Nyack Community Garden

Newsletter for Summer 2025

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Check out our Summer 2025 newsletter, the 50th Anniversary issue!

We have articles about teaching children about the garden, interviews with garden members, information about food-related legislation, a book review, longstanding garden members’ reflections on the garden at its 50th anniversary, and other garden reminders. We are also reprinting an article on the history of the Nyack Community Garden, originally published in our newsletter in 2018. We hope you enjoy this issue, and happy gardening!

Garden Contest winners

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s Garden Contest.

Our Judges were Mayor Joe Rand and Village Administrator Andy Stewart. Both took the role quite seriously and spent considerable time walking through the garden plots making sure to consider both full and half plots.

As always, we appreciate everyone’s time and attention in helping to make our garden the gem of the Nyack community.

Best Overall

Jayne Stuecklen & David Kiremidjian

Most Creative

1st Place Nicole & Donna Faustini
2nd Place Marie Carmel Grube
3rd Place Niki Strippoli

Best Veggie Garden

1st Place Tom Wondra
2nd Place Aaris Sherin
3rd Place Denise Hogan

Best Veggie and Flower Garden

1st Place Lynda Grant
2nd Place Donna Hudson
3rd Place Vivienne Von Wiederhold & Alicyn Mindel

Prizes will be given at our annual potluck dinner so please make sure to put it on your calendar.

Newsletter for Fall 2024

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Check out our Fall 2024 newsletter, the “Feast” issue. We have great recipes featuring pumpkins, jalapenos, red lentils and a whole slew of interesting articles on what’s growing in the garden!

Garden Contest winners

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hello All,

How beautiful our gardens looked for the contest! Thank you all for cleaning up and making us look so neat and lush.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2024 Garden Contest!

Best Vegetables:

1st place - Karissa Sullivan - 27B
2nd place - Lauren Pakain - 32
3rd place - Vivienne Von Wiederhaold /Allcyn Mindel - 8B

Best Veg/Flowers:

1st place - Nikki Strippoli - 7
2nd place - Olive Crone/Alexandra/Janet Hamlin - 6
3rd Place - Donna Hudson - 18

Most Creative:

1st place - Nicole & Donna Faustini - 48
2nd place - Jayne Stuecklen/David Kiremidjian - 36
3rd place - Jill Remaly/Tony Berman - 35

Best in Show!

Nicole & Donna Faustini - 48

Thank you to Marie Dilluvio for organizing this, and to our judges, Joy Macy, Bluefields Farm, Blauvelt, and Zoie Freidberg from Little Gem Farm, Orange County.

Congratulations to all the winners, and to the very large number of good gardeners and gardens this year.

Thank you,

The Garden Committee

Congrats to all!!

Newsletter for September and October 2022

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Check out our Summer 2024 newsletter, the “Commmunity” issue. We have a great article on Rona, who was one of our youngest gardeners, and how the garden has helped her family, and the garden as a “great place to learn about community”. We also read about the garden as a “sharing community”, our pollinator gardens, and our contributions to the broader community through Plant-a-Row. Finally we have some very interesting and useful articles about “We Need to Change our Food System and What We Eat”, the “Passion Flower” and “Chamomile”, and “Cultivating Healthy Soil”.

Garden Class on seeding and tools

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A week or so ago we held a garden class where we planted the Elegance Greens Mix from Johnny’s. This mix is mostly different mustard varieties (Brassica species) that grow fast and like cool weather, perfect for spring and fall. Most of what people call Asian greens are different mustard species, so this mix has those greens, plus a few leafy cabbages. You can sow the seed very densely and then harvest the greens using your scissors, you might get 3-5 harvests from one planting. Eat the flowers as well, they’re delicous.

The key to getting good germination is keeping your soil moist for the first few days and making sure your seeds have good contact with the soil. A good trick is to put a fine layer of some soil mix on top of the garden soil, then make your shallow row, 1/4” say, in that fine soil. Sprinkle the seed in the row, cover with fine soil, and tamp that down. Water each day, unless it’s raining, and you’ll get good germination.

We also talked about hoes. There are many different kinds of hoes, some for digging, some for weeding, some for mixing. We have two kinds of weeding hoes in our shed. One is called a stirrup hoe or shuffle hoe:

This one cuts the weeds at the soil surface, using a back-and-forth motion, thus shuffle hoe. You can weed an entire plot very quickly with this hoe.

The second one is called a goose neck hoe or half moon hoe:

This one is great for fine weeding, like in and around big plants. You cut the weeds at the soil surface by pulling it towards you.

Use the right tool for the job!

Brian O.

Avoiding insecticides with a mosquito trap

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting post from the Audobon Society of Virginia that a gardener shared with me:

HOW TO SET UP A MOSQUITO LARVA TRAP

The idea is to get the female mosquito to lay her eggs in a tempting bucket of water that has fermenting hay in it, apparently a very attractive environment for a mosquito. Unfortunately for the mosquito the water is laced with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which kills the larvae when they hatch.

Makes you wonder if similar strategies would work with any of the pests that do the most damage in our garden, which include the flea beetle and the squash borer (and to a lesser extent, the bean beetle and grasshoppers). In fact, there are squash borer traps, but we’ve never tried them out.

Anyone want to buy some and see if they work?

Brian O.

Newsletter for Fall 2023

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Check out our Fall 2023 newsletter, which is our “Sharing” Issue. There are articles on sharing work and garden plots, sharing the garden with hummingbirds, sharing food through Plant-a-Row, plants sharing the soil through companion planting, and sharing a meal at our annual Potluck dinner.

There are also pictures from the Garden Contest, where this year’s winners were:

Best Vegetable Garden:

1st Place - #14, Aaris Sherin

2nd Place - #9, Stephanie Salter

Best Flowers and Vegetables:

1st Place - #38, Gayle Sturmer/Eric Rosenberg

2nd Place – #21B, Liz Cherry/ Michelle Morales

Most Creative:

1st Place - #48, Nicole & Donna Faustini

2nd Place - #36, Jayne Stuecklen/David Kiremidjian

Best Over All:

#45 & #46, Cristiane Bertone/Glen Holley, Alley Olsen, Nancy Gray/Elizabeth Turk

Newsletter for September and October 2022

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Check out our September-October 2022 newsletter, it has superb articles: Planting Flowers for Arrangements, an article about Huge Watermelons and cucamelons, Planting a Winter Cover Crop, Watering our Gardens, Plant-a-Row 2022, pictures of this year’s Garden Contest winners, and some notes from our Board about the upcoming Potluck Dinner. Wonderful pictures, and much valuable information!

Garden Contest winners

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hello All,

How beautiful our gardens looked for the contest! Thank you all for cleaning up and making us look so neat and lush.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2022 Garden Contest!

Best Over-All Garden:
#48 Nicole and Donna Faustini
Best Maintained Garden:
1st Place #36 Jayne Stuecklen
2nd Place #23 Marie Carmel Grube
3rd Place #3 Barbara Berasi-Rosen
Best Vegetable and/or Garden:
1st Place #43 Nyack Garden Club
2nd Place #8B Vivienne Van Wiederhold
3rd Place #20 Christine Randolph
Most Creative Garden:
1st Place #7 Niki Strippoli
2nd Place #37 Jill Remaly
3rd Place #49B Cristiane Bartone

Congrats to all!!