Hello 104th Street Garden Members,
This is Craig, and I have several recent garden happenings to tell you about. Mostly, it is all very good news.
Pergola Installed:
Les and I were in the garden today with a crew from the Parks department that installed the new Pergola. The Parks department supervisor and crew did a great job on the installation. After the installation, I called up Ariana who is a Project Planner at NYC Parks – GreenThumb to thank her getting us the Pergola and setting up the installation and to tell her the Parks supervisor and crew did a great job on the installation. And thank you to Les for helping and giving me a break so I could get out of the cold.
Here is the new pergola installed:
Cistern Repaired:
The Cistern has also been repaired by Sammy the super for the building to which it is attached. Sammy came up and talked to Les and I during the installation of the pergola and showed us what he had done. The pipe hook-up is a little different, but it all looks great. He has a new overflow drain set-up that drains on both side of the cistern, and the last thing he needs is about 10 feet of 4” width flexible black tubing for the overflow drain. He gave me a small sample of what he needs, and I will shop for it by the weekend. This is the first time that I have talked to Sammy about the cistern repair, but I know that Beverly and Simone, from the Steering Committee, have worked on the Cistern repair, and I wanted to thank them too. Figuring out how to fix the cistern was a difficult problem, and I think we should figure out a way to thank Sammy for his hard work.
Rat Abatement Update:
There have been a few small billing and admin issues with the exterminator. Simone, and Ariel and Linda sorted out those issues for us, and I want to thank them for handling all that stuff. An exterminator called me yesterday, and I walked with him as he serviced all of the bait traps in the garden. I wanted to get a sense of how well the traps were working. The bait stations have two ways to kill the rats. They have two posts that hold a packet of rat bait (which is poison) a lot of the rat bait was missing so the rats are eating it. The bait stations have a snap-trap too. There were eleven rats caught in the snap-traps this time. Most were caught in the east garden this time. But the west garden had a gigantic rat caught in a snap-trap. I couldn’t believe such a fat rat could get in the bait station. That’s more than twenty rats total that have been caught in snap-traps inside the bait stations that I know of. We’re getting good service on the bait stations from exterminator, and we are killing rats. The same exterminator called me later in the afternoon since he was going back to do a dry ice treatment. He filled in rat holes as we walked around too.
License Meetings Delayed:
GreenThumb has delayed the garden license meetings. They have all been postponed until early next year. They have extended our license. When we have a firm new date and details we will let you know.
Reminder garden Clean-up and mulch meeting:
We have a Garden clean-up and mulch meeting on Saturday December 1st from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
(If needed, we have a rain date of Sunday December 2nd from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.)
Some agenda for Clean-up meeting:
*Spread out some mulch.
*Put the beds to bed.
*Empty the water barrels and get them secured for winter.
*Put other things away for the winter.
Hope to see everyone at the meeting,
Craig
