Category: Boston

Gardeners’ Gathering

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Sweet potato slip freebie from a workshop today

Today was the 49th Boston Gardener’s Gathering. It is an annual event held at Northeastern University that brings together gardeners from Boston and surrounding areas for a day of workshops and exchanges, and for reestablishing (and/or forging new) connections after the long New England winter. Mayor Michelle Wu (accompanied by her two-month-old baby daughter) delivered the keynote address, which was a beautiful, reaffirming optimistic message of growth and resilience. I went to two fantastic workshops, one about soil health and concocting microbial inoculates (it really was a chemistry lab and a lot of fun!), and one on growing sweet potatoes, led by the legendary Elnora Thompson. I met a lot of neighbors and fellow Boston gardeners and went home with a sweet potato slip (thanks, Elnora!) that I promptly potted up. I really needed this kind of kinship today. I also went home with about 200 packages of free seeds for our community garden. I can’t wait for spring!

All potted up!

Early Spring

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Seen in my backyard
Back porch container arugula and radishes are sprouting, yay!
Emerging bulbs in my flower container on the back porch

Things are waking up in my containers. The radishes and arugula I sowed on March 10 sprouted, and the 20 flower bulbs I had planted in my large flower container in early November are beginning to emerge. The bulbs are a mix of White Splendour Anemone, Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica), King of the Striped Crocus and Blue Grape Hyacinth. I am so excited for some color on my back porch soon!

Winter Solstice Garden

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My plot after the snow

We had some surprise snow yesterday. It was supposed to snow less than an inch, but we got about 6 inches. Boston has not had this much snow in about three years! Today was a glorious crisp winter day, perfect for a winter solstice walk in the neighborhood.

Grapevine along the garden fence
Chinese crab apple in the outside street-facing flower bed
Street-side flower bed

Fall Work Day

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Blueberry foliage

Yesterday, we had our community garden fall work day. We got a lot done, from weeding and clearing the common areas inside the garden to getting the communal outside beds ready for winter (including planting 100 tulip bulbs and 100 crocus bulbs), to spreading hay and mulch, replacing three more timber plot borders and more. We harvested the last green tomatoes and flowers for gardeners to take home, and placed the remaining tomatoes in our donation box outside the garden gate for neighbors to take home. All that is left to do apart from finishing weeding & mulching and cleaning the shed is to dig up the dahlia tubers after the first hard frost. The common areas are (almost) ready for winter.

Before
After
Pinwheel marigolds

Garden Plot Clean-Up

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Garden plot after weeding and mulching

This morning, I spent a couple of hours weeding my plot and spreading salt marsh hay that I had left over from weeding the outside garden bed and fertilizing and mulching it earlier this morning. The outside bed is now pretty much all set until the fall, when I am hoping to get spring bulbs in the ground. I mulched that bed heavily, hoping to suppress the weeds. Fingers crossed.

Outside bed after weeding and mulching

My plot is now ready for summer. The zucchini are coming in, the first tomatoes are showing up on the vine, the leeks have recovered, the winter squash is spreading, and the garlic is almost ready for harvest.

First zucchino of the year
I am loving my calendula border. So many different flowers.

Communal Garden Bed Progress

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Zinnias and daylilies

It has been about a month since we started planting the new communal garden bed outside of our community garden. The area was cleared in early May, the Southwest Corridor Park crew built the garden bed border, and we spread compost. Planting for this season is now pretty much completed. We mulched the left side of the bed (native perennials) and the blueberry bush (very accessible on the very right of the bed close to the path) with bark mulch and will now mulch the rest of the bed with hay. We fertilized once and will fertilize a second time in the next few days. The plants are coming along nicely, even though we had to relinquish some plants (mainly kale, but also Zinnias, marigolds and other flowers) to the resident rabbits.

The blueberries are starting to ripen
There will be lots of tomatoes
Daylily border at the fence
Shadier left side of the bed planted with mainly native perennials (New York aster, goldenrod, coreopsis, bluestar) but also dahlias, calendula, marigold, annual asters and creeping thyme.
Right side of the bed, more accessible for people as it is close to the walking path. Planted with a blueberry bush, lavender, sage and Black-eyed Susans as well as annuals: tomatoes, chard, squash, basil, hyssop, marigold and many dahlia, zinnias and daylilies.
Calendula (pot marigold)

Planting the Outside Bed

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From this (weeding and removing shrub roots from the ground) …
… to this

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent two hours planting the mixed communal flower and vegetable bed outside our community garden. The Park took out some old overgrown diseased shrubs three weeks ago, built a cobble stone border and added a layer of compost. Now it was (is) up to us to fill the bed and take care of it. Our vision is to create a bed for the community that is both beautiful and useful, so we are planning a combination of flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit.

Towards the left, where it only gets morning sun, we planted native perennials (New York Aster, Sweet Goldenrod, Lance-Leaved Coreopsis, Eastern Bluestar), and creeping thyme. In the center, we added Swiss chard, planted squash against the fence and sowed sunflowers directly behind the shed.

Left section

In the right section, close to the border, within reach for passers-by are small-fruiting and cherry tomatoes and a blueberry bush. Plus Black-Eyed Susan, marigold, lavender and annual asters, as well as daylilies against the fence.

Right section

There is still a lot of space for other plants, and the bed will be filled over the next couple of weeks with dahlias, other flowers, strawberries (hopefully) and more squash and other vegetables and herbs.

View from the side showing the space that still remains for more plants