This will be the third planting season at the Community Resource Center World Headquarters Community Garden. The mulch went on today. The plants will go in as soon as the last danger of frost has passed on April 15. Let’s just review the Top Ten things Chick One learned in the first two gardening seasons.
- Do not plant cucumbers in this particular garden. The vines crawl up the trellis and the emerging cucumbers get stuck. And then protrude through the trellis, creating alarming and faintly pornographic shapes.
- It takes a long time to produce strawberries. The first year, we got three.
- Do not plant watermelons in this particular garden. See No. 1.
- Tomato plants that start out as little sprigs can get disturbingly large. Last year, I planted two fairly close together and by August I needed a machete to hack through them to pick the tomatoes.
- Onions are easy to grow. Who knew? You just put them in the ground in May and come back in September to pull them up. They quadruple in size. It’s a miracle!
- Blackberry bushes can grow to the size of oak trees while producing very few berries. And unless you stand guard, the birds will get them first.
- You can leave your garden hose out all summer and no one will steal it.
- Cute garden signs (I love it when you talk dirt to me) have no effect on the success of the garden.
- No matter how much you beg, Chick Two will not help you pull weeds (“I don’t stick my hands in dirt”).
- Hope springs eternal. This will be the best planting season yet.
two chicks in a warehouse 