Garden Update

We continue to work on the garden to get it in tiptop shape for the start of the vegetable season. Things are going wonderfully now that Dale is here working so hard! Much of the fenced garden has never been planted but we plan to remedy that in the near future.



Our vegetable garden is a 100 ft x 150 ft plot - that's about a 1/3 of an acre. We plant in "wide rows" - meaning it's not like many fields you see with just a single row of corn or cotton that runs the whole length. Instead, our beds are 3 ft wide and 20 ft long. The garden is divided into 6 sections, each one for a different type of plant - the tomato family, the squash family, legumes, roots, the cabbage family and finally corn and watermelon grow together. Every year the garden plots will rotate so the plant families are growing in new soil. This helps build up the health of the soil by not depleting nutrients that a particular plant uses as well as prevents the proliferation of diseases. Currently, we have 3 of these sections complete...but the other three are coming along quickly!

We strive to grow a wide range of vegetables as well as growing varieties that you might not see in every grocery store. We've been having fun growing all sorts of lettuces this winter and are hoping to be able to extend the lettuce season nearly year round with some tips we have picked up. I think it's unheard of to harvest lettuce in July, but apparently it's possible - and we would love to be able to provide our community with this beautiful vegetable throughout most of the year!



But of course, we also would like to provide some of the staples. While we will never be able to grow all the onions and potatoes that our community needs, we want to get some of these fresh to you. We have red, white and yellow onions planted and they have done marvelously in this cool weather. Now if it will only not get too hot too fast, we will have some nice sized bulbs!



As the gardening season progresses, I'd like to bring you up to speed on how various vegetables are grown to help everyone really connect with the food they eat. We sometimes really take for granted being able to just pick up carrots, tomatoes or celery at the grocery store. But we don't always realize what really goes into growing that food. Stay tuned for more in depth discussions of the exciting world of vegetable growing!