There is no excuse not to plant a garden this year.
I hope anyone and everyone is excited and interested, because there are several community spaces to garden and lots of community plots available.
If you live in an apartment, it is hard to have enough space to plant a lot of vegetables.
If it is your first time, I’m sure that you can learn something from other plots beside yours.
This is especially true if you can talk to previous gardeners and see what they are growing.
Mostly all vegetables like the sun.
Lettuces can be planted in partial shade, and some plants, like tomatoes, like a lot of sun. Remember if you plant rows along the North/South continuum they will have sun all throughout the day and not cast shadows on other plants, whatever the size.
It’s fun experimenting with new or unusual plants.
With global warming/weirding, we can now plant edibles that are usually grown farther south.
Little did I know that buckwheat is not in the wheat family, but in the rhubarb family.
Even though, my buckwheat grew, I didn’t know how to harvest, in bulk, the triangular black covered seedpods.
But remember rhubarb leaves are poisonous, so you can use them on top of weeds, to kill them.
Be careful of the growing season. If a plant takes a long time to grow, you can always buy bedding plants and transplant them once it’s warm outside.
But not beans according to my friend.
There is a lot to learn about harvesting plants.
Once my neighbour helped me pick swiss chard, the northern greens, and commented on how I didn’t pick it on the base of the stalk, like celery.
I was just picking the wide leaf part. Why waste all that good volume of stalk for cooking.
I’m sure it will be a great learning and rewarding experience.
Carol Thiessen is an avid gardner and community garden project supporter.