The Garden at 485 Elm
People growing together:
a collaborative community garden in Montpelier, Vermont

The garden all snug in its bed — asleep, but never dead

This is the quiet period between the end of the 2016 season, officially on Dec. 31, and the beginning of the 2017 season, on Jan. 1. We’ve pulled out spent crops, spread cover-crop seed, raked leaves over the beds, and turned the compost.

But the garden is merely sleeping. Napping, really.

There are still Brussels sprouts in Bed 7, delicious and fresh until they’re all gone. Carrots and parsnips rest under plastic and layers of organic material. Garlic seed that went the in ground in early November awaits spring. A self-seeding tomatillo bed can start sprouting any time it finds the weather hospitable.

Unlike a book that has a final page and sentence, the garden never really ends.

Carrots in a raised bed.

Carrots nestled in a raised bed for the winter.