It's July!

Wow, too much time has slipped by without an update. We've had a very busy growing season so far. Our garden on Minnesota is doing wonderful. All of the perennials from last year are getting so big, in fact bigger than we had anticipated.

We may even have contributions to make to the Great Perennial Divide next year. Most of our crops at the Minnesota garden will be tomatoes. We have over four beds of heirloom tomato plants that we started as seedlings this year.

In the past month they've grown taller than some of the gardeners. On Monday we harvested 16lbs. of garlic! We also will have a huge bean crop from this garden this year.

Our new garden on Cherokee is also taking off, it's a bit slower, but it is to be expected for a new garden. We are hoping to harvest potatoes in the next few weeks. The corn seems to be slowly taking off, and we've harvested many pounds of onions, beets and radishes already from this garden as well.

Our immediately plans mostly involve maintainence and harvesting for now, but we will be working on larger plans that may involve a greenhouse, an apiary and a larger composting area within the next few months.

We are always looking for more gardeners, and it's never too late in the season to jump in, so if you're reading this, and you want to garden, well, Come join us!

Happy Growing!

I'll try to keep the updates at more regular intervals for the rest of the summer.

New Garden on Cherokee Street

On April 4th we broke ground on the new garden, located on the 3300 block of Cherokee Street.
This is our site for the expansion of our vegetable garden and we have only just begun the beds. This lot provides a lot more space and also more visibility that will provide more access to our neighborhood. We'll be working at one of the gardens twice a week for the duration of the spring and summer.

It's exciting to break into spring with new ground and renewed vigor. Here's to a great growing season ahead.

Coming Soon!

The West Corner Community is starting a new garden at 3312 Cherokee Street.

If you are interested in being involved, having fun with your neighbors, want to help beautify your neighborhood, or just love digging in the dirt, join us!

Saturday, April 4 for our first official work day.
We will be cleaning the lot and getting it ready for planting vegetables.
We also have our monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 31 at 7p.m. at the Typo Café on the corner of
Compton and Cherokee, or call 314-374-7562

First Work Day

Yesterday was our first official work day in the gardens. We haven't planted any new seeds or plants yet, but spent the day cleaning up all the perennials and getting the sites ready for spring.

It is always exciting to begin the garden work each year, and this year is easier in so many ways. Once a garden is established and a lot of the heavy labor is taken care if it becomes more of a joy to be able to maintain what is there.

Many of the garden members have started seedlings inside this year, and will have a very good supply of tomato plants, peppers and herbs ready to transplant as it gets warmer. There is a lot of green popping up now, such a great harbinger of spring, that it's hard to hold back from digging in right now.
We look forward to a good, long growing season and the return of fresh veggies!
Stay tuned for more frequent updates and news on our new garden soon.

Going into Fall

Red Okra blossom

As we begin to plan and prepare for fall we have much to harvest in the garden. The general consensus has been that while everyone seems to have been harvesting tomatoes for awhile now we are just beginning our harvest and we believe this to be due to planting so much by seed. We are also just beginning to fully see carrots, gourds, peppers and eggplant. Next year we'll start most seedlings inside a bit earlier. It's not an entirely bad thing to be reaping such a late harvest, but we do worry about any frost that might hit the tomatoes before they all ripen.

It's been a tremendously rewarding year for our garden and we've learned a lot so far.
We'll be working on expansion grants in the coming months. We hope to have a sign by next spring and maybe, hopefully, a fence of some sort.
For the moment we are enjoying the fruits of our labors.

Gateway Greening Urban Garden Contest 2008

On June 28th Gateway Greening held a Garden Tour of the community gardens they've been involved in. We went on the tour and got to see just a few of the gardens around St. Louis. Our garden was supposed to be the last on the tour but time was running short and we missed the gardens in Soulard as well as our own garden.
When the tour ended at the Missouri Botanical Gardens we were served lunch before the awards Ceremony.
Dr. Peter Raven presented the awards, there were many entries, and all the gardens have done such an amazing job, it was well deserved recognition.
Our very own garden won 1st Place in the New Garden Category.
It was so exciting to be a part of the tour and to receive such on honor from Gateway Greening and the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
As part of the award we were given a very nice black metal bench, various plants, and a reference book for gardening.
We will have pictures up soon of the summer garden growth. Stay tuned!

Green

We have been busy planting all of the vegetable beds the past month or so. The last bed was planted on Monday night with the seedlings that I had been growing at home.
Currently we are growing:
Carrots, onions, radishes, tons of tomatoes, beans, squashes, cucumbers, melons, gourds, eggplant, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuces and greens, strawberries, garlic and a plethora of herbs.
Everything excluding the strawberries was started by seed and we've had really good luck so far. We've learned a lot already for next year as well.
The main project to work on now is building our compost site at the back of the lot and building the bean trellis. We've also put up trellis between the perennial and vegetable gardens and planted wisteria to grow on them.

Everything is growing so fast, the rain has been wonderful for all of the plants.
We'll post more pictures as things get bigger.