For another year, I’ve decided to rent a plot at our local community garden. I wrote about growing there last year, but I didn’t mention it too much after that until the Fall. I like having a garden there, it gives me a lot more growing space for vegetables, and it is also nice to get out in to the neighborhood. My hope is that I’ll be a bit more diligent about documenting the progress with this garden, but then again, I’m famous for neglecting my community garden plot, so who knows. I do have the best intentions though!

There are a few things I need to keep in mind when planning this garden. The first is that whatever I’m growing needs to be somewhat low maintenance, so if I’m being neglectful (out of sight, out of mind) or if we end up going out of town for a few days, this garden will be pretty self-sufficient. The other thing that I need to keep in mind is that it is a garden out in the open, with no signage, and pretty minimal monitoring, and things could get stolen or damaged. I’ve been pretty lucky with my plot as it is kind of plunked in the middle of the garden and the worst thing that has happened has been a few pulled out and abandoned carrots, but I have witnessed other nearby plots almost completely wiped out (darn hooligans!), so I always keep this thought tucked away when I plan this garden.

Clearly I need to do a little bit of weeding, but I prefer to wait until everything has come up – some beans are still breaking through the soil right now, so the weeding will have to wait another week.

I decided to continue with the tradition of keeping it simple, and planted kale, bush beans, cow peas, fava beans, and a couple of zucchini plants that wouldn’t fit in at home. But, I also decided to throw in a few marigolds and zinnias that I started from seed indoors. Most of the gardeners here grow flowers alongside their vegetables, and I’m always admiring it – plus, I do this is my garden at home, so I went ahead and did the same thing here.

Baby kales. And yes, I was overcrowd my plants, but they don’t seem to mind in my climate.

I also want to mention that everything I grow in this space I’ve started by seed – most (with the exception of the flowers and squash), were sown directly in to the plot about the last week of May. Mainly, I do this because I don’t want to spend a lot of additional money on this garden. With having to pay plot fees, and with the chance of things getting stolen or vandalized, the thought of spending more money on this garden is just not very practical for me. My garden at home is an entirely different story though!

That’s about all that’s going on in the community garden right now. I’m hoping the next update will be in a month or so when everything has had a bit more time to flourish.