Plant at a community garden

“I had taken over the brand new plot the prior fall, starting by scouring the plot for rocks and weeds. Still, it took a couple warnings from the community garden chair that I needed to be turning over the soil and planting seeds or starts for me to get going. I did the absolute minimum, letting it languish as I struggled to grow my green thumb. [...] I started visiting the community garden regularly, amending what started as lifeless dust with more compost and soil, planting kale and strawberry starts, blessed to be in USDA Hardiness Zone 10b. More experienced gardeners observed I wasn’t watering deep enough, and I also learned about watering more carefully and intentionally, close to the ground, so as not to kick fungus up from the soil and spread blight or leave plants moist at night, encouraging aphids to feast on them.”

“It’s also an eye-opening experience. I didn’t realize how much weeding we need to do. Weeding is a relaxing activity to do on the weekend. But only because we’re weeding a teeny, tiny little plot. I learned that the organic farming techniques don’t use passed pesticides. So, they are doing weeding by hand. That means what we do for 30 minutes during the weekends for “fun”, some farm workers are doing full-time every day. This kind of backbreaking activity requires bending over and pulling out little grassy plants for hours and hours. And it’s a never-ending battle with the weeds.”

“I purchased two beds in an area near the entrance that received full sun for the greater part of the day. It was early spring, and I planted turnip greens, carrots, beets, and English peas. Later, as the weather warmed I planted corn, yellow squash, black eyed peas, pink-eye purple hull peas, tomatoes, okra, and peppers. My garden thrived.”