Hot July temperatures often mean less planting for gardeners and more of a focus on harvesting.
But making a garden harvest last throughout the hot, summer season isn’t always easy.
"What I do is I teach gardening," said Five Rivers MetroParks education coordinator, Betty Hoevel. "So whether it's vegetable gardens or ornamental gardens, and understanding how that plays so deeply into environmental health."
As a life-long gardener, learning and sharing how to grow nutritious food is deeply important to her.
As part of her work with the MetroParks, Hoevel will present on how to stretch a garden harvest through the summer months at MetroParks’ annual Small Farm and Food Fest on Aug. 2.
"You can't make a tomato last for four weeks, for instance. That's not going to happen. But you can, if you plant correctly, have a series of plantings, you'll have continual harvests, but then you have to know how to harvest," Hoevel said. "People think, 'Well you pick it and it's done, right?' And that's what we're going to talk about, it's not necessarily so."
She said she will be teaching visitors about succession planting and stretching the use of greens such as lettuce, kale and spinach which grow outwards from a head, or base.
“So you want to keep picking from the outside so the center of the plant continues to grow and generates more leaves and these will go on through the heat of summer,” she said.
Hoevel’s presentation will take place at 10 a.m. alongside seven other local speakers. The festival itself runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Carriage Hill Metropark.
"It's a great opportunity to come out, not only feel like you're in the 1880s, but learn a little bit about the thinking," she said.
Hoevel said visitors should plan to spend an entire day at the fest for a number of activities, food and featured presentations which change yearly based on public interest.
"I've been here several years and it's fun to see the topics change and see what's going to be interesting in a particular time," she said. "A lot of that's driven by what's on the internet, people are talking about XYZ. All right, let's see if we can get somebody who knows something about that. And that's why we keep it current yet historical."
