So it begins! This year I am participating in Knox Park's 3 year Incubator Farm program so that I serve my clients better with planning and maintaining their vegetable gardens.
At home I grow fruits and vegetables in containers because it is so shady and most of the sunlight only hits paved areas or stone walls. This year I want to be more deliberate and organized around crop planning, and the Knox farm program provides just the kind of support I need to deepen my food growing skill set.
The open field at Knox is in an urban center where winds blow in all manner of plastic bags and bits. Over the next couple of weeks I will sift the rocks and plastic waste out of the soil, foot by foot, planting as I go until I run out of time. The likelihood is low that I will get to sift all of it, but I can put aside the sifter and just turn the soil with the shovel and cover it with cardboard until I'm ready to plant it.
Soil samples have already been received and the soil is good, with very low background levels of lead. Unfortunately lead is present at varying levels in most soil urban and suburban.
Seeds are germinating in the adjacent greenhouse: leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, okra, basil and other herbs. Two unusual vegetables I will be growing are New Zealand spinach and Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers. The latter is per the request of my husband who read that it tastes like a cross between a lime and a cucumber--both things he enjoys in a summer gin and tonic. The New Zealand spinach was grown at a farm I worked at and I really like it much better than our common spinach.
Next post will be pics of my seedling babies! I will track what germinated and what did not, and maybe if I can fit it in, plant melon seeds!
