Hello readers! Happy Spring! This post is long overdue and I apologize for my lack of posting this past month. The weather has finally broken here and we've had a few nice 60 or 70 degree days (I'm not that naive though, I'm sure we'll have one last snowfall just to bring us back to reality, that yes, we live in Cleveland). With today being the first day of Spring, we were anxious to get our hands back in the dirt and get our garden going. We packed up the car with all our gear and drove the short distance to our community garden plots, anxiously wondering if our garlic had survived the winter. You can imagine then, that we were pleasantly surprised to see that our garlic had indeed survived and had 6" green sprouts. I couldn't resist digging one up to see how big the bulb was and it was about the size of a quarter. We can't wait to harvest it, but will have to until July or so.
We planted the cool weather crops this morning: buttercrisp lettuce, snow peas, brussel sprouts, brocolli, scallions, cauliflower and spinach. We plan to go back in a few weeks and plant more broccoli, lettuce and spinach so we can have a continuous yield. This year we are doing 3 -10'x10' plots instead of 2. With one already filled, we are planning to do a "3 sisters" plot (corn, beans & squash) and then fill the last one with peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, soybeans, zucchini, cucumbers and whatever else we can get our hands on!
4 comments:
How fun to get your garden started already. I love it!
Can you explain how a neighborhood garden plot works exactly? Do you share produce or pay a certain amount? We don't have a lot of gardening space at our new house and it's something I'd like to look into.
Hi Kristen! The way community gardening works in our city is that we pay a fee for a plot (in our case it's $25/year for a 10x10)... all of that fee goes back into the garden to buy community tools, soil amenities, compost bins, etc. The gardeners are responsible for their own plots from start to finish. Less commonly, some neighborhoods will do more like a small collective farm, where everybody pays a fee and works the same land for equal shares of the product.
This is our second year, and we love it. What we weren't expecting was that we love the "community" part as much as the "garden" part. It's great to go and other people are there, some are really experienced gardeners that we learn a lot from, and you can share tips and veggies and you can always find someone to water your garden if you're leaving town.
Especially now, in the spring, I find myself looking for an excuse to go and do something there, but there's not too much. Shortly, though, it will keep us busy enough!
Thanks so much, Brad! Looking forward to getting a garden started. : )
Also, wanted to let you know that I linked to your Curried Carrot Almond Soup, at http://crownsandcrumpets.blogspot.com/
Just wanted you guys to know that I LOVE your food blog! : )
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