Article by Jan Green
If you’re a gardener, March is likely an exciting month for you with the arrival of spring. You’re anxiously waiting for the weather to warm up enough so you can safely put those warm season crops into the ground. There are plenty of ups and downs along the way. Garden success has a lot to do with timing. Plant too soon and a sudden cold front could sneak up on you, wiping out your plants before they barely get started. Plant too late and the sweltering Texas summer heat could stress those plants or even bring them to an early death. Spring is one of the two main growing seasons here in Texas- fall being the other. Summer can be too hot to successfully grow many of our favorite vegetables, and winter, well winter is often best spent bundled up indoors with a hot drink, sitting next to a roaring fire.
If you’re not a gardener, you may not understand the excitement a gardener gets when they see that first ever-so-slight hint of green just barely peeking out from underground, a seed pushing with all its might to break through the soil. Or maybe you just don’t understand the enjoyment some people get from watching the butterfly garden explode with color, ready to greet our winged friends as they flutter over the rainbow of color below, deciding which flower suits their fancy. I won’t try to explain it. Just know that this is our time of year- SPRING !
March here at the community garden started off much like last month ended, continuing to take care of the soil in our garden beds. Cereal rye that grew over the winter was cut down and incorporated into the soil. Neem seed meal, a fertilizer, insecticide, and nematicide was also added. There will be many months ahead with our gardens filled with heavy feeding vegetable plants, and we’re doing our best to make sure they’re properly nourished. Success in the garden is all about the soil. This task of amending the soil continued day after day until March 26 th when students from HPU helped knock out the last few beds. What a relief it was to have that task behind us, and it should pay off.
Currently, we are enjoying the asparagus that is now ripening. Occasionally it gets away from us as we become focused on other tasks and forget to check on our one lone asparagus bed at the other side of the garden. Strawberries have recovered from the last, sudden cold front and are now starting to take on some color. The plum and peach trees burst into bloom, giving us hope of tasty things to come. Pollinators began making their appearance, and milkweed in the butterfly beds returned to lure the monarchs into the community garden. But the blackberries don’t quite seem ready to join the group. They’re happy to continue resting for just a bit longer. The onions which were planted in January are continuing to put on more leaves. We strive for 13 big, healthy looking leaves,
each leaf being another ring on the onion. The healthier the leaf, the bigger the ring. But it shouldn’t be long before they start to bulb, always an exciting time to see who can grow the biggest onion.
Toward the end of March we finally started planting the first of our spring crops. We’re rushing it a bit with our squash and cucumber seedlings that had been started indoors back when the great outdoors was too cold for growing much of anything. They were more than ready to be moved to the garden where their roots would no longer be crammed into tiny pots. The plants were a bit
upset at first to be put out of the house, but it didn’t take long before they became accustomed to their new freedom and were growing by leaps and bounds.
Impact Day, a day when students from HPU go out into the community and volunteer at various nonprofits around town, took place on March 26th . Several activities were scheduled from painting to building garden beds to working on garden activities. Much was accomplished, and we were once again grateful for the help we received and the chores that were accomplished.
By the end of the month, six of our 35 pantry beds had been planted with summer crops. Still a long way to go, but with the forecast for the first part of April looking rather cold, we decided to stop for the time being. Now we wait for more consistently warm weather before planting tomatoes and peppers. We don’t mind taking a risk on planting a few of the vining crops like cucumbers and
squash. They grow quickly from seed- three or four days and they’re up and going. If we lose them due to the cold, we’ll just throw more seeds into the ground. But we are a little more cautious when it comes to the tomatoes and peppers that HPU grew for us since they take several weeks to grow from seed. Right now they’re in their pots, waiting to be set free to grow and produce and feed people in our community.
So, even if you don’t happen to BE a gardener, you probably like some of the produce we grow here at the community garden, from the plums and peaches to fresh strawberries and onions, and all those summer vegetables. Gardener or not, if you ate today, a gardener or farmer somewhere was a part of that. We feel honored to be a part of providing fresh produce to those around us, especially those in need.