Cover Crops: A Long-Term Success Story
In August, a University of Vermont Service TREK Farm and Food team transformed the garden, digging in to turn a huge windrow, move compost, and pull copious weeds. One transformative act whose results were not visible that day was planting cover crop. Not long after...
What else is growing at the garden?
Soup’s On!
The season began slowly with a cold, wet June. We planted and replanted. Finally, crops are ready for regular harvesting. How do we share all this food? We harvest lettuce, chard, kale and other greens so they continue to produce as long and as much as possible. We...
You *can* eat the daisies!
Our herb walk with herbalist Diana Baron fell on a gorgeous late spring evening and revealed a big food surprise: daisies! How did I not know this?The buds, leaves, and stems of daisies have a subtle, herbish flavor and crisp texture. Salads will never be the same....
485 Elm Gardeners Protect Honeybees
Mike and Robin Harris, who garden here at 485 Elm, tend honeybee hives at home. Recently, on WCAX-TV, Robin, Mike, and our garden's UVM Extension Master Composter project lead, Andrea Stander, discussed Vermont's efforts to protect honeybees. Honeybees' survival and...
Compostville 3.0 is underway!
The third iteration of Compostville is online and soon will be accepting gardeners' food scraps! The short videos below demonstrate the system and clarify some dos and don'ts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjD_8LTgsnQ Here's the garden's UVM Extension Master...
First Major Planting Complete
We've planted seeds and some seedlings that don't require consistently warm soil and sun: beans, beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, chard, cilantro, kale, onions, parsley, peas, salad greens, squashes, and spinach. We even had time to rebuild the tomatillo box. Here...
Early garden food
Most of our garden crops are barely peeking out of the ground—tiny peas vines, baby bean plants, onion seedlings, and lovely little lettuce infants. Not yet. To keep the harvest growing and share among our many households, we don't harvest heads or pull out whole...
Sunday in the Dirt
Our first big garden work party of the season! It was a gorgeous sunny day, so comfortable for gardening. We knocked off the entire to-do list. Of course, now we have a whole new to-do list to tackle. French sorrel: Eat it as a salad green, flavorful soup herb, and...
Spring Reveal
French sorrel is the first crop we see each spring, and one of the last to go before winter. Garlic planted last fall is starting to peek out from under its winter blanket of leaves, much like us gardeners. These carrots overwintered. They'll be sweet and delicious...
Winter Gardening Dreams
While the garden is under many inches of snow, we have already begun the 2019 season. Our first garden potluck at the 2019 season. No surprise that this gardening group loves enjoying food together. Even in January, we enjoy pesto with garden basil, greens, and...
Compostville 3.0
Have you seen Compostville lately? It's another area of the Garden at 485 Elm, transformed. Did you know that food makes up about 21% of "trash" in the United States. Vermont's Act 148: Universal Recycling & Composting Law mandates that by 2020, food scraps from...
