Last harvest of the season!

Dining Services hope you enjoyed the fresh produce throughout this years season! We served spinach, carrots, chives, squash, jalapenos, cherry tomatoes, snow peas, and more! If you weren't one of the lucky ones to try the organic lettuce mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds, today is your chance! Stop by for lunch and enjoy your salad today with lettuce cut fresh this morning!

Campus Sustainability Day

If you missed lunch today, you definitely missed a good one! USM Dining celebrated Campus Sustainability Day by focusing on a local meal. It was a huge success and absolutely delicious!

Monday is Food Day!

The first, National Food Day is taking place this Monday, October 24th!

We have several events planned for Food Day, we hope to see you at one of them!

• “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” - Joe Carlin from Carlin Family Farms of Windham, Maine will join us for dinner (4pm-7) in Brook’s Residential Restaurant to showcase his local business and delicious acorn squash!
• Follow the “Did You Know” Signs around Woodbury Food Court and between Bailey and Brook’s to learn what ARAMARK is doing as it relates to sustainability and health.
• Spin the Food Day game wheel in Brook’s Dining Hall (11am-1pm) for an opportunity to win a prize and learn new facts about health, food, farming, and sustainability! While you’re there, pick up some facts about Food Day!
• The TRUE Cost of Food will play on repeat during lunch at both Woodbury Food Court and Brook’s Dining Hall – watch to learn more about food cost, production, and sustainability!

 Please visit FoodDay.org to learn more about the campaign and discover who else are planning activities!

Attack of the aphids!!!!

OK, they weren't really attacking, but if they were smart enough, they could have!! A couple of weeks ago I noticed my snow peas burning in the sun, so I moved them over to the shade. I harvested 1 quart of snow peas (see last post) and I check on them this week, and all the plants look dead! Since one of my spinach beds inside was not producing as much as the other, I thought I'd replant more peas inside. I pulled all of the spinach up and saw a few aphids, but when I pulled the pea plants up there must have been a hundred or more of those little buggers!

Water can in hand, I went straight to the kitchen for some vegetable oil, water, and soap (no bleach), a natural remedy for aphids I found online previously. I was surprised that this instantly killed them! I'm going to add compost and wait a day before transplanting tomatoe plants into that container as well as wait to replant my peas. Hopefully the aphids will not return!

It has been hot in Gorham! Check out the progress and enjoy the heat....

Left: Cucumbers Right: Sunflowers

Garlic

Pickling cucumbers inside have grown a lot in the past week!

Jalapenos are beginning to flower!

Hot and bell peppers doing great!

Pole beans taking over the lights!

And beginning to flower :)

Pumpkins!!

Squash (hope there's room)!

Chamomile has flowered a lot!

Cherry tomatoes are beginning to show!

Just keep growing, growing, growing!

It's almost July! Can you believe it?! I can't! It's been beautiful here in Gorham for the most part and the plants are loving it! Another harvest yesterday, 24 quarts lettuce, 8 quarts spinach, 2 quarts chives, 3 quarts terragon, 1 quart snow peas. Check out some of the progress...

Cucumbers, Squash, Pumpkins, Carrots

Carrots

Chamomile beginning to flower!

Cucumbers, with sunflowers next to them

Pickling cukes inside

Mountain Mint finally getting bigger

Nasturtiums

First harvest of Snow Peas

Pole beans growing right up and above their poles!

pole beans



Pumpkins



Squash

Sunflowers, these are the biggest :)

Cherry tomatoes beginning to flower!

Soggy plants this morning!

Barrow's Greenhouse in Gorham is closing this month and they've started to yard sale all of their unwanted items. Below is a picture of some supplies I bought from them last week, definitely a bargain! All of those smaller pots have another pot inside them as well and those watering cans were exactly what I was looking for. All of that for $11.25, needless to say, I'm definitely stopping in again sometime this week. Go out and support some local business, there's some really great stuff!

Well, I'm glad I took pictures last week, because today is certainly a cloudy day. I started early this morning and looked at the plants first thing, they definitely don't need watering! Must have rained pretty hard last night, but it's better than everything drying out. Even plants inside the greenhouse didn't need watering. Should be receiving our rain barrels soon that Gary Stephenson from Residential Life ordered. This will provide a great alternative to the hose and plants seem to really love fresh rain water!

I've noticed some spiders in the lettuce beds, but I'm leaving them be for now as they don't seem to be eating the lettuce. Also, I'm assuming they're keeping other bugs away. There is a critter digging in my squash and pumpkin beds, it's only happened a few times so I haven't done anything about it yet, also not really sure what to do. Ideas?

Spinach and lettuce survived their first harvest beautifully. They grew a lot just over the weekend so they look even better than the pictures! In fact, many plants grew over the weekend including the pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, and nasturtiums!

BASIL

SPICY BASIL, GENOVESE BASIL

BELL PEPPERS

CHERRY TOMATOES

GRAPE AND TRUST TOMATOES have a lot of growing to do to catch up with the cherry tomatoes, but at least they are finally growing!

CHERRY TOMATOES

CUCUMBERS INSIDE

ORGANIC CUCUMBERS OUTSIDE

CLOSE UP CUCUMBERS

CUCUMBERS/SQUASH

GENOVESE BASIL

JALAPENOS

LETTUCE

NASTURTIUMS

SWEET PEAS

GREEN BEANS

PUMPKINS

SPINACH