We finally had our first meeting (the first planned meeting was snowed out), and had a really good turnout for a mid-week meeting. We had 30 people show up, with eleven new gardeners, including three for our youth/teen program. With another signup meeting scheduled for Saturday morning, we may see a good crop of gardeners this year.

Although the meeting was scheduled to start at 6 pm, people started to arrive by 5 pm, anxious to attend and talk with other gardeners, and get their applications in. We talked about how to plan your garden out: where to place it, preparing the soil, looking at how much moisture it retains, soil amendments, etc. We covered what kinds of plants to place where and why, plants that don’t get along well, and companion planting as well as succession planting. Organic pest control was discussed along with handing out some flower seeds for flowers that assist with pest control.

Pea seeds were handed out (our youth/teen gardeners even took some) at the end of the program. Returning gardeners discussed how they had already started their peas, and some already had them 12” high and weren’t the least bit concerned about winter’s impending return after almost 80-degree days as they felt the peas could easily handle that short blast without being seriously hurt as they could cover them for the couple of days we can expect to see cool temperatures.

All the gardeners, including the youth/teens, are looking forward to getting the gardens started. The youth/teens will be starting some tomatoes, lettuce, onions this Saturday in raised beds indoors in the multi-purpose room before moving them outside once the nights are warm enough; the produce from these will be used to feed the participants in our afterschool and summer programs, providing fresh instead of canned or frozen options for meals.

I think we can look at a good year of growing our veggies and growing our future gardeners