Written 8/7/17
Carroll Garden Club adopted Plot 3 in the Community Garden which is located at the end of Milton Rd. in Westminster. Denise Meads, Diane Brown and Jan Halman-Miller planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelon, pumpkin and winter squash. Brenda Powell helped mulch the whole plot with newspaper, landscape fabric, and wood chips. This has resulted in minimal weeding and watering. The winter squash bit the dust, but everything else is thriving. Tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are nearly ready to be donated to Second Chance, a food pantry in Westminster. Also, members who have extra produce from their home gardens will donate it to Second Chance.
In addition to tending our plot, we interact with the intern, Cecelia, and other gardeners, many of whom are fairly new to gardening. We field questions like, “How can you tell when these melons are ripe?”. (Answer: cantaloupe stem slips off of the vine; watermelon’s tendril behind the stem turns brown.)
Some surprises can turn up in a community plot. Someone, noting a bare spot, planted a packet of cabbage seeds in a short row between our watermelons and cucumbers, between 7/12 and 7/19. A few have germinated as of 7/26, 1/4″ apart. By next week our watermelon vines will have shaded them out.
Community gardening is fun, ideas and practices are shared, and some Wednesday mornings bring amusing discoveries.
