BY LINDA SCHREIBER

Hot, hot, hot! The dog days of summer didn’t subside for the annual Johnson County 4-H & FFA Fair the last full week of July. It was beastly hot, so much so that fair officials sent some livestock home as early as 5 p.m. on Wednesday. The fair closed Thursday with the annual livestock auction.

The fair may have ended, but work in the Demonstration Garden continues with regular Tuesday evening work sessions. With a small army of volunteers caring for and watering multiple times a week, the garden is flourishing, bigger and better than ever.

Pop-up work sessions are added when produce needs immediate attention like picking aronia berries to donate to the Coralville Community Food Pantry. At the end of July, the group made a 178-pound aronia berry donation.

Depending on the weather, there’s likely another couple of months to the growing season before the garden and volunteers can rest. There will be much more produce to donate with more than a dozen tomato plants in ripening stages and lots of winter squash growing on the vines. The bounty of produce is sure to achieve new donation records. Already this year, the garden has donated more than 400 pounds of produce — in 2022, more than 500 pounds of produce from the garden was donated.

Ann Ruppencamp fills an important role as the garden monitor who often harvests and delivers produce to the food pantries in between group work sessions. Harvesting produce when it’s ready is essential to prevent spoilage and ensure others enjoy the garden’s bounty when it’s at peak flavor.

Planning for this signature Master Gardener activity begins in the winter months when volunteers select seeds to grow and a theme for the garden. This year’s garden highlighted companion plants. Garden coordinators Chris Sedrel and Laurie Roehl note they chose vegetables that grow better with an agreeable companion and created garden signs identifying every plant in the garden and their “plant pals.” They provided fair visitors information to take home identifying what grows best with a pal.

According to lifetime Master Gardener Barb Schintler, the first vegetable demonstration at the Johnson County fair was a few tomato plants planted on the west side of Montgomery Hall. Marilou Gay coaxed Johnson County Agricultural Association officers, known as the fair board, into a real garden initially planted by one of the cattle barns in 1993. In 2017, fair officials requested moving the garden and provided space north of the Heritage Barn as a permanent location. The following year, they suggested adding a wire corn crib to give the garden area a look and feel of an Iowa farmstead.

For the next two years, the new garden was established and flowers were added before the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020-2021 shuttered fair competition and the Master Gardener Plant Sale & Flea Market. Through it all, Master Gardeners continued to maintain all Fairground Gardens, including the Demonstration Garden until in-person activities resumed in 2021.

In 2022, Master Gardeners added a storage shed and John Weeg guided plans to establish a hügelkultur berm to improve the heavily compacted soil and the garden’s moisture retention. After digging down 4 feet and 2 feet wide to remove the soil, layers of wood, compost, plant debris and dried manure were added back transforming the space. As the wood gradually decays, it will be a consistent source of long-term nutrients and moisture for the plants.

This season, volunteers added three new raised beds to accompany the raised rock garden that was added in 2019 and selected companion plants to create ideal growing conditions. Master Gardener coordinators indicate the garden will have another new look in 2024 with education as an emphasis along with growing produce to combat food insecurity in Johnson County.