Opening Weekend 2014

Hello all -

Yesterday was Opening Day at EHCG! We had several dozen gardeners come out for the Orientation tours, and with plot assignments up in the gardens and posted online things are really in full swing.

Maybe I should say "full spring" because, compared to this time last year, we are in amazing shape. (You can look back at the March 17 post in this blog for comparison). One year ago, late March in the gardens meant a heavy snow cover and no signs of frost. Walking around the garden yesterday, I spied onion shoots emerging from the soil in many plots, young spinach, and strawberry plants regaining their green color! My tulips are beginning to come up as well. Plots up the hill at EHCG are doing well a little earlier, as they experience an earlier thaw than those of us to the west.

I hope that everyone has had a chance to find their plot at Eagle Heights or University Houses gardens. If you are a first time gardener, please be careful to confirm that you are indeed in the right plot before digging in. A quick check with a garden worker will resolve the situation for those of you who are uncertain.

Our annual Seed Fair will be held next weekend at the Eagle Heights Community Center. All gardeners registered with us will receive 15 (FREE) tickets redeemable for seed packets. We boast an impressive diversity of seeds donated by many local businesses. I advocate for experimenting a little if you have extra tickets - an open mind is how I discovered fava beans at the Seed Fair last year, and now they are probably my favorite thing to grow (and eat!). Expect an email this coming week with more details from the registrar.

I recommend doing yourself a favor and doing some research before picking seeds. Some seeds need to be started inside before being transplanted outside, such as broccoli, cabbages, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and basil. While you can certainly choose these kinds of seeds at the Seed Fair, if you don't have the time and resources for germinating seeds inside and growing them for the required span (typically 6 weeks or more), it might be a good idea to spend those tickets on direct-planted crops such as lettuces, beans, all root vegetables, and even squashes. Transplants for these fussy sorts of spring and summer crops can be bought at the cold and warm weather transplant sales we are hosting in April and May (more information in future blog posts). Also, you might want to distribute your seed selections between spring or cool weather crops, and summer or warm weather ones.

It may be helpful for you to consult several resources to plan your garden. The last post I published on this blog went over the planting guidelines for the more common crops grown in our gardens, informed significantly by Robin Mittenthal's From the Ground Up gardening manual, a much more comprehensive resource. Several planting guides for timing exist online, including a spring planting calendar I really like. Individual seed packets will generally also give planting information, although I find some disagreement from brand to brand. I have also posted previously a month-by-month garden plan, which is by no means perfect but a basic framework of how one might plan their planting to fit everything in, at the right time.

This certainly sounds like a lot of planning, and of course feel free to throw caution to the wind and scatter seeds with abandon. I think that most plants can be grown chaotically, and have heard some argument that this may confuse pests who are more attracted to large homogenous plantings, as though they are some miniscale monoculture. I prefer to plan because otherwise I will reach early June without space for melons or ground cherries, and bolted spinach that was planted too late to enjoy.

With that said, happy gardening! See you at the Seed Fair.