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

Welcome to The Garden!

Potato and Shallot Harvest

Potato and Shallot Harvest

The potatoes were ready, so gardeners dug them up. They were divided into shares, with each of the garden's households getting a bucket of red and purple and a bucket of white potatoes. Unlike potatoes, which must be dug up, shallots lift easily out of the ground....

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What else is growing at the garden?

Flowers Are Garden Crops Too

Flowers Are Garden Crops Too

The garden's zinnias are at peak bloom and will continue until the cold. Gardeners can continue cutting and enjoying zinnias, snapdragons, flowers in the roadside perennial bed, and wild things growing in the Back 40. Gardeners are welcome to freely harvest flowers...

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Gleaning and Feeding Friends & Neighbors

Gleaning and Feeding Friends & Neighbors

The garden donates food every season. This year, the donation program has been more important than ever. Beans and greens are abundant now. Volunteers from Community Harvest of Central Vermont harvest bush beans. This wall of beautiful bush beans engulfs a volunteer!...

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Garlic Harvest

Garlic Harvest

Masked gardeners gather at least six feet from each other to prepare for today's garlic harvest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuyptjFPMZw&feature=youtu.be Pulling garlic from the earth was quick and easy. After that, gardeners separated it by variety. We grew...

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Gardening Together for Ourselves and Our Neighbors

Gardening Together for Ourselves and Our Neighbors

The garden donations team had fun harvesting chard, bush beans, and onions tops to be used as scallions. They packaged them up in meal-sized bags and brought them to nearby neighbors. All that was harvested went quickly! Now that the gone-by veggies are, well, gone,...

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Mulching Efficiently to Get Out of the Heat

Mulching Efficiently to Get Out of the Heat

The walkways between the squash beds have been weeded. Gardeners laid down cardboard and covered it with hay. That will suppress weeds and give the winter squash a supportive surface to ripen on. The heat is doing a number on our snap peas and snow peas, as you can...

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This Is Us: Vermont’s New Composting Law

This Is Us: Vermont’s New Composting Law

Food waste costs everyone shocking amounts of money, seriously harms the environment, and—not for nothing—wastes food. Vermont's new ban on food scraps in the trash aims to remedy that. Much of this short, important story was recorded right here....

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It’s Harvest O’Clock!

It’s Harvest O’Clock!

Peas are sweet, delicious, and ready to eat. Chamomile and Johnny Jump-ups Rainbow Chard Kale of Many Colors Italian Large-Leaf Basil Lettuces and More Lettuces Yet to come: beets, onions, ginger, and beautiful flowers holding the promise of many, many more...

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Warming Up for Warm-Weather Crops

Warming Up for Warm-Weather Crops

Chris plants ground cherry (or husk cherry) seedlings. We decided not to grow tomatoes this season, as they take many, many hours of care every week. Ground cherries are a tomato relative that's much easier to grow and is delicious to eat right off the bush like fresh...

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