The Garland Community Garden--one of the few places in the DFW area where you can see hops growing and blooming.

Last year we were curious to know if hops would grow well in Garland.  We called a few growers (five) throughout the USA--from Oregon to Massachusetts.  All of them gave encouragement and they all suggested "Cascade" as a variety.  We planted the Cascade rhizomes in March of 2015.  Their first year they were somewhat wimpy and only made it up about ten feet and produced about 12 flowers.  This year the bines are much stronger and we have at least 30 blossoms.  I thought this morning about loading up one of the hops barrels and taking to downtown Garland so more people could see them, but then I realized that would not be feasible because of the electrical wires in between the garden and downtown.  So if you want to see hops growing, you'll have to come to 4055 Naaman School Road - Garland 75040.

Garden Talk Monday June 27--Come and Learn.

CA Hiscock, a Dallas County Master Gardener will be the guest speaker at an event hosted by Loving Garland Green at the downtown public library 625 Austin Street Garland, Texas 75040.  Monday June 27, 2016 – 6:30 to 7:30 PM.

Topic:  “Can I Eat That?”

I hope you can make it. 

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Kevin Keeling, Loving Garland Green Board Member installs a trellis for one of our many healthy blackberry bushes at the Garland Community Garden.

Garland Community Garden Clean Up Was a Great Success!

This Saturday, June 25 was Loving Garland Green’s end of the month garden cleanup.  Altogether we contributed approximately 24 people-hours in one Saturday morning.  Gene and Margie brought two weed eaters while many of our other members did their own version of “weed/grass eating” by pulling the stuff up with their hands.  I assisted Kevin Keeling in installing a great trellis for one of our larger blackberry bushes in the front area of the garden.  Kevin drove the rebar supporting the wire for the trellis goes about 2 ½ feet in the ground.  We then used zip ties to attach the wire to the rebar.  Later we will put wire over the zip ties for permanence.

We still have a little bit more grass to remove from a few of the beds, but all in all, the garden looks great!  In addition to other vegetables, we have six tubs of sweet potatoes and one bed of them.  Instead of a "pumpkin patch" for the kiddos on Halloween we will have a sweet potato dump.  The sweet potatoes are harvested between Halloween and Thanksgiving--before the first hard freeze.  After harvesting the potatoes need to cure for a week to 10 days before eating--otherwise they will taste bland and unexciting.

Burgi Bartlett, Loving Garland Green board member pulling weeds from the Medicine Wheel in the garden.

Margie Rodgers, one of Loving Garland Green's founding members, weeds a bed to perfection.

The grass yields to Gene's mean weed-eating machine.  Gene, a Loving Garland Green board member, worked hard on Saturday.