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11/19/2020 - Welcoming the Holiday Season (New Newsletter Design!)

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Welcoming the Holiday Season!

Dear *|FNAME|*,

I hope this email finds you and your families well. With the gardening season officially behind us and the cool Fall weather taking over our forecast, I am deeply thankful right now for all the time we spent outdoors this year working in our gardens.

The COVID Pandemic has made 2020 a year of immense and unprecedented challenges with impacts felt across the world. A small silver lining however, was an increased interest in gardening from so many people, but specifically those who want to start growing their own food. While we at FFG were excited for this enthusiasm, which is literally our mission, the increased demand for things like seeds, bulk compost, seedlings and even lumber, presented new challenges for us this year. Also, a long drought with persistent hot temperatures meant many of the thirstier plants in many gardens struggled in the peak of the season and home stretch if irrigation systems were not adjusted properly or had to hand water to supplement. In the end, we look back at what was a truly rewarding and fruitful gardening season with many amazing memories and important lessons learned!

As we begin to shift focus from one season to another, we want to wish you good health and hope you get to enjoy some quality time with your close loved ones. Below I'm sharing some news about exciting FFG off-season events, some Holiday recipes and a Vegetable Selection Form to help get your 2021 early garden planning started!

Best wishes,
Roberto

Virtual Workshops

We've been working on this for some time now, and are excited about our pans over the next couple of months to offer a series of Free Online Workshops focused on different vegetable gardening topics. Our hope is to create opportunities for interactive Q&A sessions and offer straight forward, easy-to-digest gardening education for gardeners with beginner to early-intermediate levels of experience. But of course all are welcome to join us! So far we have identified three topics to cover including Creating a Garden Plan, Soil/Amendments/Fertilizers and Watering - Irrigation. We are working to have a guest for the fourth session. We'd love to hear what other topics you would like to learn more about, please email us your suggestions. We will share details on our FB and IG pages and send out Zoom invites to our mailing lists ahead of time.

Garden Recipes For Your Holiday Meals

Last year's turkey Part of a large potluck dinner with our neighbors and friends.

This year's holiday meals will likely be different that our traditional ones. Many of us are giving up our large family dinners and may try to gather virtually instead. We still see no reason why we shouldn't have tons of fun in the kitchen cooking up delicious meals for our families and make it even more special if you are using ingredients that were grown right in your garden! Here are a couple of Recipes that stand out ingredients that are easily and frequently grown in many of our client's home gardens, specially herbs! Check out this Roasted Turkey with Rosemary-Garlic Butter Rub and Pan Gravy recipe . We have this Garden Lasagna and this Chunky Vegetable Soup on our radar for the Thanksgiving menu. Most of all, we hope you have a fun and safe time with the closets people in your life!

Garden Planning Notes

We are always in garden planing mode, so we want to share again our 2021Vegetable Selection Form and remind you it is the simplest way to start planning your gardens. Simply select the crops you are interested in growing and make sure to click on the "Send me a copy of my responses" button at the end of form to get the vegetable list sent to your inbox right away.

One last note!

Lastly, we are already lining up projects for next Spring. Because we always value so much the referrals we get from friends and neighbors, we are asking if you or someone you know has been thinking of starting a new vegetable garden, contact us now to plan all the project details and schedule it for Spring 2020!

Happy Gardening,
Roberto Rodriguez
Owner
Fresh Food Gardens
207-450-9729

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11/02/2020 - Thank You for a Great 2020 Garden Season!

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Thank You for a Great 2020 Garden Season!

Dear Fresh Food Gardens Customers,

As the gardening season comes to a close, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you, Fresh Food Gardens' maintenance clients, for allowing us to care for your vegetable gardens this year.

Fresh Food Gardens thrives to help families and organizations take steps towards self sufficiency by creating beautiful vegetable garden spaces and promoting education and access of healthy hyper-local fresh food systems. We truly appreciate that you've allowed us to share what we've learned over the years to help you grow your own food at home. We believe that sustainable urban agriculture can promote healthy diets, environmental stewardship, stronger communities and improved quality of life.

Most of your gardens have already been cleared and prepped for the winter, including planting next year's garlic. The remaining gardens will be done by the end of this week. We hope that you will consider hiring us again next year and that we can stay in touch through the winter to focus on developing your 2021 Garden Plan. Please take a few moments to fill our this 2021 Vegetable Selection Form in order to help us get started.

Over the next few months, we will be in touch to share information about virtual gardening workshops events and plenty of off-season garden planning help/tips. I will be careful not to crowd your inboxes, planning on no more than three emails each month. Please be sure to follow us on Instagram @FreshFoodGardens, Like (and share) our Facebook Page and please consider writing a review on our Google Business profile to let us know how we're doing!

Thanks for a great year.

Sincerely,

Roberto Rodriguez
Owner, Fresh Food Gardens

09/27/2020 - End of Season Planning

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Season Home Stretch

It's officially Fall now and the number of days left in our Southern Maine growing season are winding down. For those of us in Zone 5B, the first average frost date is October 6th marking the official end of our growing season, which is about 156 frost-free days long. The end of one garden season always means the start of planning for the following year. In this newsletter, we cover some important garden chores that need to be addressed in the next few weeks in order to guarantee success next year and how to begin planning for next year's garden!

Planting Next Year's Garlic

Growing garlic is really easy, they don't tend to have pest or disease problems and once you enjoy homegrown garlic, you'll never go back to store bought. In Maine we grow hardneck varieties by planting cloves sometime from late September to early November, the point is to allow enough time for roots to grow but not long enough for any of the top green growth before the ground freezes for the winter. I always use Halloween as the deadline to planting garlic in our gardens. Plant cloves 2-4 inches apart and about 2 inches deep with the pointed end facing up. In most square foot gardening spacing guidance, you can fit 6 garlic plants per square.

Winterize Your Gardens

As we head into the end of the growing season, it's time to prepare our gardens for the harshness of Winter. Winterizing Your Gardens this Fall is something FFG does for all of our garden maintenance clients and an important task to ensure a successful garden next year. Start by removing all dead and dying plants to avoid risks of spreading pest and disease. All beds should be topped off with at least 2 inches of fresh compost, adding appropriate amounts of garden lime and balanced slow release organic fertilizer in order to maintain healthy soil biology. Some gardeners will add a layer of straw over the beds or crushed leaves as additional mulch to further protect the beds.

Preserving your harvest

"There are many reasons why you may choose to preserve your own food by home canning. Preserving your own food is eco-friendly because it cu down on food waste. By canning it from the start, the produce will last longer because it will be shelf stable. Preserving at home is also fresher and tastes better because you are able to pick your product at peak ripeness and adjust the seasonings to your liking". Check out this Beginner’s Guide to Canning for help getting started.

Fill Out Your 2021's Vegetable Selection Form Now

The last month in the garden is the perfect time to assess things, note what crops did well and which ones struggled. Did you find yourself growing things you did not enjoy, maybe grew too much or not enough of one vegetable? This is a great time to start garden plans for next year. You can use our Vegetable Selection Form, make sure to select "Send me a copy of my responses" at the bottom of the form.

It's Not Too Late

We find ourselves constantly reminding people that there is no wrong time of the year to build a new garden or expand an existing one by adding another raised bed (or two). We at FFG are beginning to schedule projects for next Spring and want to encourage everyone to get a jump start to next season by considering your new garden installation right now. Refer a friend, neighbor or family member asking them to email us at info@freshfoodgardens.com or calling (207)450-9729 to schedule a garden consultation.

Roberto Rodriguez, Owner
Fresh Food Gardens

COVID19 Items

As our community continues to grapple with the impact and spread of COVID-19 we want you to know that your safety and the safety of our communities is our priority. We are starting to wear face masks whenever we visit your gardens; if you want to join us during a garden maintenance visit we will maintain the recommended 6ft physical distance between people. Let me know if you have any other questions about the precautions we are taking at this time.

Thank you for letting us take care of your gardens this year.
Roberto
(207)450-9729

06/15/2020 - Mid-June Update

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Kids are out of school, Summer is around the corner and there's all sorts of action in the garden right now.

Mid June feels like a big turning point in the season for the vegetable garden. Short season early Spring crops are getting harvested like Radishes and salad greens. Our second and third sowings of successions for carrots and lettuces are getting planted and heat loving crops like Cucumbers, Tomatoes and Peppers have been planted by now.

This is a good reminder that there's still plenty of time left in the season to start new crops, even to start that new garden! Let your friends and neighbors know that Fresh Food Gardens is still taking on new projects this season and we have room for new season maintenance clients!
Check out whats going on in the garden, below.

Harvest early Spring short season crops
Some early Spring crops like the first set of radishes, spinach and spring mix can and should be harvested to make room for summer crops. In many gardens spring lettuces are starting to bolt, which means the plant has come to the end of its life cycle and begins to grow a flower to set seeds. Read more about bolting vegetables here. Once this happens, the taste turns bitter and overall quality declines. Since we cannot overcome that phase, the best thing to do is pull the plants out of the ground and reuse the space by planting Summer crops like bush beans and heat tolerant varieties of head lettuces.

Early Stir Fry Broccoli Heads and Side Shoots
In late Spring, you will see some of the stir fry Broccoli varieties start to form small tight heads. You want to make sure to harvest these while they are tight and green. A broccoli head is really a cluster of small flower buds. If they begin to open and reveal their yellow petals, harvest immediately by cutting below the head but leave the majority of the stem behind for side shoots to grow that will be harvested in a few weeks. These small broccoli heads should be good for a side dish treat every couple of weeks over the next month or so. Most other Broccoli varieties will grow much larger plants and produce larger heads, resembling to the types of broccoli that are commonly found in grocery stores.

Late Spring Growing

Now that tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers have been planted, caring for them through the rest of the season includes regular watering, fertilizing every 3 and 6 weeks after planting. All the trellises, cages and stakes should be in place and secured by now. Indeterminate tomatoes will require extra care to prune off suckers growing one main stem vertically on strings (our preferred technique) or poles. Learn more about Growing Tomatoes on Strings here. I'll share more about tomato care in our next update.

Special Late Spring treats

Garlic is planted in the Fall, left to overwinter in the ground and grow through the Spring and early Summer to form the bulbs we ultimately harvest and use. But, just before the harvest, we get to harvest Garlic Scapes, the flower bud of the garlic plant. Scapes are delicious to eat! Scapes taste just like garlic. We want to remove the bud in order to encourage the bulbs to thicken up. Check out these 7 Things to do with Garlic Scapes Recipe.

Coming up this Summer

The heavy workload of Spring is starting to pay off! Garden beds are filling up with vigorous growth from many crops! Soon we'll enjoy fresh snap peas right off the vines, more home grown salads and many more delicious, healthy food from your own garden.

If this is your first season growing, take this Summer to learn how vegetables are growing in your space, what's thriving and what looks like it needs some help. Did you space things right? Planted too much lettuce? Not enough? Take notes and lots of photos to journal your season. We can try some of these Spring crops again in the Fall and definitely incorporate what we're learning into next year's garden plan. One of the best things about gardening, is that you get to try again next year.

Please remember to tell all your fiends and family about Fresh Food Gardens, we are still taking on new clients and are scheduling garden installations all Summer long. Spring is not the only time to build gardens!

Thank you for your business,
Roberto
Fresh Food Gardens

COVID19 Items

Thank you for letting us take care of your gardens this year.
Roberto
(207)450-9729

05/25/2020 - End of May Update

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Happy Memorial Day, the unofficial start of Summer and the Maine growing season.

I hope you and your families are all doing well and able to enjoy this Memorial Day Weekend in an active and healthy way. This weekend is commonly referred to as the time to start your gardens in Maine and as we know, there is a big increase of interest in home gardening this year. Many local garden stores, greenhouses and farms, some who decided to skip markets and sell directly from their farms due to COVID19 precautions, were quickly running out of vegetable seedlings leading into the weekend. Another telling sign of this increased interest in gardening, consider the season is just getting started, this past Saturday Skillins in Falmouth ran out of bulk compost and I was told at Allen Sterling & Lothrop up the street, who were also out of bulk compost since late last week, that it was the same story at Broadway Gardens in Westbrook. He said Benson Farms in Gorham, who supplies the Surf-n-Turf compost could not keep up with the increased demand. Wow!
Theres a lot going on in our gardens right now, below I'll try to summarize what we're planting, harvesting, pruning and training and start to look forward planing for June plantings. As always, Thank You for letting us take care of your gardens!

Harvest your lettuces
One of the fastest growing Spring crops in most of our gardens are the loose leaf lettuces. We like to grow these in densely seeded rows meant for "cut and come again" harvesting (linked video explains this method well). I like to harvest rows when loose leaves are about 3-4 inches long. Work your way continuously harvesting down the rows every day or two, they will grow back and be ready for a second harvest in about a week or so. Harvest plenty and often to start enjoying fresh daily home grown salads.

Thinning Carrots
Also starting to sprout in gardens are rows of carrots that were densely seeded in rows. Over the next few weeks, as the tops grow larger, the rows will be thinned down to one carrot every 1-2 inches for the rest of the season. Carrots like consistent watering to grow into the long thick roots that we harvest, irrigation systems are helpful with this as will be hand watering deeply every 2-3 days. A similar thinning processes is taking place with radishes, beets and head lettuces that were direct seeded into the gardens this month

Mid to Late Spring Growing

It has been a busy May in all gardens and we got so much done already! We picked up the majority of the seedlings we are planting in your gardens back in the first week of May. Hard to believe it was snowing that day! We've been hardening them off for the last weeks by taking them out during the day to enjoy the sun and tucking them indoors at night to protect them from the cold.

We have also planted all the Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, kale and cauliflower and started succession sowings of carrots and salad greens (remember to harvest your first plantings!).

What We are planting now

This past week we started planting tomatoes in most of your gardens. Many of you have asked if they will be fine on the older nights, in general we are fine with temperatures in the 50s and even an occasional dip into the high 40s as long as daytime temps get into the 60s or higher on average. Over the next several weeks and months we will continue to prune and train the indeterminate tomatoes up strings or poles into single stem plants growing vertically.

Whats's coming up over the next few weeks and a few FFG notes.

As we head into June and the risk of frost is completely gone, we can start planting Summer and Winter squash, peppers, eggplants, beans and other summer classics. Please try to spend as much time around your gardens as possible, look around, see the growth patterns or plants, the way they mature, keep an eye out for issues like pest or disease and let me know when you have a question or concern.

Also, we have started looking to hire a part-time employee to help with the garden maintenance part of our work. Except for our garden coaching clients, soon we will have a different gardener tending your gardens, but still following the established garden plans we have created for each of you. This is exciting news to share as it speaks to the growth of our work and your continued support!

Remember to tell your fiends and family about Fresh Food Gardens, we are still taking on new clients and are scheduling garden installations all Summer long. Spring is not the only time to build gardens!

Thank you for your business,
Roberto
Fresh Food Gardens

COVID19 Items

Thank you for letting us take care of your gardens this year.
Roberto
(207)450-9729

05/01/2020 - Early May Update

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April was for cleanup, prepping and early starts.

Weather in the month of April was less than ideal but we still got a great deal of garden work done to prepare and even start your growing season.

If you have an established garden and FFG is maintaining during the season
Raised beds were cleaned out from winter debris and topped off with nutrient rich organic matter using fresh compost, we added slow release dry organic soil fertilizers using worm castings and kelp meal. Most irrigation systems have been reconnected and running on timers already while others will be started in the next week.

If you have a new garden this year and FFG is maintaining during the season
Raised beds were filled with our preferred vegetable garden organic soil mix. If there’s an irrigation system in place, we may have started using them already while others will be started in the next week. Support structures like trellises, tomato frames, cages, etc are getting set in place or will the last few weeks.

Early Spring Growing

FFG clients should have a link to your personal garden plans showing what’s been planted in your garden, if not, please email me directly so I share the document with you. Here is a general summary of our early Spring panting work so far in most gardens so far, including our own home garden here in Portland.

If we planted garlic in your garden last Fall, those probably surfaced in early April and should be off to healthy starts to their season.

Onion are one of the first things to go out into the garden, they can be grown by sets or young seedlings. I have the best results using transplants and if your garden plan included onions, those have probably been planted already.

Starting back in mid April we have been sowing seeds of early salad greens, Swiss chard, radishes, carrots and peas. We also took a few chances planting seedlings of cole crops like cabbage and kale in some gardens but some of these may need to be replaced over the next week if they were damaged by the cold nights we had in April.

Coming up over the next few weeks

We are scheduled to pick up the first of our seedling orders on May 9th, after hardening them outdoors we will starting planting Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cauliflower soon. Later in May, once temperatures are consistently warmer, summer crops like tomatoes and peppers will be planted. We will continue direct sowing seeds for successions of salad greens, radishes, carrots and peas every week too. May is going to be a busy month!

COVID19 Items

Thank you for letting us take care of your gardens this year.
Roberto
(207)450-9729

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