Yesterday was the official opening and planting day for the community garden. Stephen and I spent some time planning out our garden this week. After we firmed up our plans, we redrew them so they would be legible. Then, I took photos of them and printed them out so we’d have a copy that could get wet and dirty at the garden and a dry clean copy for our records. You can click on the photos if you want details. We planned out one of our plots with the square foot gardening method along with a 8×2 aisle. Since that wasn’t going to be big enough for everything, the other plot is just pumpkins, cucumbers and overflow tomatoes. We were gifted a few tomatoes so we made sure to plant them. We planted a mix of seeds and plants. We have a staggered planting schedule for some items and will have a couple more small plantings in future weeks.
We arrived at the garden just after 9AM. It was going to be a hot day in the sun.
Nick and Sally got to work playing in the dirt. Others got busy planting.
Once we had our square foot plan strung, we got busy planting too.
Nick and Sally took turns helping out. We were the only ones with small children at the garden. They got lots of attention.
Turns out water was a bit of a problem. The plan was to use water from the community center, but the distance was impractical for carrying water. So, the mayor and a council member went and got a rain barrel, filled it and brought it out to the site.
Here’s 3 view of our planed plots and one of our neighbors. Most of the other plots seem to be filled with plants. That was to be expected with the late start, but we are hoping our plan and calculations with the fall crops will yield us good results with our mix of seeds and plants.
Soon we got busy watering. It took a few trips, but we left with everything wet.
We ended up being at the garden for almost 2 hours. We planted a pepper plant, tomato plants, pumpkins, and marigold plants. We also planted the first round of seeds for cucumbers, spinach, beets and carrots.
Planting was winding down when we left. We returned last night to water some more. We want to give our seeds and plants the best shot even though it’s really hot and dry this week. We got email this morning that the water fairies came and watered today. We’re still going up to check on things since we don’t think our seeds would have been watered.
The kids are super excited about the garden and have already asked when we’re going today. It’s a good thing it’s only 2.3 miles from our house.