Getting Ready for the Fall Season

Many workers make the job go quicker, with more laughs, and generate "best ways." The four garden beds were cleaned of dried up or harvested plants and made ready for the autumn season of growth. To winterize the area, more compost and organic fertilizer was amended into the ground (yeah! for composting). We did keep some of the herbs in the garden, like our basil, as they were still producing lovely additions.

The group of volunteers planted peas, potatoes, green onions, broccoli, carrots, and spinach. A joy to plant are the daffodils which will bloom in the springtime. We also planted more sunflowers. We have harvested the sunflowers from the summer, in anticipation of drying and then roasting those seeds. Yum!

The garden may look bare, especially with how abundant it looked earlier in the year, but just wait. We will once again produce food, treats, flowers, and other garden delights.

As always, we are looking for volunteers -- who get treated for their labors with produce from the garden. Call 409-832-1906 to be a garden volunteer.

Fall Garden Prep

As the summer comes to a close, we are looking forward to the fall season by making plans for our next planting. The garden has been a success with a plethora of okra, herbs, beans, sunflowers and wildflowers harvested. We even had a few cantaloupes, potatoes, tomatoes and are waiting for our eggplants to become ripe. We survived the summer heat and are anxiously awaiting some cooler temperatures.

Over the weekend we had our first tiny taste of fall and welcomed a bit of a cool front. It is getting us excited for the cooler temperatures ahead and we look forward to planting our fall garden. Last Wednesday, in preparation for the new garden, we had a work day to remove some of the plants that have stopped producing and made plans to improve our soil with compost. We started bright and early and were able to get a lot done before it got too hot.

We removed the beans, tomatoes, cantaloupe, squash and sunflowers-turned-trees. We are now drying the sunflowers and will roast the seeds in a few weeks. We are all looking forward to that! Yummy!

After we finished our work for the day, we made a list of veggies to grow in the fall. We are working on making our garden layout and will post our plans in a few days. On the list are pumpkins, potatoes and leeks to name a few. We look forward to having some delicious leek and potato soup in the cooler months!

Thank you to all our volunteers who have helped with the garden so far. It was been so rewarding and fun! We are always looking for more volunteers, so send an email or give us a call to see how you can help.

Stay tuned to see what else we’ll be planting!

Boys and Girls Club Visit and sample the Garden's produce

We loved having the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club visit the McFaddin-Ward House's victory garden. The sixty or so youngsters came in three sessions: Thursdays July 2, 9 and 30. They were enthusiastic about seeing the "real" deal in the garden and then later eating it on their home-made pizza. As a bonus, they also toured the first floor of the house. Danny Chand and Grace Mathis of the Southeast Texas Food Bank organized the outing to help the children understand how important nutritious food is to their health. For us, we marveled on how well they behaved these delightful people are. So please come back!

Progress Report on the Victory Garden

Although it has been plenty hot--well over a three-digit heat index--our garden is looking lush.

We’ve harvested tomatoes, potatoes, okra, cucumbers, beans, herbs (basil, dill, mint, cilantro), and lettuce. Our meals taste so much better when we eat the fresh fruits of our labors!

The sunflowers are growing beautifully and we are enjoying the colorful wildflowers.

Everything is doing well, but we do have to water every day.

Get involved! We are always looking for more volunteers to help with maintenance. We are starting to make plans for a fall garden. A bonus is getting to take home some of the harvest. Nothing taste better than home-grown vegetables.

Pizza straight from the garden (Almost!)

The McFaddin-Ward House plays host to the Boys & Girls Club showing the youngsters how food fresh from a garden could be just the topping for the ever-popular pizza.

The idea for Grow-Your-Own-Pizza toppings came from Danny Chand, the Nutrition Education Specialist for the Southeast Texas Food Bank. Part of his job is to teach good eating habits to a variety of age groups. He noticed that children often don’t have the link between how harvested food becomes grocery food. Capitalizing on his wife Carol Cuccio’s Victory Garden at the McFaddin-Ward House, Chand partnered with the Salvation Army’s Boys Clubs and Girls Club to show the children how to grow/pick/eat garden food.

For three sessions, Thursday July 2, 9 and 30, at 10am, 60-70 youngsters will visit the McFaddin-Ward House’s first floor. They also explore the four-bed garden and its vegetables and herbs, with a final stop at the visitor center where they will be treated to home-made pizza while learning about the nutritional content of the pizzas .

Carol Cuccio noticed on the club’s first outing, several of the children had never seen garden-grown tomatoes and were at first reticent about eating the squash. Commenting on how well behaved the children are, Cuccio also spoke about the children’s willingness to taste-test the colorful pizza toppings. “The children saw firsthand how food can go from the garden to the table and they liked this adventure in eating.”

Last Visit from Tom Wright of KFDM TV

On Wednesday, June 17, Tom Wright made his fourth and final visit to our Victory Garden. He interviewed Carol Cuccio and she was able to show him how well the four-bed garden has grown.

We can harvest many of the herbs and several of the vegetables (crowder peas, tomatoes, and cucumbers to name just a few). Michelle Cate took photos of the garden for you to see on our Facebook page. The Sunflowers look magnificient.

Come by to see the garden--as we work hard to keep it cool in this 100+degree heat.

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What Fun at the Latest Green Thumbs

Once again, a great group of gardeners came to our children's programming: Green Thumbs. This month's theme was "Bugs: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" and did our Greenies find the bugs all over our garden and yard--I must admit they all looked ug-lee to me! The museum educators showed, though, how the bugs were either good for our garden or bad for our garden.

After reading Eric Carle's "The Hungry Caterpillar" and chanting the word metamorphosis a few times, the youngsters were let loose in the garden with bug-catcher jars to see what they could find. Then they looked thru the guide sheets to i-d the little buggers.

Off to get wet. Very wet. On hot days in Beaumont where the temperature was over 90 degrees with high humidity....what fun to run through the sprinklers, just like their parents and grandparents did when they were young. Vintage sprinklers were spread all over the carriage house lawn and impromptu games of Kick Ball and Chase Me and Jump Over the Water sprang up. Rebecca Woodland taught the kids how to play Red Light/Green Light and Mother, May I (remember those good old-fashion games?).

Glad they ALL could join us. Look for another fun and entertaining (and -- when we can sneak it in -- educational) Green Thumbs program!!