I'm interested in the garden, but I'm a real first-timer. Can you provide guidance as I go? What's it like to get started?
You are a perfect candidate for our garden!
Jesse and I -- and other gardeners, too -- are happy to offer advice. I would also look into a basic book on organic vegetable gardening and rely on the Internet to Google basic questions, too. There are tons of community gardens with blogs -- and on the other end of the scale, there are many university and government agricultural bodies that offer advice on organic gardening.
In fact, if you find any good blogs or sites, please share them with me, so I can post them here.
On the right-hand column of the blog, there are some good reference sites to start with. One is a planner which helps you figure out how much space you need (Mother Earth News Garden Planner Tool). Just looking through our blog and others (keeping in mind our region is cooler than most) will give you a good idea of what's ahead.
Gardening organically isn't a whole lot harder than being able to use modern chemicals, but it is more hands-on. Basically, when you find bugs, you have to spend time squishing them and using gentler deterrents and other methods -- but you get to have your veggies knowing there are no harmful chemicals on them.
As a beginner, you can have great success doing some planting seedlings and some seed-sowing. For some plants, like tomatoes, squashes, and peppers, I would definitely suggest starting this year by buying seedlings and planting those. I don't think it's warm enough to start right now -- stores like local farm stands and
Idylwilde will have plenty of seedlings once the ground is ready!
There are a couple of things that are very easy (even preferable) to start from seed, such as green beans, peas and lettuce. Peas are a good very early crop. Beans need the soil to be warmer, so you would start them later; maybe in early June. Lettuce can be grown in cycles (continually cutting it back, adding little bits of seed every week) until it gets too hot.
Pumpkins are fine started by seed or baby plant, and are a good example of why it's good to plan. They are fun to grow, but take a long time and LOTS of space!
I would keep it simple, though -- not too many different kinds of plants -- and plant food you like to eat.
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| Baby sunflower coming up |
And maybe some flowers. I like to plant lots of marigolds because they deter pests. Also there are sunflower seeds in the soil at the garden -- from past year's plants, worked back into the soil. If you can spot them as they come in, just don't pull them up (if you wish). Some will get as much as 12 feet tall.
You definitely want pay attention to our "frost date." After this date, USUALLY, it will not get cold enough at night to freeze your plants. The frost date for around here is about mid-May. This means it is possible to plant in early May, but waiting for late May would be most prudent. We almost always risk it and plant something really early, because we can't want. (And this means we have had to RUN over to the garden to cover some of the plants with paper bags overnight.) There is also work to do beforehand, getting the ground planned and the soil ready.
On the first weekend in May, we will be putting in the garden fence and preparing the common areas and drawing the plots. This is a community activity we need help with. While you're there, you'll be able to see what other folks are doing and get some ideas and pointers.
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| The deer fence - wicked important |
Just wondering whether compost/soil is provided? If there are slugs or other annoying bugs/worms, is the individual's responsibility to treat them or the garden community will do it?
A local farm in Boxborough usually leaves us a huge mound of composted horse manure. This will be within the next couple of weeks. (And this hasn't been arranged yet, but we can pretty much count on it.) This is for everyone to use – and there is plenty of it!
As far as maintenance, your garden patch is your castle. It’s everyone’s responsibility to take care of their own pests (we’re volunteers!). It’s important that everyone takes care of their plot, too – things like bugs and mildews can spread, so they need to be take care of, for everyone’s sake. Keeping everyone aware of what’s going on around the garden in this respect is something Jesse and I will do, as managers. We have people connect their email to the blog (don’t worry, we won’t fill up your in-box) so they can receive updates about things we need to do as a community.
For community activity, we ask for help with setup, shutdown (in October) and sometimes some maintenance on the fence in-between, as well as keeping your plot, the tools and common areas in good order. We may also do a community corn patch, because corn grows better in big groups. This would be purely opt-in, and welcome any ideas! Everyone is responsible for their own row, but weeding isn’t so hard once the stalks get high.
We also ask everyone to take a look at the regulations and stick by them, and to come to us with any questions or problems. People do make innocent mistakes and shouldn't feel bad about it – Jesse and I are there to gently nudge when it’s needed.
