Bring your extra seeds and seedlings to a community planting party Saturday, May 19
See our list of easy-to-grow vegetables in “Read more…”
May 18, 2012
by Susan Rubin
The Chappaqua Community Garden is having a planting party on Saturday, May 19, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The garden is located next to the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps headquarters, located at 323 North Greeley Avenue. We’ll be planting seeds and seedlings. Experienced veggie gardeners will be on hand to help coach beginners and share stories of what grew well in past sunny and rainy summers.
If you’re a home gardener with extra seeds or seedlings come on down and donate them to our giving gardens. We currently have four beds that are dedicated to growing food for the Food Bank of Westchester which help to supply area food pantries and soup kitchens. An herb garden is also in the works. The community garden will take donations of fresh produce throughout the season, contact Suzi Novak at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more details.
Mother’s Day weekend marked the unofficial start to the gardening season. Many Garden clubs including Chappaqua and the Pleasantville Garden Clubs had plant sales this past weekend. If you didn’t catch a sale, most garden centers are at peak capacity right now so if you haven’t bought some plants yet, now is the time to do so.
Seven Easy-to-Grow Vegetables: These vegetables are almost foolproof: bush beans, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, squash, Swiss chard, and tomatoes.
Eight Heat-loving vegetables: These vegetables will do exceptionally well if we have a hot sunny summer: beans, corn, eggplant, melons, okra, peppers, tomatoes, and watermelon.
Eight Vegetables for shadier gardens: If you have a garden plot that receives fewer than six hours of direct sunlight, try these vegetables: beets, carrots, kale, lettuce, radishes, scallions, spinach, and Swiss chard.
Vegetables kids love to grow: The following vegetables are fun, easy-to-grow plants, and kids love to harvest and eat them (sometimes right in the garden): carrots, cherry tomatoes, pole beans on a teepee, pumpkins, seedless watermelons and Swiss chard.
Herbs are easy too: You can start with a small plant it will take off and provide you with with abundant amounts of fresh herbs all spring, summer and fall. There are lots and lots of varieties of basil, but don’t forget rosemary, parsley and cilantro.
Other veggies do best when started from seed.
Radishes are great to start from seed. They grow very fast – if you’re the impatient type, this one veggie that will give you great satisfaction. For an added bonus, if you let some go to flower, you will find lots of new beneficial insects coming to your garden. Radishes grow well with carrots or beets. Plant a few rows of these seeds in your garden, they don’t take up too much space!
Beans are another no-brainer that do best by putting the seed right in the ground. You can choose between bush beans or pole beans, ones that like to climb.
Squashes are easy to get going from seed or you can buy a few seedlings. You won’t need too many because they take up lots of space and you’ll get lots of squashes per plant when they are growing happily in the sun. Choose from summer squash: zucchini, yellow and patty pan squash are easy choices. Winter squashes include butternut, acorn, kaboocha and of course, pumpkin.
Go ahead, give it a try and get your hands dirty! Whether you start with seedlings or seeds, you’ll be amazed at the rewards Mother Nature brings you.
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