Aggie Abundance Week #1

Oliver's Garden

Entering sophomore, Oliver, would like to share a landscape planting job he did in Cohasset!! 

"In the pictures below we planted 4 green mountain boxwoods, 5 oriental spruces, 3 Chamaecyparus, and 6 azaleas. This job was quite difficult due to the location being up a steep hill and the transportation of the trees and shrubs. Luckily we were able to safely lift the trees over an existing stone wall and transport them by a tree dolly and a small Vermeer mini skid steer up plywood sheets. I have learned many things such as leaning the tops of the trees forward and applying burlap to the cambium to lessen the damage when tying a rope to the cambium. This trick of pointing the top forward was a trick my family learned from haulka nurseries out of New Jersey.  This is my first big planting this year and I look to learning new things at work and at school next year!"

Great work Oliver!! 

Jack's Garden

From entering sophomore, Jack! 

Check out his cool veggie garden!

Aggie Abundance!!

Norfolk County Agricultural High School proudly presents.... 

The Aggie Abundance Victory Garden! 

In uncertain times, the Aggie would like to step up its community service with the important task of raising food for the community! 

This week was a huge leap forward for the Aggie Abundance Covid Victory Garden.  Teachers volunteered their time to plant vegetables that will be given away this summer to help families make ends meet during this time of food shortages and high unemployment.

  Thousands of vegetables have been planted.

In true Aggie form people have pulled together to help the greater community. 

Bob Brol and Fred Bernhardt spent time welding and adapting an antique plow that was donated to the Aggie so that it could be pulled behind a tractor, as we no longer have draft horses on campus.  John Lee put the plow to good use and created furrows  so that potatoes donated from Gilmores could be planted.  The entire garden is  now planted!  We will be looking for staff and alumni volunteers to help maintain the garden, harvest, and package before being given away. 

Thank you to everyone who volunteered.  It takes a team.

Mr. Stone, Ms. Fegley, Ms. Forsyth, and Mr. Kane planting some peppers!

Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ruvich, Ms. McGarry, & Ms. Collins planting some Broccoli! 

Look at this beauuuuutiful purple cabbage!

ASPARAGUS! YUM!

"Yesterday, we had our first asparagus harvest from my grandfather's garden in New Hampshire. It is roughly 15 square feet, and was first planted over 60 years ago. It still produces a massive harvest every year." Jack W. Grade 9

Rain Gardens!

Riley B., Grade 12 made an incredible Rain Garden design for her yard!!!

"I chose to put my rain garden in the area that I did, because I believe that it would be the most efficient there. It is located at the bottom of a slope which will really help with the direction of the water flow from the underground pipe that I would install. This area is also free from trees and isn’t swampy so those won’t be problematic factors. Another factor that I thought was very important for the location is that it is located right next to the stream that runs through my yard. This will allow all the water that overflows in the garden to drain directly into the stream. The good thing about my house is that I have multiple drain points in my yard so all the water runoff can be divided up.

For the deepest level of the garden, I chose to plant Deer fern and Red Twig Dogwood. I chose these plants for that level because they both are very drought resistant and are bigger than the other plants so that they should be able to be seen when the other plants are growing on the higher levels. I also chose these plants because I liked how they looked aesthetically. Out of all the plants the Red Twig Dogwood is probably my favorite because it gives off such a pop of color and I liked how the deer fern complimented that by makinging the red more prominent. 

For the level in the middle that doesn’t get as much water than the deepest level, I chose Wild Ginger, Lupine, and Pacific Aster. I chose these plants not only because they fit the requirements to strive in a rain garden but how they look and the colors that they bring to the palette. The wild Ginger is a very simple plant but gives a very rainforest vibe to the garden. I chose the other two plants because they have very beautiful unique flowers that were very visually pleasing in my eyes.

Finally for the shallowest level in the garden, I chose to plant Evergreen Huckleberry and Western Columbine. These plants proved to survive in the conditions of the rain garden. I chose the Evergreen Huckleberry because I believe that it will add a new texture to the garden and provide berries that I think would look really good. I also chose the Western Columbine because I love the flower on it and the red and yellow from it give the garden another pop of color."

CNN Article:

The human needs driving the rise in gardening, and how to start one

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/03/health/how-to-start-gardening-coronavirus-wellness/index.html

Ms. Ward's Garden Update!

"My oregano and chives came back from the herb garden I started last year and I have added rosemary, cilantro, parsley, dill, Cayenne peppers, banana peppers, and mini red bell peppers. I also have basil and cherry tomatoes going in separate pots."

Gabby's Apple Seedlings!

Student Gabby, Grade 9 wanted to share her apple tree seedlings with us! 

Riley's update!

"Here is a updated picture of the seedlings I started. The second picture is of a couple trellises that I built for the cucumber plants and green beans." R. Bowles 2020

Ms. Martin's Update!

Week 3 Ms Martin’s Garden Java and Mars think they can lay on the plants!! 

Week 4 The Upgrade of the garden! 

They are all watered and transplanted so they grow even bigger!! 

Victory Garden Update!!

"I ordered a bunch of seeds about a month ago, but they still haven't arrived. So, in the meantime, I decided to propagate a basil plant from stem cuttings. I have attached pictures of some of the cuttings as they were growing roots in water. I transplanted them into pots with soil on Tuesday and they are already growing new leaves. I have attached a picture of them in pots as well. A few days ago, I got impatient and planted some leftover seeds from last year indoors. Pumpkin, cucumber, and melon are labeled in the picture, but I planted some beans as well."

Stay Well and Happy Gardening,

Jennie Aldridge

PODCAST ALERT!

Fantastic podcast on gardening!!!


The Beginner's Garden Podcast!

Winter How To: Tip for Pruning Grapevines

Winter How-To: Tips for Pruning Grapevines

( Photos: Ms. Forsyth, Montpelier VT) 

The Secret to Pruning Grapes

Here’s the secret: grapevines produce fruit on one-year old wood. What the heck does that mean? When a bud sprouts in spring and grows into a new shoot within the larger grape plant, the shoot turns from green to brown by the end of the growing season, at which point it is considered one-year old wood. The following spring some of the buds on one-year-old wood will grow flowers (which develop into fruit), while the buds on older wood produce only leaves or shoots.

The primary goal of pruning is to maximize the amount of one-year old wood on each grapevine without encouraging the plant to produce so many grape clusters that it lacks the energy and nutrients to fully ripen them. Left to its own devices, a grapevine grows to a dense mass of mostly older wood with relatively little “fruiting wood” each year. The dense growth leads to poor air circulation, which encourages fungal diseases. Expect to remove 70 to 90 percent of the previous year’s growth each winter.

The second purpose for pruning grapes is to encourage the vines to grow a structure that is conducive to harvesting and which conforms to the shape of the trellis the vine is growing on. Aim to create an orderly system of evenly spaced vines that resembles the branches of a tree. There are many trellis options, but most vineyards utilize a system of one main trunk with two or four main branches that angle off at 90 degrees along heavy-duty wires positioned a few feet above the ground. Each winter, excess vine growth is cut back to the main trunk and branches to preserve the structure. Grapevines are capable of growing to enormous proportions, however, and there is virtually no limit to the size or type of trellis and the number of branches that can be established.

Step-By-Step

The following instructions presume you’re starting with the 2 -to 3-foot bare root vines that nurseries typically sell in winter. If your vines have already been growing for a few years, or if you’re tackling a massive overgrown grapevine, you’ll need to cut it back to conform to the shape of the trellis (so that it resembles the form outlined in steps 1 through 6 below), before proceeding with an annual pruning regime. If that sounds next to impossible given the current shape of your vine, there is no harm in cutting the entire plant back to within 2 or 3 feet of the ground – it will regrow vigorously the following year, allowing you to begin the training process anew.

Loppers and a small pruning saw are necessary to rework large overgrown vines, but otherwise a pair of hand pruners are all that’s needed for annual pruning.

Year One: Establish the Trunk

1. If there is more than one shoot on the plant, select the most vigorous and cut the others back flush to the main trunk.

2. Cut the selected shoot back to two or three buds above where it started growing the previous spring from the main trunk. This encourages strong growth the coming spring.

3. As the main shoot grows during the coming year, tie it to the trellis using green vinyl plant tape. Remove any other shoots as they appear during the growing season.

Year Two: Establish the Lateral Branches

4. The following winter, cut the main shoot back to a few inches below the first horizontal support of the trellis.

5. In spring, several shoots should sprout from the buds below the cut that was made in winter – as they grow, tie one shoot to each trellis support (selecting for the most vigorous shoots) and remove the rest, cutting them flush with the main trunk.

6. Cut off any flower clusters as they appear to encourage the plant to devote its energy to vegetative growth. The plant will be ready to support fruit production starting in year three.

Year Three and Subsequent Years: Establish (and Renew) the Fruiting Spurs

7. Each winter, thin out the shoots that grow from each lateral branch that has been tied to a trellis support so there is just one shoot every 6 to 8 inches

8. Cut the remaining shoots back to 6 or 8 inches in length. The fruit will develop on these short stubs.

9. Remove any shoots that grow from the main trunk or that sprout from the roots.

10. Continue the process of training new shoots along the all the trellis supports over the coming years. Each winter, cut off the ends of the shoots that have grown beyond the trellis support.

Important Tips

• When pruning and training grapes, there are a few additional points to keep in mind:
• Sterilize your pruning equipment after working on each vine by dipping the cutting blades in a solution of isopropyl alcohol.
• Promptly remove any diseased wood – it may have lesions or sap on the wood, with grapes that don’t ripen, mold, or discolored leaves – and burn it (if you’re in a rural area where that’s allowed) or toss it in the “green bin” for the municipality to haul it away.
• Any cuts that aren’t made flush to a trunk or branch should be made at a least one inch above a bud and at a roughly 45-degree angle (to allow water to roll off rather than catch in the pock mark that often develops where a branch has been cut).
• Tie the shoots loosely to the trellis with green plant tape – the tape will eventually decompose once the branch is stiff enough to support its own weight, but you don’t want the tape to constrict its growth in the meantime.

When Life Gives You Quarantine, Plant Potatoes

The pandemic separated my family from our neighbors. Could a network of backyard gardens bring us together?

Joe Chivers, 10, planting young onions in one of the Ackroyds’ new beds.Credit...C.J. Chivers

By C. J. Chiver, New York Times 

Luke Ackroyd wandered his family’s backyard Sunday morning, surveying an expanding vegetable garden. Before him were rising arugula sprouts and the stiff green spikes of young onion plants.

A nurse anesthetist, Ackroyd was due on Monday to start a four-day shift on an airway team at Boston Medical Center, a 514-bed hospital and trauma center in the city’s South End. He expected to spend the week intubating patients suffering respiratory distress from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. For now, his mind was on potatoes — as in, where in his yard might he grow them? And should he plan for one row, or two, or three?

Luke is my neighbor in Wakefield, R.I., a former mill village near the state’s southern coast. He lives three doors up. On Sunday the two of us remained about a dozen feet apart, engaged in the new and awkward dance of the pandemic spring. We walked his yard, talked potatoes and settled on choices. The Ackroyd patch would be two rows, each about 15 feet long, near a stack of firewood and away from the shade of rhododendrons and a small tree. Our street was silent. The town seemed still. Before we parted, Luke said he would ask Sam, his 13-year-old son, to turn over the grass with a shovel while he was at the hospital during the week. Then my sons and I would put seed potatoes into the Ackroyd dirt — just as we had planted the rest of his family’s early vegetable garden in the past weeks.

In the middle of March, as the coronavirus altered life all around us and revealed the fragility of our reliance on distant sources of food, my family was in a position many Americans outside the areas most afflicted came to know, watching with dread and sorrow as Covid-19 began sickening distant co-workers and friends. We entered self-isolation before our nearest hospital announced treating an infection, and we were sheltered outside the areas of gravest risk. An unfamiliar feeling of uselessness descended upon us: Unlike mail carriers, E.M.T.s or supermarket employees — unlike Luke — we were members of a largely idled or remote collective, among the tens of millions without a clear or practical contribution to offer. We were lucky, and we knew it. We also wanted to convert the privilege of our good fortune to service, but we had no idea how.

The mid-March run on beans and meat and pasta at local grocery stores, like the shortages of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, had left people feeling vulnerable. Sparse shelves also coincided with planting time for early spring crops — spinach and peas, arugula and onions, radishes and turnips and the like. Looking into our own yard, we wondered: Could the pandemic spur a shift to greener and more community-based living, in the form of vegetable gardens, and thereby offer solace and sustenance alike? If daily news reports were thick with menace and fear, if news conferences from Washington felt unhelpfully carnivalesque, maybe people’s sense of control, agency and resilience could be nurtured in the soil — as they had been for our forebears.

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Jack Chivers, 20, raking and leveling freshly tilled new garden at the home of Bob and Susie Clendenen.Credit...C.J. Chivers

Simple gardening was something we knew how to do. My father is an accomplished garden- and fruit-tree tender. Throughout my childhood in upstate New York, he summoned baskets of tomatoes and beans from the land around him, along with thick bouquets of dill and basil. Over time, he became, to use the doctrinal term, a muskmelon madman — raising seedlings on the kitchen counter, transferring them first to cold frames and then to gardens rich with horse manure he brought home hot in dented garbage cans in his Volkswagen squareback. As his vines spread, he defended each leaf and flower, stooping among them throughout the summer to remove insects by hand. So prized were the fruits of his labors that an otherwise upstanding neighbor became a cantaloupe thief. One day our dogs flushed her out of the patch red-handed. Her name was Marian. We called her Melanie. My mother said she never knew a dignified woman could scoot like that.

For a dozen years since returning to the United States from Moscow, our family followed my father’s example, trying to coax a significant amount of our food from gardens and other local sources. This was in part tied to the allure of freshness and flavor, but also to a desire to kindle a modicum of tangible self-sufficiency in a world tilting disorientingly toward the virtual. What, in the end, can you eat from an Apple store?

The lifestyle, and its aesthetic, occasioned ribbing and jabs from relatives and friends: Prepper. Hippie. Hayseed. Freak. Keeper of a survivalist compound. But when schools shuttered and all of our worlds grew smaller, we were reasonably well prepared for emptied grocery store shelves and mandatory social distancing. We had large vegetable gardens ready for seed, along with compost pits, a few fruit trees, a root cellar, enough firewood for two winters and a 35-year-old but recently rehabbed commercial fishing skiff on a dock a few miles from the back door. Our freezers held meat from turkeys, sea bass, porgies, ducks and goats that we killed ourselves and processed on a butcher’s table that my oldest son, Jack, and I built in the basement and set up beside the house. Just outside the kitchen windows, opposite from the clam rakes, were nine laying hens in a coop. As panic shoppers picked clean entire sections of grocery stores, these chickens were producing six to nine eggs a day. (The lone rooster, a lame and gentle fellow who rarely crowed, died a few days into our isolation. Was this an omen? Time will tell.)

We also had tools, including my father’s old gas-powered rototiller, with which we could make quick work turning lawns into vegetable patches, and chain saws for clearing trees and their offending shade. The clincher, though, was our number. Five siblings had been reunited, then all but confined, under one roof: a college freshman, a high school senior, a high school sophomore, a middle-schooler and a 10-year-old. Unless one of us became sick, we could muster a local labor pool most any day and offer a free service that might give our neighbors fresh greens in a few weeks — then more diverse harvests throughout summer — by doing for them what we were doing at home anyhow. And we could do it in compliance with social-distance mandates, down to texting instructions to new gardeners after we planted their yards while they remained inside.

First we ordered seed. My second-oldest son, Mick, browsed the catalogs. Our initial focus was on crops that would germinate and thrive in New England’s cool spring weather. We settled on spinach and arugula, in sacks by the pound, and beanbag-size pouches of seed for cilantro, parsley, turnips, radishes and peas. Then we placed orders for bundles of onion plants and sacks of eyed potatoes. Our onion order was 10,000 plants strong.

We extended offers. On St. Patrick’s Day I texted our former next-door neighbors, Bob and Susie Clendenen, who had moved to a smaller house two blocks away, asking them if they would like a garden at their home, starting with seed potatoes, peas and greens. “Then you guys would have some healthy supplemental food five paces from your porch,” I wrote.

Within a minute, Susie replied. “Really?” she texted, followed by a thumbs-up emoji. “YES.”

A few days later she stood on her back porch and directed Jack and me as we tore up the lawn around a stone birdbath. Promising soil emerged, dark and free of clay and rock. Soon Jack was planting, making rows and marking each with a pair of quahog shells. He set aside areas for onions and potatoes to be planted later, then returned home to split firewood and prepare for his online college class.

The following day Susie texted that she had been looking out at her new garden all day.

By then, Mick was raking and seeding the Ackroyds’ three raised beds.

Word spread. More requests for gardens came in. We offered help, but proposed conditions. Anyone who accepted labor or seed had to agree to do the work that vegetable gardens require — the inevitable weeding and thinning, the likely watering, the sometimes comically hapless thwarting of pests. And if the crops thrived, the families agreed, they would share their bounties around town.

Soon we had more takers than we had time. Within a week, my kids and I had cut fresh plots into several other neighbors’ lawns, built and filled more raised beds in our own gardens and left rough-cut oak planks for Luke and Sam to assemble into another trio of beds in their yard. In one lot we felled five trees, opening a shaded patch to the warming sun and sky.

The work did not go smoothly in each place, much less every day. Weather has been mostly chilly, windy and dreary, and the gardens have been drenched in downpours heavy enough to wash away or redistribute seed. The spinach proved slow to germinate. Where it did emerge, it has barely grown. Some lots were rocky. One turned out to be clay two inches down; without a dump truck’s worth of compost, its potential yield is roughly that of a sidewalk. Our house cats — mousers we keep as wardens against rodent vectors of Lyme disease (an illness one of my sons and I have caught) — have tried commandeering one raised bed as a litter box. They bolt when we hiss at them. Like Melanie, they return.

There have also been near-instant successes. The arugula blinked to life everywhere seed fell. The early vigor of the turnips and radishes have been of similar order. Our onion plants arrived lush and healthy; soaking rains helped them establish roots with speed. New gardeners whose yards are frequented by deer or rabbits have agreed to forgo planting crops these animals will eat in favor of growing potatoes and onions, which the animals avoid, to exchange with households that will grow extra greens. Openness to collaboration, eagerness for labor, expressions of good will — sentiments in our neighbors that hint at mutual reliance are as bright as any bloom.

There has also been the reward of seeing children participate as the world reels. About a week after Mick raked and seeded the Ackroyds’ older beds, my youngest son, Joe, returned to their yard with the onion plants. Sam Ackroyd had worked with Luke to make three fresh beds and fill them with topsoil and compost. Their additions were ready for seeds or plants.

Luke was away at work. To avoid contact with anyone else, we texted ahead and asked everyone to remain inside.

Dena, his wife, arrived in her minivan. She is a physician assistant. To the swarm of children who roam the street, she often serves as a village healer, treating their cuts and scrapes and insect bites, sometimes alerting other parents of the earaches and fevers that spring up in the pack.

She had news. Her father, she said, had Covid-19. His home was about two miles away. She had spent the night evaluating whether he should go to the emergency room. He had not.

Joe, my 10-year-old, was planting her onions. He listened quietly. Having been in Dena’s care repeatedly, including once for a broken wrist and another time for slicing open the cartilage of his left ear, he seemed relieved that she was on her father’s case.

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From left, Lucy Ackroyd, 10, and Joe Chivers, 10, talking in the Ackroyds’ backyard after Joe planted onions.Credit...C.J. Chivers

The back door opened. Lucy, Luke and Dena’s 10-year-old daughter, stepped into the morning. She and Joe had been inseparable until social distancing pulled them apart.

“Hi,” she said, from about 30 feet away.

“Hi,” he answered.

They made hesitant steps toward each other, until about 20 feet apart. Joe showed her the garden, and what he had done. Then they sat on the lawn, and talked softly about what a drag online school is, and of the miracle of internet orders and curbside pickup from Brickley’s Ice Cream, a pandemic-inspired service on Main Street that they hoped to persuade their parents to try. Soon Joe and I were walking home, bucket of seed in hand, headed back to quieted, less certain lives, and the haltingly hopeful chores of our own dirt.