Jun 4th, 2009

Community Kitchen Garden: Look What's Growing!

By Janine Butler, garden volunteer

What a difference a couple of weeks can make!  Look at these pictures that were taken this morning:

Look how the squash seeds have grown!

Look how the squash seeds have grown!

The squash seeds that we planted a couple of weeks ago are doing great.  I can’t believe that they could grow so big in such a short time!  The seed package did say that germination would occur in 10 -15 days, but as I have never grown squash before I didn’t quite believe it.  Well, seeing is believing! The rest of the plants are also doing very well.  It is so exciting!  Everything is growing!

Cabbages planted by children from New Directions Daycare

Cabbages planted by children from New Directions Daycare

I am especially pleased with the cabbages – if you remember back to the Planting Day Celebration, the children from New Directions Daycare played an important part in planting those rows of cabbages.  It’s great to see that they have taken root so well and I hope the kids get a chance to come back and see how the plants are growing – I’m sure they would get a big kick from knowing that what they planted is actually thriving.

Rows and rows of tomatoes!

Rows and rows of tomatoes!

Lots more plants and seeds have been also been planted in the last week by the volunteers and staff at Lewis Ginter and, in fact, the majority of the site has been planted.  However, the sheer scale of the garden is a huge task.  This is where you can play a part: Lewis Ginter needs you!  We are calling out to anyone who would like to volunteer to work in the veggie garden.  Work will be taking place on Saturday and Monday mornings, 9:00am – 12:00pm, and anyone and everyone is welcome to come and play in the dirt!  Come once, or come all the time!  No experience is needed however the work may be hard at times, involving shoveling mulch and digging, but believe it or not it is lots of fun!  You can contact the volunteer department for more information, or just show up onsite on Saturday and/or Monday at 9am.  If you have a pair of gloves, sunscreen, and a full water bottle then you may wish to bring those along. If you can’t volunteer, we would still love for you to come and visit the garden at anytime.  Southern States has kindly donated packets of seeds to be given out to visitors, including watermelon, radish, pumpkin, cucumber and lettuce.  Yummy, sounds like the makings of some great salads to me! I hope that you are all having much success in your own gardens at home!

Janine Butler is a former Garden Volunteer.

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