Spring Planting in the Community Garden

Last Saturday was a work day at the Franklin Community Garden. Nehemiah and I got up early, gathered up our work tools and seeds and headed out to meet new neighbors and start our Spring Gardening. Praise the Lord that the rain held out allowing us to clean up our plots, till, compost, and sow. I’m into my fourth season at the Community Garden. My soil is nice and black as through the years I’ve layered compost, manure, and organic fertilizers. Not only have I noticed that my soil is richer, but I have an abundance of nice juicy worms aerating my soil. Because I have such neighborly creatures with a host of other organisms living there, I avoid tilling with a tiller. I don’t want to kill off my supply 🙂 Instead, I weed by hand and with a 3 pronged fork, I lift up the soil throughout the year. I’m really starting to get interested in soil ammendments as this is the key and life to our plants. Stay tuned as I plan on doing a post on that soon 🙂

It’s always so much fun meeting old friends and chatting about plants that have been started at home, tips and tricks, and of course meeting newbies that have decided to take the plunge and find out what all this gardening stuff is about. For me, it was also great having my oldest son with me. Nehemiah will be 3 in June and absolutely loves gardening with his mama. He’s such a helper. He helped me gather compost, pull weeds, and planted all of the peas. It’s such a good feeling knowing that as he grows older he will have an appreciation of where real food comes from. Praise the Lord!

Nehemiah holding a worm and helping mama load up some compost

As our day ended, we mulched our strawberry plot and cleaned up our other plots by adding compost, manure. We then sowed our early spring gardening plot.

Early Spring Gardening Plot (What was planted)

Onions
Spinach
Peas
Fava Beans
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sage

I’m still in the early works as I still need to add lettuce, swiss chard, radishes, and companion plants and herbs. Nasturtiums, Marigolds, Zinnia, Chamomile, Basil

My father has donated his backyard where in the next couple of weeks we’ll be building up 3 raised beds which will be home to more herbs and our summer bounty. I will also be planting potatoes, carrots, turnips, and beets in pots. I can’t wait.

We’ll see how it goes and how much time I end up having but so far everything is off to a good start. It’s way too hot out today, time to water.