Written by Jan Green
January, a time for new beginnings, and that’s especially true here in our community garden. We’ve closed the books on 2024, hopefully learning a few things along the way from both our fellow gardeners as well as from trial and error. We’ve come to realize that when it comes to gardening, the more you learn, the more that’s left to learn. It’s a never ending process filled with both joy and frustration along the way. So we open the book on 2025 as our journey begins.
Except for close to 2000 onions that have been planted by our volunteers for pantry donation and private gardeners combined, the garden is pretty much a blank slate right now. That will change soon. After countless hours of researching different types of plants that can better tolerate Texas summer heat and also some that are resistant to nematode, decisions were made and orders were placed. We are so fortunate that HPU graciously grows all of our tomato and pepper seedlings for us- 160 of them. What a blessing that has been! This allows us to choose any variety we want, as long as we can find the seeds. The wonderful world of endless tomato and pepper varieties is at our fingertips.
Moving from 2024 to 2025, a few changes will we made to the types of tomatoes we grow. We will keep Celebrity, a favorite for years, but will scale back just a bit on that variety. Last year we tried a couple new types, Purple Boy and Sun Sugar, and found both of them much to our liking. We fell in love with Purple Boy for its wonderful flavor, resistance to cracking, and productivity. The Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes are a sugary treat that are just perfect for popping into your mouth, but we won’t go overboard on that variety. As yummy as they are, we simply do not have the manpower to harvest cherry tomatoes, a labor intensive task. So, we will include a limited number of those in our yearly planting, knowing full well many of them will not make it out of the garden. They’re just too good to resist. Pick a few, eat a few. Plus, being a part of the garden community, our gardeners and volunteers have some perks as well. Enjoying a few Sun Sugar tomatoes will be one of those perks. This year we will test five new tomato varieties, comparing then in several categories to those we typically grow.
The peppers we grow will be mostly limited to bells and jalapeños since they seem to be the most popular, but we will try a few different types of those along with our regulars this year to see if we find some that produce more or taste better than our current varieties. Poblanos and Jimmy Nardellos will stay on the growing list, but the number will be significantly reduced.
Our list of “favorite” cucumbers seems to grow yearly. Two years ago we grew Armenian cucumbers and fell in love with them. They became our “garden hero”, producing faithfully throughout the sizzling summer months. Last year we planted Indian Snake cucumbers for the first time and loved them as well. Both of these grow extremely well when other varieties are long gone. So, we plant spring cucumbers and then switch over to the above when the heat gets more intense. This year, two new heat tolerant varieties will be added to the garden. We hope they will make our list of “favorites” and become part of our regulars.
So for now, gardening plans have been made, onions are planted, cereal rye is growing, trees are being pruned and sprayed, weeds pulled, irrigation checked and fixed, etc. It’s the calm before the storm. In just a little over a month, the cereal rye will be terminated, and the garden beds that are especially showing their age will be rebuilt. Thanks again to HPU’s Impact Day, that becomes a much less time consuming and back breaking project. The goal is to rebuild 10 beds per year, making this a six year project. Before we know it, it will be time for those seeds and plants to take their place in the garden. Each and every one of them with a mission to grow as much fresh produce as possible. That’s what plants naturally want to do. We may have to help them a bit, and obviously we harvest and distribute that produce throughout the community. That’s what WE do, the gardeners and volunteers of Brownwood Community Garden. 2025 here we come.