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

All Planted Out

On a perfect cool, cloudy, comfortable day, gardeners worked all day long to get seeds and seedlings into the ground. Bed selection and prep, planting techniques, and camaraderie got the job done.

Flower team dug out self-seeding Shasta daisies and ubiquitous dandelions to make room for annual flower seeds. Zinnias and more will grace the tables of gardeners and neighbors the garden shares the bounty with.
This experienced gardener draws our attention and appreciation to this legume plant and the white nodule in its roots. Legumes feed the soil. These nodules feed legumes and help ensure the presence of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which garden plants need to grow.
Dozens of cucumber seedlings from Pleasant Mount Farm Greenhouse in Huntington, Vermont, as well as a few from a young gardener here who’s experimenting with growing starts at home, line both sides of two trellised rows. We have seeds to direct sow cucumbers to fill in areas where we find gaps.

There are but a few rows and boxes left to plant. There will be succession planting of peas and beans too. But now our energy turns to sustaining all we’ve planted: watering, weeding, watching for critters and mitigating anything that might threaten the crops, and any garden projects that need doing such as wooden planting box repair.