Carrot Seedling - Picture by Su Yin Khoo

Last Wednesday Jeremy and I volunteered for Growing Gardens who runs our community gardens.  Our garden requires community service in exchange for your garden plot.  Luckily for us, Jeremy’s work offers a few days off if you are going to do community service, so Jeremy took one last Wednesday and we fulfilled our volunteering commitments.  Growing Gardens not only runs our community gardens, but also has a youth program to teach kids how to garden, offers classes on gardening, and provides food to people in need.  We went out to the greenhouse where you can show up to volunteer every Tuesday and Wednesday and they had us help with a few things.

We learned to use an oscillating hoe which we used to quickly weed paths between the carrot beds they had.  Then we weeded their carrots seedlings by hand. We did not know what carrot seedlings looked like prior to this, and theirs were so tiny and overrun with weeds that they were hard to find at first, but we quickly figured it out, and now we will know when our carrots sprout as well.  Their beds were full of lamb’s quarter, which is an edible weed that tastes similar to spinach.  According to a book Jeremy is currently reading if your soil has lamb’s quarter it is a good sign and means your soil is very fertile.

It ended up being a fun and fulfilling day, even though we were weeding, we got to sit outside in the sun with a beautiful view of the mountains, and by the time we had finished we had made a very good dent in their weeds and really helped their carrot seedlings out.  When we left they even let us look through their seeds and see if we needed any, we ended up taking some wildflower seeds for our garden.  We came home sunburnt in odd places that we missed with our sunscreen and sore from the weeding and hoeing, but afterwards we left feeling good about our work and helping out this great program in our community.

Learning to Garden

It is only May and we have already learned quite a few lessons about gardening.  We hope by making lists like these we will remember what we want to do differently next year, and maybe help some other people out in the process.

Raised beds – don’t raise beds too high if they are not supported on the sides and make sure they are even, don’t plant anything too close to the edge because the dirt will wash away.  Seeds should be planted on flat ground so they get evenly watered, this is especially important with a drip irrigation system.  If your beds are sloped at all, the plants at the bottom of the slope will be drenched, the others not watered enough.

Seeds – In Colorado, try row covers for direct seeding of lettuce, onion, and parsnips because it is so dry here  this will prevent the seeds from drying out.

Mulch – Put mulch in between rows so walkways do not get all muddy after watering.

Weeding -  Weeding is easier after it rains.  It’s easiest to weed a little every day or two before the weeds get out of control.  Discard weeds outside of the garden so they do not re-root themselves in the garden or pathways.

Seedlings – Buy a grow light for seedlings indoors or make sure seedlings get direct sun and hardening off.  Our kitchen does not get enough sun for most seedlings, the light is too indirect.

Seeding things outdoors – Seeds need to be wet to germinate, if they get to dry it will kill them.  But be patient, things may sprout even though they took longer than expected, keep watering just in case.

Walls of water – These are very useful for early tomato and pepper planting in cold climates, it is easiest to water around them instead of through the top.  Especially with tomatoes that are not supposed to have the leaves wet.  To water around them make divots so water can flow under them or buy a watering can without a rain drop nozzle.

Watering – Plants and germinating seeds here need a lot of water because it is so dry.  Before drip irrigation gets set up water twice a day every day.

Hardening off plants – Seedlings that have spent their whole lives indoors need time to adjust to being outside.  Start with just an hour or so a day and work up slowly until the plants can withstand a full day of being outside before you transplant.  Be careful when hardening off plants an extra couple of hours can be an eternity and kill them.

I know these are gardening basics, but yes, we have already made all of these mistakes.  But, plants are pretty resilient we have made every one of these mistakes and we still have plenty of plants that have survived.