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

Welcome to The Garden!

The Winter Squash Bed Becomes the Garlic Bed

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...

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What else is growing at the garden?

Early Planting Accomplished

Early Planting Accomplished

We've planted all our early crops, the ones that can go in while there's still threat of frost: Beets Carrots Kale & Other Leafy Greens Peas Salad Greens Summer squash We're looking forward to June, when we'll plant tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, hot peppers,...

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Planting Onion Seedlings

Planting Onion Seedlings

By the Ides of May, we've planted the onion bed, carrots, summer squash, peas, and massive messes of greens. There's much more still to plant as the season warms: Beets, pole beans, bush beans, flowers for cutting, and, of course, tomatoes.

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“Water the earth, not the air”

“Water the earth, not the air”

"Water roots, not leaves." "Water the earth, not the air. " These are some of the many lessons we learned from our first garden coordinator in 2014. Here are scenes from this year's watering orientation. /

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Early Herb Walk

Early Herb Walk

Clinical herbalist and Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism student Diana Baron led us in and around the garden to identify the plants just poking out of the earth as we begin the 2018 gardening season. We took this herb stroll on April 21, a week before our first...

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Day In The Dirt!

Day In The Dirt!

Gardeners dug, shaped, and planted at the first work party of the Garden at 485 Elm. Our seventeen volunteers joined hundreds of others at 33 community and school gardens all over the state participating in Day In The Dirt. This was the sixth annual Day In The Dirt,...

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Winter gardening for real

Winter gardening for real

Mulching some of the beds was that one last chore we didn't get to before the snow flew. On January 10, an intrepid gardener went out on her own to complete it. We weren't even sure the garden gates would open with so much snow piled on each side. But Meredith found...

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Tucking the Garden in for Winter

Tucking the Garden in for Winter

Most of our crops have been harvested. Just a few hardy greens and Brussels sprouts remain. We've tested and amended the soil and planted winter cover crops for nutrient replenishment. But we're not quite done. Nature doesn't tend to leave bare earth. We mimic that...

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Planting Tomorrow’s Garlic

Planting Tomorrow’s Garlic

The garlic we planted in mid-November will be harvested in early autumn of the 2018 garden season. Gardeners here enjoy harvesting and eating most of the crops we plant during the season we planted them. Garlic is one of the crops we overwinter. In 2018, we'll be...

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