So far, being part of the garden has been a great experience. Through participating in the weekly meetings and a work day once a week, I have learned a great deal of information about gardening and met some great people. Since I first joined the garden, we have done a lot of crop rotation, double digging beds after harvest and amending the soil for new plants to be cultivated. We amended the soil by mixing in different organic fertilizers such as goat manure, compost from the city, fava beans grown in our garden, and our very own compost made with worm castings. Our garden has many young plants but in the coming months I think we will have some really nice growth.
Most of the plants that you see at the garden now were started from seed by members of the garden in our very own greenhouses. For this season’s summer crop, we planted Tomatos, Tomatillos, Squash, Zuchini, Carrots, Lettuce and more. Recently we moved some strawberry plants from our south-garden to our north garden strawberry bed. Before transplanting them, we made holes in the bed and mixed them with compost. Hopefully in a few weeks we will have an even more lush, green strawberry bed. In the bed that those strawberrys previously, we will plant root vegetables like onions, garlic, radishes, and more.
The tomato plants in the garden didn’t seem like they were doing to well at first, but in the recent days it seems like they are getting used to the soil and growing. That is exciting! Of the very first squash that we planted, some are already making fruit! We also planted a bed of squash with each plant elevated in its very own mound. It looks like a mountainous squash forest. We put the squash in mounds in order to facilitate better drainage and give the plants’ roots enough area to spread out deeply and soak up as much water as possible. We have noticed that they also don’t seem to like too much water in their early stages. I think squash blossoms are very beautiful to look at.
The garden is a great place and I encourage others to stop by on any of our workdays and especially our Monday meeting. I encourage others to come to the garden to enjoy this great weather in the city as summer approaches and learn about different gardening skills and beneficial methods of organic gardening. Gardening is a great skill to know and you can set up a garden just about anywhere with good sunlight. Gardening can be as easy as making a fence pocket out of a burlap sack and chicken wire, filling it with soil and hanging it on a railing, fence or gate. Just add seeds and water and sooner than you think you can be eating your own lettuce or making tea from you own medicinal herbs. By coming to GHCG you can learn a lot about gardening and if you want to, bring home what you learned.
The garden is also great because it gives you the opportunity to get outside, get your hands dirty and also meet some great people. At our Monday garden meetings (1pm), we have been very fortunate to enjoy soup while we have weekly discussions about different aspects about the garden such as: crop rotation, irrigation, harvesting, art and our next plans of action for working in the garden. It’s a great time to check-in, start off the week and all join to take care of something very valuable to us all: the garden.
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