperature, but the fabric wasn’t enough. I bet clear sheet plastic would have made the difference. We would be at the flowering stage by now, with daytime temps still warm enough for the bees to do their work.

The more immature zucchini plants, showing the effects of frost burn.

Lisa Wooten (left) and Jeannie Arnold (right) and the Hooks family dividing and transplanting kale.

CKG volunteers November 5, 2011 - left to right: Jeannie Arnold, Lisa Wooten, April Hooks, Joshua Hooks, Linda Wakeman, Josephine Hooks, Masen Hooks

Left to right: Josh, April (mom) and Masen on a balmy day in the garden three weeks ago.

The last Saturday in October, a group of seven Dominion associates worked at Lewis Ginter’s Community Kitchen Garden. What started out as a shiver-inducing brisk morning quickly turned into t-shirt weather as the team cleared a large area to prep for the winter cover crop. The team also continued our “manual intervention” pest management system by hand-inspecting the fall crop for cabbage worms. Happily for everyone, no worms were found.

The Dominion Power team with independent volunteer Laura Schumm (center). Laura has been volunteering in the CKG since September 10.

The team worked at a blistering pace to clear weeds from part of the garden, in preparation for a winter cover crop of annual ryegrass and red clover.

The group included Christine, Dawn, Iva, Pam, Kevin, David & Rob (names are not in the order shown in the photo).

That’s folksy talk referring to the fall vegetable garden. At Lewis Ginter’s Community Kitchen Garden we have all the old tomato plants cleared, the stakes & cages stacked, a winter cover crop of annual rye and red clover sown, and we’re just a couple of weeks away from beginning our Fall harvest for the Community Kitchen.

The stakes are stacked for the winter. No small task, made possible by the willing & able hands of volunteers.

We have some good-looking broccoli in progress - a total of 190 plants.

We have three types of cabbages: conventional Jersey, Early Gonzales (a "mini" cabbage) and a red cabbage. A total of 150 cabbages.

It was a gorgeous morning at Lewis Ginter’s Community Kitchen Garden. We took a day off from pampering the cole crops, and applied our energy to the incremental removal of some of the hundreds of tomato plants. The process of preparing the garden for the winter cover crop is well under way.

We had our third fun visit from a really nice group of Northstar Academy students, who whole-heartedly pitched in to help remove tomato vines. I’d like to picture them here, but since the students are minors it’s a complicated and lengthy process to obtain photo releases from so many parents.

We also were fortunate to have help again from Laura Schumm, an artist and horticulture student who has been a regular volunteer for several weeks, and three Dominion employees: Christa Vidonic, George Slayton and Kevin Barry. All three are Business Performance Analysts with Dominion Power.

Kevin, Christa and George take a break from pulling tomato stakes & vines. I don't know what it is about hard labor that makes the CKG volunteers laugh so much. I hope it's not simply the sight of the photographer wearing shorts.

Kevin, Laura, Christa and George with a mountain of old tomato vines. Sort of an "American Gothic" pose - but a whole lot more cheerful!

In what seems like one of the most unpredictable turn of events in the food movement, DC public schools are leading the way in kicking sugary milk and cereals off of their menu. While it seems like a no-brainer for health reasons, it is a bold move.  I have a huge amount of respect for DC schools and their Healthy Schools Act, passed by the council earlier this year and funded in the 2011 budget.  For many of DC’s inner city children, the free (or reduced cost) meals they get at school are the best (and sometimes) only nutrition they get — so it’s important.  According to the Healthy Schools Act, DC has the highest rate of adolescent obesity in the nation and  in some neighborhoods, half of the children are overweight or obese.

With obesity, diabetes, and other health issues on the rise it seems like DC may be just the first of many school systems who will eventually do the same.    For kids, having to choose sugary milk or that is the best nutritional choice is too big a decision with too much freedom.  As parents we would be considered irresponsible if we let our children watch whatever TV shows and movies they want without regards to the content. Why would we do the same with food?

One of the best things about DC Public Schools Healthy Schools Act is that it is clearly spelled out that this program will establish a school gardens program and competitive grants in order to both educate kids and make eating vegetables more appealing.  My elementary-school-aged kids, who are pesca-vegatarian (ie we are vegetarian but we eat fish), and who don’t eat HFCS, food coloring or artificial sweeteners, LOVE vegetables. But I would never serve them processed, canned, trucked-in, or unripe fruits and vegetables that are often served in the school cafeteria. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to eat them either. I know first-hand — in order to get kids to like veggies, you have to give them the best: fresh, local, in-season, organic produce.  And, you have to give them choices. One of my children likes spinach, peppers & cucumbers, and berries — the other doesn’t, but she loves carrots & peas –which the first one won’t eat.  They both pretty much love any other vegetable they come across as long as they know it is fresh and grown locally, without pesticides.

Plus, nutritionally the canned green beans they serve at schools pale in comparison to the just picked fresh raw green beans that my kids are eating in their lunch.  How silly is it that in our culture,  my children are teased because they think peas or spinach are yummy! How strange that my child’s teacher asks if he has a medical problem becuase I won’t let him eat petroleum-based food dyes typically found in many children’s foods — like strawberry milk or Froot Loops.

Blogger, and former Post Reporter, Ed Bruske, who scooped local media to make the announcement, has lots of other great commentary on his blog. If you care about these issues, take the time to read it, you’ll be glad you did.

Here at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, we know how important it is to have good nutrition — with plenty of locally grown vegetables  — even if you can’t find the time to garden or shop at the local farmer’s market.   That is why we started the Community Kitchen Garden with the help of the Community Foundation. Our goal (and we nearly met it last year) is to grow 10,000 lbs of fresh local vegetables for the areas neediest families — those that depend on the Central Virginia FoodBank, Meals on Wheels and partnering daycare organizations that provide food to low income citizens and families.  And so far, it seems to be working.

Back in DC,  The Washington Post‘s Mike DeBonis points out that much of the hard work for DCPS is yet to come:

It’s one thing to take away patently unhealthy choices from schoolkids; it’s another to add new, healthy choices.

And, he’s got a point. But if you ask me, getting the freshest local food and training the staff not to overcook it — but to let its fresh flavor stand on its own is half the battle.

And,this move, coupled with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign and her school garden initiative along with the White House Garden gives me hope.

Meanwhile, here in Richmond, not only are we incredibly lucky to have the great partnering organizations  in the Community Kitchen Garden project but also we have urban garden advocate Tricycle Gardens. Together with passionate parents at local elementary schools, and organizations like Farms to Schools, there is no where to go but up in our children’s nutrition.  And when I hear whispers at my children’s elementary school that the parents are going to rally, and get a garden planted and get a grant for a salad bar to be built to serve the fresh local veggies that the kids will grow themselves. I don’t doubt for a second that they’ll do it — because times are changing.

Image credit: http://betterdcschoolfood.blogspot.com/2010/06/dc-schools-to-discontinue-flavored-milk.html

Photo courtesy of Ed Bruske

Last week we delivered the remaining cabbages, cauliflower’s, mustard greens and broccoli to the FeedMore foodbank, that serves Meals on Wheels of Virginia and the Central Virginia Foodbank.

After the final weigh-in the grand total weight of produce grown throughout the summer and fall was 9,166 pounds! That’s fantastic! Back in the spring we set a goal of growing 10,000 pounds to contribute to the Feedmore kitchen to help supplement the 4,000 meals they make each day. While we didn’t quite make that lofty goal, we came pretty close – close enough, in fact, to call it an outstanding success!

It’s amazing what can be accomplished with a little hard work (ok, maybe a lot of hard work!). Volunteering at Lewis Ginter has been a very rewarding experience for me, especially working on the Community Kitchen project. Knowing that people have directly benefited from what we have accomplished feels great and I am proud to have been a part of this community. There have been many volunteers that have contributed to the success of this project, and we thank them all for their time and effort.
Plans are already underway for next year! Tom Brinda, Assistant Director at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, is already working on coordinating the program again for next year.  This weekend he will plant the ground cover that will help prepare the soil for next season.

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about the progress of the garden, and look forward to bringing you new veggie news in 2010!