Community Garden: Protect everything you have planted

I went to Stout’s Greenhouse this past weekend just to look at things. I am here to tell you that those people know how to grow things.

It doesn’t matter if you are looking for flowers or vegetables or hanging stuff or planting stuff or whatever. You can’t get much better. However, I didn’t get anything. Do you know why? That’s right!

There has been heavy frost a couple of mornings and that would definitely do harm to young tender plants. So if you insist on planting make sure you can protect everything by covering things up if you need to. We are still an entire week away from the average date of the last freeze, but this in no way means that it won’t freeze again. Please pay attention to the weather, especially the morning temperatures.

If you have a garden on a high spot you may be safer a lot earlier than someone in a low spot. Just don’t get too excited with this warm weather. I will tell you that the ground is getting dry. A lot drier than I thought! I turned on the drip irrigation system at the garden because it was so dry. It really surprised me. It isn’t going to run a long time but just long enough to give the onions a little moisture every other day.

Still spreading some leaf mulch and some tree mulch in the proper areas. Especially trying to make sure the area is right for the tomato plants. The ground has been prepped but now we have to make sure that the weeds and grasses can’t come back and invade. Lots of work to do yet, including more tree mulch spread around the raised beds to keep the grass from trying to get to the water.

We are still planning on around seventy-five (75) tomato plants, lots of pepper plants of different varieties and then as much yellow crooked neck squash as we can get our hands on and have space for. On the far west end we are still going to do the vining crops. That way the little squirrel thieves won’t be stealing the seeds so much. I would love to see them carry off a melon or two and try to get them up a tree. To see a squirrel that big would also scare me to death, but that is another story.

Don’t forget that we are going to have some container gardens this year. Time to show how you can plant a salsa garden in a pot and have fresh homemade salsa every week. Now that is really sweet. Lots of fun this year in the garden! Lots of geese in the pond but no ducks again. I guess after they had to be taken away when the pond dried up the ducks just decided not to come back. So if you want to keep the geese make sure you feed them something besides bread. Feed them something good. Look it up!