7 June 2018
www.sunshinecommunitygardens.org
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Special Early Morning Workday to Precede Tomato Tasting
Saturday 6/9
7AM - 9AM
Only 22-days remaining to complete Service Hours for this semester. Remember that a missing TSBVI hour is billed at $50. The first two missing Regular Service Hours are $30/each.
However, what our community space really needs is your TIME! Please come out and pitch in even if you have met your minimums. Many Sunshine community members contribute far more than the rules require.
Special incentive: I just returned from Ecuador and I will be brewing a pot or two of the special high-grown coffee from Loja Province Ecuador ! Come fuel-up and cut some grass or weed with us in the cool of the early morning.
Workday Leader - Charlotte Jernigan - Zone 6
Tomato Tasting and Potato Show & Tell
This Saturday, June 9 at 9:00 am, Sunshine will have its annual tomato tasting and potato show and tell. If you have not attended before, members bring what they've grown during the week. There are bags and markers so you can identify them. Bringing them early allows the score sheets to be done in advance. The bags and markers will be in the trailer in the room to the right with the AC on. Be sure to place them in the boxes marked for the tomato tasting. The day of the tasting you get to sample a large number of tomatoes and hang out with your fellow community gardeners. Judging is done by giving the tomato a numerical score and commenting if so inclined. Everyone is welcome, even if none of your produce is ready. Please come and if you want to help, arrive early and we will put you to work.
Tomato Tips - Vine ripening with "tomato socks"
By Charlotte Jernigan (18-years at Sunshine)
Having a bird peck your tomatoes just as they blush is frustrating. Growing yellow or lime-green tomatoes instead of red or purple helps somewhat but all gardeners want to increase their chances of being able to truly "vine ripen" their red and purple tomatoes.
You will see many suggestions in action around Sunshine:
- Bird netting - lots of drawbacks but some use netting successfully.
- Red Christmas tree ornaments as decoys.
- Keeping water out for the birds to reduce thirst driven pecks.
- Flags, streamers, old-CDs spinning from strings, wind-whirlies, owl-statues, etc. In other words, various inanimate motion-makers to "spook" the birds.
I want to share a method that has worked well for me. You can perhaps combine this method with some of the above. I buy cheap, opaque mocha, suntan or black panty hose and cut the legs into segments. I cover my non-cluster tomatoes individually with these "socks." See pictures below. I use the larger remaining panty segment to cover some of my cluster tomatoes as a group.
Cherokee purple
covered w/stocking
A peek under -
vine ripened -
no bird peck
Four tomatoes
in their decoy
"sock" covers
While this is not 100% fool proof, it works 80% of the time. In 20% of cases, either a bird pecks the tomato anyway or a tomato rots-out inexplicably. In rare cases, insects get under the nylon and do some damage. Getting rain or water on the "socks" increases the chances of problems but I find that these actually dry out faster than brown-paper sacks or cotton socks which were the tips that the panty-hose method was based on. I hope some of you have success with this, as I have! ++cj
Weeder Content
Please email your article or suggestion to Holly Gilman by end of day Wednesday.
Officer and Zone Coordinator Contacts - Sunshine Gardens
Officers
- President - Nick Sweeney nick.sweeney@hotmail.com
- Vice President - Marilyn Landberg marilynlandberg@utexas.edu
- Secretary - Noelle Letteri - nletteri@yahoo.com
- Treasurer - Caroline Limaye scgtreasurer1@gmail.com
- Director - Linda Booker - lindaruthbooker@gmail.com
- Director - Jeff Taylor - kscjtaylor@prodigy.net
- Director - Randy Thompson jartdaht@gmail.com
Email the board.
Zone Coordinators
- Zone 1, Jasmine Baker austinjasmine@gmail.com
- Zone 2, Wayne Kuenstler wckuenstler@gmail.com
- Zone 3, Ludmila Voskov lvoskov@austin.rr.com
- Zone 4, Ila Falvey ila.falvey@gmail.com
- Zone 5, Mary Gifford mgifford@austin.rr.com
- Zone 6, Charlotte Jernigan charlotte@cybermesa.com
- Zone 7, Maria and Philip Wiley m.stroeva@gmail.com, philip9wiley@gmail.com
- Zone 8, Shannon Posern sposern@hotmail.com
- Zone 9, Kerry Howell casonhowell@gmail.com
- Zone 10, Christopher Schroder
christopher.s.schroder@gmail.com &
Karl Arcuri karl.w.arcuri@gmail.com
Other Personnel
- Weekly Weeder Newsletter - Holly Gilman hollyjgilman@gmail.com
- Plant Sale - Randy Thompson & Janet Adams jartdaht@gmailcom
- TSBVI Liaison & Volunteer Coordinator - Janet Adams jartdaht@gmailcom
- Plot Assignment - Kay McMurry scg.plots@gmail.com
- Compost Coordinator - Janet Adams jartdaht@gmail.com
- Education Committee - Shannon Posern shannonposern@gmail.com
- Carpentry & Repairs - Robert Jarry r.jarry@sbcglobal.net
- Water Leak Repairs - Steve Schulz sschulz784@aol.com
- Tools & Wheelbarrows - Bob Easter beaster1@austin.rr.com
- Kitchen Supplies - Anita Keese
anodekraft1@msn.com
(If supplies are needed for events, contact by email or at 512-773-2178) - Compost Tea - Jennifer Woertz jen@enjeneer.com
- Micah 6 - Dana Kuykendall kuykendall@austin.rr.com
- Micah 6 - Mary Gifford mgifford@austin.rr.com
- Website Coordinator - Sharon Rempert scgardenweb@gmail.com
- Spanish language contact - Andriana Prioleau gabp8dec65@hotmail.com
Record Service Hours Online - Green Binder