Planting Garlic in 2023 to Harvest in 2024
Once Vermont is well into fall frosts, it's garlic planting time. Waiting until extended warm spells have ended ensures the garlic won't germinate and begin growing until spring. Flashback to midsummer: We harvested the garlic planted in 2022 and reserved hundreds of...
What else is growing at the garden?
A Taste of What We’re Enjoying in Late Peak Garden
In addition to what's pictured here, we're harvesting and enjoying arugula, basil, beans of many colors, beets, carrots, catnip, chili peppers, chives, cucumbers, edamame, eggplants, French sorrel, ground cherries, lemon balm, nasturtiums, oregano, sunflowers, summer...
Harvesting Edamame—Except for the Seed Plants
When the edamame plant leaves turn yellow, it's time to harvest the crop. Gardeners harvested all but the sixteen plants closest to edamame perfection. Those will continue to mature. We'll harvest them later and save and dry the seeds to plant next year's crop....
University of Vermont TREK Team: Gratitude All Around
For several season, the garden has partnered with the University of Vermont TREK program's service track for incoming first-year students. Enthusiastic teams spend a couple of hours pitching in to help projects feeding the community, including community gardens like...
The Potato and Onion Harvests Are In
For most crops in the Garden at 485 Elm, gardeners harvest whatever's ready to eat. Greens, beans, peas, eggplants, peppers, summer squash, and herbs are harvest as we go. A few crops we harvest all at once then divide by the number of gardener households for...
Garlic harvest day
Every fall, we plant garlic from seed. A garlic seed is one clove of garlic. We harvest the crop the following season just after midsummer. Garlic is the one crop we save seed from for planting the entire next crop. On a perfect July morning, gardeners from sixteen...
The Garden of Eating
Ripe husk cherries, aka ground cherries. These sweet-tart treats are related to tomatoes and grow on low bushy plants. Haricots verts and other bush beans are bursting on the vine. We cleared the vines of mature beans so new ones can grow and brought packed full-size...
The garden is flowers!
The garden is a DIY CSA for gardeners not just for food but for flowers. The Flower Power Team suggests gardeners bring a container, grab scissors from the garden shed, and help themselves to a bouquet. There's bee balm, bachelor's buttons, poppies, and some pinks....
Dealing with Garden Pests: We’re Hosting a Workshop
The Garden at 485 Elm is hosting a workshop in organic-gardening-compatible garden pest management on Wednesday, June 23. Learn more at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont's website. Then Register here. Garden like a farmer! Integrated Pest Management...
Garden task: Harvest and eat garlic scapes
This is the time of the season when we watch the garlic crop for scapes. Scapes are the flowers each growing garlic bulb sends up. Harvesting them keeps the sun, water, and soil nutrients feeding the bulb (our target crop) instead of the beautiful flower that would...
It’s food, beautiful food
Maturity came early to French sorrel, chives, Good King Henry, and a few other perennial and self-seeding plants. Suddenly, the garden is bursting with fresh food. With nearly twenty gardeners' households harvesting crops, how do we share the food? When everyone grows...
