IF pests and blight are wrecking your plants, it might be time to turn your garden on its head.
NEWS AND LINKS
COMMUNITY GARDEN NEWS
We’ll bet that many of you don’t know that here at River Terrace we have had our own community garden for the past three years! The River Terrace Garden Club identified a rubble strewn overgrown area of our property and set out to turn it into a verdant garden in which any of the shareholders could indulge their gardening or farming ambitions.
The first section of the community garden was cleared of rubble and weeds to reveal a beautiful stone wall fronting it complete with some valuable mosses on the stones and wildflowers poking out from some of the crevices. Members of the River Terrace Garden Club set about clearing all of the weeds, created a terraced garden and installed an automatic irrigation system to water everyone's area of the garden.
This year, over two weekends, members of the Garden Club cleared a second section of the community garden of weeds, rubble and debris, doubling its size. We also expanded the irrigation system to the new section. One of the members, Dr. Gary Klingsberg decided to try a unique type of gardening, straw bale gardening, with great results. In 2014 the garden will again increase in size. We have space available for more gardeners. Contact us to learn about how you can plant your own garden.
OUR GARDEN’S BOUNTY
HARVEST
GARDEN CLUB’S BAGELS IN THE GARDEN GET TOGETHER
LOBBY PATIO GARDEN PLANTING
The River Terrace Garden Club's members believe strongly in the planting of primarily perennial flowers to bring color to our gardens. Perennials come back to bloom again each spring and summer, growing and spreading their beauty each year without the expense of purchasing and planting the area each year.
The views of Garden Club members were brought to the River Terrace Landscaping Committee and proposed and accepted by the co-op board of directors. The first area to experience replanting was the lobby patio garden. The Landscaping Committee found the plants, boxwood bushes, were unsuitable for small planters and dying because they were rootbound. Committee members Lois Strell and Gary Klingsberg spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Plant Exchange in Fort Lee, New Jersey, carefully choosing twenty five primarily perennial plants for the planters. On August 17, 2013, Landscaping Committee members: Galina Umanski, Debra Berkowitz, Sue Wensley, Gary Klingsberg, Lori Matia and Lois Strell spent the morning planting the new colorful and beautiful plants. Unfortunately, the Committee did not know that the lobby windows would be boarded up shortly after the replanting, but they have hopes that the plants will return to their full glory again in the spring.
The views of Garden Club members were brought to the River Terrace Landscaping Committee and proposed and accepted by the co-op board of directors. The first area to experience replanting was the lobby patio garden. The Landscaping Committee found the plants, boxwood bushes, were unsuitable for small planters and dying because they were rootbound. Committee members Lois Strell and Gary Klingsberg spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Plant Exchange in Fort Lee, New Jersey, carefully choosing twenty five primarily perennial plants for the planters. On August 17, 2013, Landscaping Committee members: Galina Umanski, Debra Berkowitz, Sue Wensley, Gary Klingsberg, Lori Matia and Lois Strell spent the morning planting the new colorful and beautiful plants. Unfortunately, the Committee did not know that the lobby windows would be boarded up shortly after the replanting, but they have hopes that the plants will return to their full glory again in the spring.
RIVER TERRACE GARDEN CLUB PLANTED THREE GARDENS IN 2011!
Plans of the members of the River Terrace Garden Club came to fruition in 2011! Galina Umanski, Lori Matia, Lois Strell, Debra Berkowitz and Gary Klingsberg planted the first two of the three initial phases of its garden projects: the lobby patio garden and the pool deck garden, over the weekend of April 23-24, 2011.
As anyone who walks through the lobby or drives into the garage can attest, our lobby patio plants: clematis, dianthus and petunias are a beautiful welcome addition. Club members also planted dozens of perennial flowering plants and grasses in the pool deck garden. So far our lilies and phlox plants are blooming, but by mid-summer there will be tall stands of multi-hued Echinacea, liatris gay feather, hydrangea and grasses showing their colors and beauty. Come on down for a close-up look throughout the spring, summer and fall.
Watering of the gardens is accomplished automatically through two digital timer controlled drip irrigation systems that club member Gary Klingsberg installed. The systems minimize water usage and deliver water directly to our plants everyday.
Our club’s “Three Garden Concept” is delineated below. The River Terrace Community Garden site was opened during the spring 2011. this spring to any interested shareholders who would like to “get in the dirt” and plant their own outdoor garden. Early this spring, River Terrace Garden Club members discovered that our community garden site and its surrounding areas had been covered in rubble and construction debris. We have a firm commitment from the coop board to stop the dumping and to begin a clean-up and remediation of the site. As soon as this has occurred we will post the information on the River Terrace Garden Club’s website so the gardening may begin.
Lois Strell obtained a beautiful magnolia tree from the New York City Million Tree Program and planted it in the front lawn just to the right of the entry of the circular drive. This addition adds beauty to our property and balances the trees to the left of the drive as we approach our home. She also obtained tulips and planted them in our newly developing Parking Lot Gardens.
Formed in the spring of 2010, the River Terrace Garden Club meets monthly, generally on the last Tuesday of the month in the home of Gary Klingsberg. Any shareholder with an interest in plants is welcome to join us.
THE THREE GARDEN CONCEPT
Aside from growing our own indoor decorative plants and even vegetable gardens, the River Terrace Garden Club created plans in 2011 to beautify three areas of the River Terrace Apartments property.- Lobby patio Presently unutilized, bare paving stones. To be beautified with planters and flowering plants the year-round.
- Above upper pool deck “River Terrace Community Garden” site. Presently a wonderful terraced site, but overgrown with weeds, rubble strewn and unused. We plan for residents to communally work on flower and or herb/vegetable gardens. This will offer a chance for residents to work in the soil and raise a garden if they so choose. It will also transform the present eyesore looming over the swimming pool deck into an attractive, vibrant area for all to visually enjoy.
- Pool deck garden The present area of plants, while green with large evergreens will be transformed into a truly appealing, colorful garden, which will enhance the swimming pool’s ambience as well as being an attractive garden for anyone to see when looking down toward the pool deck from the apartments above.
Mushrooms and wild plants are indeed interesting to search for, study and even eat--when you know which are edible! Two terrific websites are those of the New York Mycological Society and the Connecticut-Westchester Mycological Association. Some are even touting mushrooms as The Magical Building Material, click here to view an article. We had a presentation and discussion led by Galina Umanski about mushrooms at our October 26, 2010 meeting. Gary Klingsberg served his homemade mushroom soup.
River Terrace Porcelain Berry Gardens
We received photos from River Terrace Garden Club member Dr. Jay Meisner of the River Terrace Porcelain Berry Gardens. View them from the "Our Plants" tab. To learn more about Porcelain Berriy plants you may wish to visit the following websites: http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/kudzu.shtml and http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/pumo1.htm
River Terrace Garden Club's August 31st Meeting
Lee Ross, Sharon and Angelo Lombardo
The River Terrace Garden Club members took a tour of the gardens out front during the monthly meeting. After sunset as darkness approached, the group proceeded to Dr. Klingsberg's apartment to view the ripening vegetables in his garden and to enjoy some organic fruits, cheese and wine.
RIVER TERRACE BOARD OFFERS USE OF WOODED SITE FOR MEETINGS
At its September board meeting the River Terrace Board of Directors offered the use of the wooded site pictured below to the River Terrace Garden Club. The board wasn't certain as to the ownership of the site, after having previously researched the matter. The River Terrace Garden Club has determined the ownership of the site. To see the results click here.......
North Woods Site
River Terrace Garden Club's July 27th Meeting
Lori Matia, Neil Robbins & Debra Ginsberg
At the club's meeting on July 27th the members viewed the progress of Gary Klingsberg's vegetable and herb gardens. We began to learn about hydroponic gardening from Jay Meisner who has been utilizing the process in his apartment. We look forward to viewing his hydroponic garden set-up soon.
Galina Umanski brought her Phalaenopsis orchid to the meeting and discussed how to trim the spikes of the orchid in order to stimulate it to grow more beautiful flowers. Her full description of how and why to trim orchids is below and continued at the link provided.
Galina's Guide to Cutting Back Orchids
We are often asked about cutting back flower spikes as orchids go out of bloom. For most orchid genera the flower spike should be cut back after the bloom. This is usually indicated by the plant as the spike turns brown. For Phalaenopsis it can be a bit tricky to know what to do and to make matters more confusing there are differing schools of thought on the issue. On most Phalaenopsis the bloom spike will turn brown after the plant is finished bearing flowers on a spike. It may not turn brown all the way down, however. One school of thought says to cut the spike above a node on the stem and allow the plant to rebloom ........... (See link to Galina's full description of what to do.)
RIVER TERRACE GARDEN CLUB HOLDS INAUGURAL MEETING
On Tuesday June 29th the River Terrace Garden Club held its inaugural meeting in the home of its founder, Gary Klingsberg. The new members became acquainted and shared details of their backgrounds or lack thereof with growing plants.
Some members thus far have limited successful experience with plants but desire to grow beautiful plants, flowers, herbs and/or vegetables. After touring and viewing the houseplants, vegetables and herbs growing in Dr. Klingsberg's apartment, the group heard some very practical and simple tips from our “Burbank on Park Avenue”, Lee Ross. (Click for article.) We also viewed a slide show of Mr. Ross’s veritable jungle of plants in his apartment. (Click to view photos.)
As the sun was setting some members noticed what seemed to be bright stars or planets in the western sky. A quick computer of what should be viewable in the NYC sky search revealed that we were viewing Venus. Thus some members decided to add some astronomy to the interests and activities of the Garden Club.
The River Terrace Garden Club is about enjoying, sharing and promoting a green environment within our River Terrace community. Most among our community grow and enjoy at least one plant. Some have a few plants and flowers, while others are growing a plant filled wonderland.
Whatever type of plants that you grow or have an interest in growing, the River Terrace Garden Club is the place to share your proud and beautiful experiences with your neighbors. If you can’t make it to our monthly meetings which are held on the last Tuesday of the month at 8 PM, feel free to e-mail your photos and descriptions of your favorite plants for posting on the website to: greenthumb@riverterracegardenclub.com. If you like, you can even share some of your less successful efforts with us on the Members’ Forum and perhaps others can offer some guidance toward achieving a better outcome in the future.
E-mail may be addressed to greenthumb@riverterracegardenclub.com
We are growing vegetables upside down on our terrace and the following article in the NY Times describes the process. The website links in the article are wonderful resources and highly recommended for exploring.
In the Garden
Growing Vegetables Upside Down
Stuart Isett for The New York Times
Shawn Verrall waters his upside-down tomato plants with his daughter, Megan, in their Richmond, Wash., garden.
By KATE MURPHY
Published: May 19, 2010
Erich Schlegel for The New York Times
Donald Rutledge, in New Braunfels, Tex., put his buckets on pulleys to protect his plants from deer.
The Topsy Turvy.
Mark McAlpine made his own containers for his Ontario garden.
Growing crops that dangle upside down from homemade or commercially available planters is growing more popular, and its adherents swear they'll never come back down to earth.
"I'm totally converted," said Mark McAlpine, a body piercer in Guelph, Ontario, who began growing tomatoes upside down two years ago because cutworms were ravaging the ones he planted in the ground. He made six planters out of five-gallon plastic buckets, some bought at the Home Depot and some salvaged from the trash of a local winemaker. He cut a two-inch hole in the bottom of each bucket and threaded a tomato seedling down through the opening, packing strips of newspaper around the root ball to keep it in place and to prevent dirt from falling out.
He then filled the buckets with soil mixed with compost and hung them on sturdy steel hooks bolted to the railing of his backyard deck. "Last summer was really hot so it wasn't the best crop, but I still was able to jar enough whole tomatoes, half tomatoes, salsa and tomato sauce to last me through the winter," said Mr. McAlpine, who plans an additional six upside-down planters this year.
Upside-down gardening, primarily of leggy crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, is more common partly because of the ubiquity of Topsy Turvy planters, which are breathlessly advertised on television and have prominent placement at retailers like Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Bed Bath and Beyond. According to the company that licenses the product, Allstar Products Group in Hawthorne, N.Y., sales this year are twice last year's, with 20 million sold since the planter's invention in 2005. Not to be outdone, Gardener's Supply and Plow & Hearth recently began selling rival upside-down planters. "Upside-down gardening is definitely a phenomenon," said Steve Wagner, senior product manager for Plow & Hearth.
The advantages of upside-down gardening are many: it saves space; there is no need for stakes or cages; it foils pests and fungus; there are fewer, if any, weeds; there is efficient delivery of water and nutrients thanks to gravity; and it allows for greater air circulation and sunlight exposure.
While there are skeptics, proponents say the proof is in the produce.
Tomato and jalapeño seedlings sprout from upside-down planters fashioned out of milk jugs and soda bottles that hang from the fence surrounding the Redmond, Wash., yard of Shawn Verrall, a Microsoft software tester who blogs about gardening at Cheapvegetablegardener.com. Mr. Verrall turned to upside-down gardening last summer as an experiment.
"I put one tomato plant in the ground and one upside down, and the one in the ground died," he said. The other tomato did so well, he planted a jalapeño upside down, too, and it was more prolific than the one he had in the ground. "The plants seem to stay healthier upside down if you water them enough, and it's a great way to go if you have limited space," he said.
While horticulturists, agronomists and plant scientists agree that pests and blight are less likely to damage crops suspended in the air, they said they are unsure whether growing them upside down rather than right-side up will yield better results.
"Growing things upside down seems like a fad to me, but I'm glad people are fooling around with it and hope they will let us traditionalist gardening snobs know what we've been missing," said Hans Christian Wien, a horticulture professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
Judging from gardening blogs and Web sites, those fooling around with upside-down gardening are generally enthusiastic, particularly if they have planted smaller varieties of tomatoes.
"Bigger tomatoes are too heavy and put too much stress on the vine, causing it to twist and break," said Michael Nolan, an avid gardener in Atlanta and a writer for Urbangardencasual.com, who has four upside-down planters also made out of five-gallon buckets in which he grows bushels of cherry and patio varieties of tomatoes as well as small pickling cucumbers.
Tomato varieties are labeled as either indeterminate or determinate, and horticulture experts recommend choosing indeterminate ones for upside-down gardens. Determinate tomato plants are stubbier, with somewhat rigid stalks that issue all their fruit at once, which could weigh down and break the stems if hanging upside down. Indeterminate types, by contrast, have more flexible, sprawling stems that produce fruit throughout the season and are less likely to be harmed by gravity.
When Mr. Nolan first tried upside-down gardening, he used the Topsy Turvy planters, which are made of polyethylene bags and look like Chinese lanterns gone wrong. But he was disappointed in the yield. "I far prefer using buckets," he said, which hang from tall metal shepherd hooks bolted to the posts supporting his backyard deck. He paints his buckets bright colors, and plants herbs and marigolds in the top to help retain moisture.
Another, less decorative solution for preventing evaporation is to top the planters with mulch or simply cover them with a lid. Regardless, Mr. Nolan said, "The upside-down planters tend to dry out really fast, so I have to water a lot - probably once a day in the heat of the summer."
Many gardeners reported that the thinner, breathable plastic Topsy Turvy planters ($19.98) dried out so quickly that watering even once a day was not enough to prevent desiccated plants. There were similar comments about the Plow & Hearth version ($12.95) and while the Gardener's Supply upside-down planter ($19.95) has a built-in watering system, online reviewers said it is difficult to assemble.
In addition to plastic soda bottles, milk jugs and five-gallon buckets, upside-down planters can be made out of thick heavy-duty plastic trash bags, plastic reusable shopping totes, kitty litter containers, laundry hampers and even used tires. Web sites like Instructables.com and UpsideDownTomatoPlant.com show how it can be done, and YouTube has several how-to videos. Variations include building a water reservoir either at the top or bottom of planters for irrigation, cutting several openings in the bottom and sides for planting several seedlings and lining the interior with landscape fabric or coconut fiber to help retain moisture.
Donald Rutledge, a construction project designer and manager in New Braunfels, Tex., devised a triple-pulley system so he could easily hoist his nine upside-down planters 16 feet above the ground, away from ravenous deer. He made his planters out of five-gallon buckets four years ago, following instructions on the Internet. "The tomatoes and basil worked real well upside down, but the lettuce, peas and carrots weren't so successful," he said. "It's been trial and error."
This year, he put his plantings right-side up in the buckets to see if it makes any difference. He said his suspended garden started as an entertaining summer project for him and his three children but has become more of a scientific pursuit: "Is upside down better than right-side up? I'm guess I'm going to find out."