How Does Your Garden Grow? Part One

(This entry covers May 15 - May 26, 2013)

For Christmas 2012, my niece got my mom a space at the local community garden. (Well, OK, my niece was 3 years old, so really my sister got it, but Annabelle was keen on the idea!) It was always intended to be a family project, of course, and my mom took to telling her friends that she got "a family plot" for Christmas. (Clarifying, of course, after the deer-in-the-headlights looks and stutters and stammers as her friends grasped for a response, "no, a garden plot!". Mom likes to be clever. :) ) The name kind of took, so while we are considering an "official" name for the garden, I suspect we'll always also refer to it as the family plot.



Fast forward to mid-May, when we had the "garden opening" meeting, and found out the size of the garden (24' x 24' -- which is a good size, but actually not as big as you'd think), the rules, first planting dates, etc. The garden "supervisor", for lack of a better term, has connections so for a nominal fee we had our plot roto-tilled, saving countless hours of labor and, no doubt, frustration on our parts! (It's quite possible we would have given the whole thing up, if we'd had to till it by hand!)

The plot -- basically, the dirt in front of and to the right of the white post to the upper left.

On the Friday before Memorial Day, Mom and I went to the Northville Flower Sale, and decided to swing by the garden and try to get some idea of what was what. (We are decidedly sub/urban girls; my mom spent her early years in Detroit and then moved to a metro suburb; my sister just moved back to Michigan after 20 years living in downtown Chicago; I grew up in the suburbs and although I went to MSU and majored in Animal Science, meaning lots of farm classes, I spent zero time learning about growing plants!) We happened to meet a long-time gardener, Sal, who has been at the site for over 30 years; he not only gave us some tips and tricks for getting going, but had a nice selection of vegetables to get us started at exceptionally reasonable prices.

The Sunday before Memorial Day, we started planting. Knowing nothing about laying out a vegetable garden, we followed Sal's advice and made nine rows and nine columns, each 32" wide. I had a free trial at GrowVeg.com (with which I'm still playing), but it didn't really tell me where to plant things, just how much space each plant would need. (What I really wanted, and still would like to find, is something where you put in the size of your plot, and how many of what type of plant you have, and it lays everything out for you.) So we just went with the grid to start, with a few adjustments for the pumpkins and watermelon (which we knew needed more room) and the broccoli, which we knew could grow in less space. The first day, we planted 15 tomatoes (two cherry, four Cherokee purple, four Better Boy, one yellow, four Roma), four zucchini, four summer squash, four cucumber, four green peppers, one butternut squash, three blue lake bush beans, eight broccoli, and two pumpkins.

Half planted and watered -- so our plot is the dark area. My niece came to help with the planting.

Tired, dirty, but feeling accomplished and satisfied, we went home, with thoughts of additional items to plant, a watering schedule, fertilizer, bug deterrent, etc. dancing around in our heads.