Welcome!

The Parkdale Community Garden is an interactive learning garden. Located in East Aurora, NY on the grounds of Parkdale Elementary. This site is full of resources for school gardens, community gardens and home gardens. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds


Sunflower seeds are highly nutritious and a kid friendly snack. Harvest the seeds when the back of the flowers have turned brown or yellow then bring the sunflower heads indoors to a dry airy place. Once the seeds have totally dried they will easily fall from the head when rubbed with your hand. Soak the seeds overnight with salted water. Drain them the next day and roast in a single layer on a cookie sheet for a couple hours at 150-200 degrees Fahrenheit. Store the roasted seeds in an airtight container set in a cool, dry place until ready to eat.
To save seeds for next year put the dry(not roasted) seeds in paper envelopes and label them. They will be ready to sow next June by our students again!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Powdery Mildew


Yuck, powdery mildew has devastated our squash and pumpkin efforts. This common fungus first started in our cucumber patch in late July, we didn't catch it early enough and then the air born spores migrated their way to our zucchini plants. We still were able to harvest a substantial amount of zucchinis but it definitely cut our season short. By mid August the powdery mildew ravaged our blue ballet squash and small sugar pumpkin plants (part of our Iroquois Three Sisters Garden). The fruit of the squash and pumpkin plants are still hanging on but we are not sure for how much longer. We were hoping to harvest the squash in mid October but we might have to pick it sooner in order to save it. We will try to "keep" it for as long as we can so the second grade can use it in their Harvest celebration in November.

We treated the effected leaves by spraying them with a mixture of baking soda(natural fungicide) and water. This seemed to slow down the spread but next year if this happens we will start our treatment earlier and more aggressively. In the meantime we will look into ways to prevent this from happening next year.