Goodnight, Sweet Garden
Sleep well. We look forward to seeing you in the spring.
What else is growing at the garden?
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...
The Winter Squash Bed Becomes the Garlic Bed
Winter squash harvest day comes before the first frost or after the squash have stopped maturing in each day's reduced sunlight and warmth. Gardeners harvested the squashes for sorting and distribution then pulled up the vines, which went onto the garden waste...
Harvesting, Processing, Cooking, and Eating Edamame
Most of the garden's edamame was ready to harvest. These green plants in the foreground will grow a while longer, but the yellow plants you see the gardeners working on, and the ones way in the background between them, were ripe and ready. Instead of pulling out whole...
Potato Harvest Day
Potatoes are one of the crops we harvest all at once and divide among gardeners. The others are edamame, garlic, onions, and winter squash. Other share-divided crops, when we grow them, include Brussels sprouts, seed pumpkins, and peanuts. Potatoes took up four short...
In Which College Students Transform the Garden
Each garden season as the fall college semester approaches, students participating in the University of Vermont TREK program arrive at the garden. The Garden at 485 Elm is so lucky to be a destination for TREK service volunteers! Several 485 Elm gardeners joined the...
Garlic to Seed and to Feed
Garlic harvest day included the last of the onions. The gorgeous harvest yielded robust shares of garlic and onions for gardeners here and for the Montpelier Food Pantry as well as our entire stock of garlic seed, which we'll plant later in the fall. Garlic heads pull...
The Power of Flowers
The garden is overflowing with fresh vegetables, herbs, and, yes, flowers. Three rows and trellises for climbing flowers host varieties that attract pollinators, beautify the garden, and bloom for gardeners who harvest them, take them home, and give them as gifts....
Onions Are Happier Than They Appear
Onions are one of the most reliable crops at the Garden at 485 Elm. When we get them in early enough, they grow into gorgeous bulbs that we harvest all at once and divide among gardeners here. Gardeners enjoy red, white, and yellow onions and shallots. This season,...
The Thick of Harvest Season
Whichever direction you look in the garden, there's food ready to eat. These haricots verts and other bush beans need harvesting for the vines to continue producing. Edamame and pole beans will come later. There's greens, greens, greens! As fast as they get harvested...
After the Flood: Help Vermont’s Farms and Growers
The Garden at 485 Elm grows along the North Branch of the Winooski River, a mile north of the city of Montpelier. On July 10 and 11, six to nine inches of rain fell, swelling the rivers and inundating the city and surrounding streets of homes and businesses....
