Growing Season Ripe at Crows Woods

They persisted when it seemed the rain would never stop in April. They endured when the heat blasted them in June and July and most of August. Then they stayed home during drenching rainfalls in the last few weeks. 

Now it’s a September tinted by Claude Monet, when the color of the zinnias and sunflowers jumps at you, when bees and beetles and butterflies are swarming. 

What better time for lease-holders of garden plots at Crows Woods to walk away briefly from the never-ending task of weeding and dead-heading, of cutting back stalks now turning yellow at summer’s end?

So, a few hours before sunset on Sunday, they met for a food feast, to talk about even more ways to cook zucchini and Swiss chard and about composting machines. A secondary purpose of the picnic, said Brenda Zadjeika, was to set up a central collection spot for surplus produce that would be donated to the South Jersey Food Bank. But there wasn’t any surplus. It had all been eaten, or jarred, or frozen, by plot-holders or their families and friends.

“I think next year we’ll set up a box for surplus mid-season and I’ll make it a point to take things weekly to the food bank. Everything is pretty much harvested by now,” Zadjeika said Sunday. She set up her plot with a series of raised beds. “Minimal weeding and better results,” she said.

“Four weeks ago everything was green. It looked like a jungle,” said David York, who has rented a 20 by 20 foot plot for three years. Now his tomato plants are turning gold and the foliage is slipping into autumnal shades while the peppers still were running amok.

“I had tons of basil and squash. It’s amazing when you watch these gardens summer after summer, when you see how much can be grown here,” said York, who visited his plot at least three times each week.

“If you weren’t here at least twice a week, you were probably going to be overcome by weeds,” he said.

Terry Migrala, finishing her second year as a Crows Woods gardener, said she usually would stop by around 6:30 each morning to tend her spot. In early summer, she harvested lots of spinach and strawberries (“a terrific salad,” she said) and later spaghetti and acorn squash. Now, flowers are brightening the fenced-in area, mostly zinnias and marigolds. The flowers not only brighten the area, but attract beneficial insets like bees. Miniature pumpkins also were plentiful in Migrala’s assigned spot.

Migrala was visiting the garden on Saturday with her miniature schnauzer, Murray, to plant spinach and lettuce for a fall harvest. “He likes to chase the rabbits,” she said of the dog and pointed out items she had trash-picked and put to decorative use, like two wooden chairs, a trellis, and a bit of plastic fencing.

In spite of the summer’s rain—first not enough of it and then way too much—“all the crops came in good,” said Paul Eckman, who grew 100 stalks of silver queen corn, each producing two ears.

“There’s nothing like picking a fresh ear of corn and eating it in 20 minutes,” he said.

The gardeners didn’t have a bumper crop of tomatoes because excess rain split the skins, Eckman said.

The community garden initially was set up where the borough’s soccer fields now are located. “Every time I used a spade in that garden I would dig up a part of Kings Highway,” because the area was a dump for the ripped-up highway asphalt. “We were glad to move. The borough even installed a water line for us,” he said.

Eckman said said he and his wife, Bobbi, also have 10 raised beds in their back yard on Ardmore Avenue. Crops there are mostly tomatoes and herbs, "things I can just walk outside and pick." Each year they give away to neighbors about half of what they grow, both said.

As the gardeners were assembling for a group photo, one of the original gardeners of Crows Woods, Helen Peitz, 83, arrived with some family members. Now using a wheel chair, Peitz said her husband was able to drive on the mulched walkways to get her to her garden plot. “I just didn’t want to give up my plot,” she said. Now she mostly gives instructions to family members on planting and harvesting techniques.

Vetti and John Thomas, whose harvest included Kennebec potatoes, shared some with fellow gardeners. “They’re used for Utz potato chips,” Vetti said of the potatoes. She had delivered two pumpkin pies and dishes of pickled beets and pickled cucumbers—tinted pine tree green with food coloring—to the buffet.

Vetti Thomas said she got seed potatoes from a source near a farm she owns in Adams County, PA. They were planted in April, when both she and her husband needed jackets and gloves to work the soil. The crop produced a bushel of spuds.

She said she hopes to encourage other members of the community garden to learn to can fruits and vegetables.

Art Leon, who has held a plot in the garden for 10 years, said he grows “mostly weeds and other things to feed the deer.” Gardeners were entertained throughout the summer, he said, by two bucks who visited regularly and small animals that foraged in the foliage.