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| New Beginnings: Southside Community Garden in High Point |
Give a woman a vegetable and she'll eat for a day. Teach a woman to garden, and she and her family can eat well forever.OK, so I trampled that Chinese proverb about fish(ing) for my own purposes. Sorry.
Still, it says what I want to say about my latest Master Gardener volunteer activity, working with the Southside Community Garden here in High Point (photo, right). Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me take it back a couple of paragraphs.
Last week was a busy one, gardening-wise. I got the seeds started for some tomatoes, green and cayenne peppers, eggplants, and more herbs. They are all currently basking in the glow of the light-tube on the shelf in the plasticized screen porch (AKA: our greenhouse), as I mentioned in my last post.
Thomas and I tilled up rows for more lettuce and carrots, and I planted a row of beets. I purchased some red-leaf lettuce plants, some cabbage (3 kinds) and broccoli plants and got them in the ground just before the rains came, along with three kinds of potatoes: Kennebec, Irish Cobbler, and Red Pontiac. Whew!
On the Master Gardening front, I had lots on my plate. On Tuesday, I was the assistant for the Speaker at a presentation on Culinary Herbs to a group in Whitsett (a very long way from High Point...:). I really enjoyed this experience and hope I'll be able to do Speaker's Bureau more often throughout the year.
Wednesday was our regular class day, with the topics being Flowers and Houseplants. Then, on Thursday, I found out that my article on "What To Do in the Garden in March" had been published online at GoGreen.com. Yippee! Writing gardening articles is another activity I enjoy...and hope to continue.
Also on Thursday, I assisted with another speaker's bureau presentation...again on Herbs...but this time beyond McLeansville. A really, really long way away. I had no idea Guilford County was such a whopper!
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| Move that mountain of mulch! |
My job for the day was to help move a mountain of mulch that the city of HP had delivered to the site...one wheelbarrow-load at a time (photo, left). When someone mentioned how wonderful the mulch smelled, I realized that it was because of the Christmas trees. Yep, our Christmas tree had indeed been recycled into mulch for the garden paths at the new Southside Community Garden. How great is that? (Sealed the deal on whether to have a real or an artificial tree...:)
Back on the home front, we got over an inch (!) of gentle rain, so everything is looking happy and healthy. I'm already seeing the spinach and the peas popping through the clay crust that is our soil.
Chores for this coming week:
- Pull the weeds in the strawberry patch. Rake away some of the straw mulch.
- Keep checking on the seeds in the greenhouse. Remove the protective covers when they sprout.
- Empty the compost barrel onto the garden; mix into the soil.
