Heirloom Tomato Plants for sale

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Benton Park West Easter Celebration

Spring 2010

Hello Gardeners,
It has been far too long between updates. We had our first work day last weekend, and will resume Saturdays morning work days. We'll be meeting at the Minnesota garden this Saturday, March 13th at 9am. I will be doing a longer update and photos soon. Hope to see you in the garden!

It's July!

Wow, too much time has slipped by without an update. We've had a very busy growing season so far. Our garden on Minnesota is doing wonderful. All of the perennials from last year are getting so big, in fact bigger than we had anticipated.

We may even have contributions to make to the Great Perennial Divide next year. Most of our crops at the Minnesota garden will be tomatoes. We have over four beds of heirloom tomato plants that we started as seedlings this year.

In the past month they've grown taller than some of the gardeners. On Monday we harvested 16lbs. of garlic! We also will have a huge bean crop from this garden this year.

Our new garden on Cherokee is also taking off, it's a bit slower, but it is to be expected for a new garden. We are hoping to harvest potatoes in the next few weeks. The corn seems to be slowly taking off, and we've harvested many pounds of onions, beets and radishes already from this garden as well.

Our immediately plans mostly involve maintainence and harvesting for now, but we will be working on larger plans that may involve a greenhouse, an apiary and a larger composting area within the next few months.

We are always looking for more gardeners, and it's never too late in the season to jump in, so if you're reading this, and you want to garden, well, Come join us!

Happy Growing!

I'll try to keep the updates at more regular intervals for the rest of the summer.

New Garden on Cherokee Street

On April 4th we broke ground on the new garden, located on the 3300 block of Cherokee Street.
This is our site for the expansion of our vegetable garden and we have only just begun the beds. This lot provides a lot more space and also more visibility that will provide more access to our neighborhood. We'll be working at one of the gardens twice a week for the duration of the spring and summer.

It's exciting to break into spring with new ground and renewed vigor. Here's to a great growing season ahead.

Coming Soon!

The West Corner Community is starting a new garden at 3312 Cherokee Street.

If you are interested in being involved, having fun with your neighbors, want to help beautify your neighborhood, or just love digging in the dirt, join us!

Saturday, April 4 for our first official work day.
We will be cleaning the lot and getting it ready for planting vegetables.
We also have our monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 31 at 7p.m. at the Typo Café on the corner of
Compton and Cherokee, or call 314-374-7562

First Work Day

Yesterday was our first official work day in the gardens. We haven't planted any new seeds or plants yet, but spent the day cleaning up all the perennials and getting the sites ready for spring.

It is always exciting to begin the garden work each year, and this year is easier in so many ways. Once a garden is established and a lot of the heavy labor is taken care if it becomes more of a joy to be able to maintain what is there.

Many of the garden members have started seedlings inside this year, and will have a very good supply of tomato plants, peppers and herbs ready to transplant as it gets warmer. There is a lot of green popping up now, such a great harbinger of spring, that it's hard to hold back from digging in right now.
We look forward to a good, long growing season and the return of fresh veggies!
Stay tuned for more frequent updates and news on our new garden soon.

Going into Fall

Red Okra blossom

As we begin to plan and prepare for fall we have much to harvest in the garden. The general consensus has been that while everyone seems to have been harvesting tomatoes for awhile now we are just beginning our harvest and we believe this to be due to planting so much by seed. We are also just beginning to fully see carrots, gourds, peppers and eggplant. Next year we'll start most seedlings inside a bit earlier. It's not an entirely bad thing to be reaping such a late harvest, but we do worry about any frost that might hit the tomatoes before they all ripen.

It's been a tremendously rewarding year for our garden and we've learned a lot so far.
We'll be working on expansion grants in the coming months. We hope to have a sign by next spring and maybe, hopefully, a fence of some sort.
For the moment we are enjoying the fruits of our labors.

Gateway Greening Urban Garden Contest 2008

On June 28th Gateway Greening held a Garden Tour of the community gardens they've been involved in. We went on the tour and got to see just a few of the gardens around St. Louis. Our garden was supposed to be the last on the tour but time was running short and we missed the gardens in Soulard as well as our own garden.
When the tour ended at the Missouri Botanical Gardens we were served lunch before the awards Ceremony.
Dr. Peter Raven presented the awards, there were many entries, and all the gardens have done such an amazing job, it was well deserved recognition.
Our very own garden won 1st Place in the New Garden Category.
It was so exciting to be a part of the tour and to receive such on honor from Gateway Greening and the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
As part of the award we were given a very nice black metal bench, various plants, and a reference book for gardening.
We will have pictures up soon of the summer garden growth. Stay tuned!

Green

We have been busy planting all of the vegetable beds the past month or so. The last bed was planted on Monday night with the seedlings that I had been growing at home.
Currently we are growing:
Carrots, onions, radishes, tons of tomatoes, beans, squashes, cucumbers, melons, gourds, eggplant, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuces and greens, strawberries, garlic and a plethora of herbs.
Everything excluding the strawberries was started by seed and we've had really good luck so far. We've learned a lot already for next year as well.
The main project to work on now is building our compost site at the back of the lot and building the bean trellis. We've also put up trellis between the perennial and vegetable gardens and planted wisteria to grow on them.

Everything is growing so fast, the rain has been wonderful for all of the plants.
We'll post more pictures as things get bigger.

Bed Installation - Complete!

Yesterday we installed 10 raised vegetable beds in the garden.
We had so much help that we got all of the beds built and filled with soil before noon, which far exceeded our expectations.

We still have a small mountain of dirt that will be placed in the beds once the current soil has settled.
The plans for the vegetable beds will soon be finished.
We have made a lot of headway in less than a year and can't wait to get the veggies growing.
From this point forward we hope for the blog to become a garden diary of sorts, measuring successes and setbacks with planting.
Please check back frequently for progress and pictures.

Garden Workday

Grant Awarded

We were awarded a grant on February 23rd from Gateway Greening for 11 raised vegetable beds. The installation will begin in Mid-March. Please check back soon for more updates on our progress with the second phase of our garden.

Sowing the Future

Last Saturday was planting day. We received all of our plants from Operation Brightside and had to actually make two trips to pick them all up.

The largest factor that made Saturday the most enjoyable work day so far was all the planning we did ahead of time.
Everything went very smoothly and once the plants were placed it was only a matter of planting them which went relatively fast.

We also added some plants to our large round planter at Utah & Gravois.

We also had a pleasant surprise from one of the members of our group. He had picked up some large cedar logs and built us a beginning fence/barricade at the back of the garden. It lends the whole lot a certain rustic feel, as though you could hitch your horse and relax awhile in the a peaceful garden.
We have successfully completed Phase 1 of our plan, and only have to mulch everything this week. Stay tuned for future updates regarding the vegetable garden and the Grant we are working on with Gateway Greening.




We also want to extend a very large Thank You to Incarnate Word Foundation and Sister Jean Durel for believing in us and all of the support given to make the perennial garden possible.
Also, Operation Brightside has been essential in the whole process from the beginning of our round planter, and now with our new community garden. We are grateful for all the support.

An Uplifting Experience

Working on gardening projects such as these are uplifting experiences. Faces that may have been strange or unfamiliar have become warm and amicable. Sweat and labor are remarkable tools for creating bonds of friendship that may not have been realized using more conventional techniques. The real fabric of a community is formed at this level. It makes me proud to see my neighbors working together toward a common, tangible goal.

Help from All Sides

The Wednesday following the weekend of building we had more dirt delivered to fill the beds.

We were blessed with many neighbors that night. A job that would have taken the group a few hours was completed in less than 2 hours!
Things are almost ready for planting and there will be an update after this coming weekend with all the plants in the ground.
Just to compare where we started and where we are now, take a look at this.

Visions take shape

This was the big day, which turned into a full weekend. We had the supplies delivered the Friday before and were ready to begin early Saturday morning.

It's always interesting to lay out a design from paper and see it transform into an acutal shpae. We are lucky to have a skilled crew, particularly our master plan sketch artist and resident brick layer.

It was a long weekend, and I think we've all agreed that after building the beds, everything feels easy.

The Dirt

We spent a few work days cleaning the lot.

We ended up with a huge pile of trees, weeds and assorted debris at the back of the lot.










There was also a large, sad looking cedar that needed to be removed, and thankfully was finally taken out by the city. Our plan was to go in phases. Phase one is our current project which consists of raised beds for the perennial garden in the first 25 feet of the lot.


The dimensions of the lot are 25x100' so we're being conservative in the beginning. Phase two of the plan is to add raised beds for vegetable gardens next spring. Our entire perennial garden is being supplied by Operation Brightside.
Incarnate Word Foundation has generously funded our raised beds for this phase.
Once we cleared the lot we began working the soil into something that we could not only build raised beds on, but also leveling it out.
We've had dirt delivered free of charge from the city, most of which is compost. It's actually quite nice dirt, and with no charge, it's exceptional.

New Grounds

Early in 2007 our group began discussing starting a new garden. The success we'd enjoyed with our round planter encouraged us to look into an LRA Lot on Minnesota. After reviewing the obstacles that this lot presented we decided it was definitely a workable location.

We obtained a 5 year lease for $5 and started planning. This lot was very overgrown and we think there was probably a house on it at one time. It had years of trash and weeds built up, making it a little daunting in the beginning.
We had already worked with Operation Brightside for our other garden and started attending classes for a larger grant.
At National Night Out we had an ice cream social at the site in an effort to gain support and interest from the neighboring residents. We even had the Mayor attend and show his support.

The beginning

Two years ago our block unit began the effort of cleaning up a large round planter that was built by the city. It had been neglected for some time and was overgrown with weeds and randomly planted tulip bulbs.
The first year we cleaned out the weeds and pulled up most of the bulbs.
We planted a bit haphazardly the first year and decided to apply for a grant with Operation Brightside.
Operation Brightside awarded us a "Neighbors Naturescaping" grant which supplied us with primarily native perrenials for the planter. We had compost and mulch delivered from the city last fall and planted everything in October.


It was amazing to watch such small plants transform over the past year into a full perennial garden.







We will continue to maintain this planter, located at Utah & Gravois and plan to add more plants this fall.
This garden was our first attempt at laying out plans and successfully executing them. Truly, having this garden gave us inspiration to try a larger project.