This article is more about community garden plots that you have to travel to. Obviously, if you're gardening in a plot at home, you have access to facilities!

Access to a Bathroom

It's really helpful to have a bathroom nearby. Sometimes you'll be at the garden for a few hours, and you'll need the facilities! It's important to keep drinking water (stay hydrated) when you're working out in the sun and/or wind, and the natural side...

Ah, yes, my favorite topic! Community gardens...

Community gardens are a terrific way to grow your own food when you live in an urban or suburban environment. This is exactly the reason they exist!

If you have the opportunity to lease a community garden plot, I think this is the best choice for growing your own vegetables and herbs when you don't have suitable land of your own. 

Definition of a Community Garden

A community...

Homesteading is having a moment right now. 

I have a few ideas why it's trending. People want

• More control over how they get their food
• More control over what's in their food
• Healthier food full of nutrients, not chemicals
• To produce food in a sustainable way - reduce the environmental impact of large-scale farming
• To connect with the natural world

Yes and yes! If you're reading this article, this is resonating with you,...

If you aren't a community garden gardener yet and you want to be, it's time to start doing some research. 

This is the time because many community gardens start leasing out their open plots at the beginning of the year. It's good to be ready ahead of time!

You need to:

• Find the community gardens in your area. 
• Check out their websites or contact the garden manager to find out the requirements for membership.
• If you meet those...

Most seed packets provide a few basic guidelines for planting. How far deep should I plant the seeds? How far apart should I plant these seeds for them to grow well?

Here's a typical seed packet back with a small table containing planting guidelines:

What it doesn't tell you is that there's an underlying assumption on how your garden is laid out. Their guidelines aren't very helpful if you aren't planting in that way.

The...

Mostly I blog about garden skills, community garden facts, garden results and harvests, etc. 

This week, I'm taking a moment to tell you about my upcoming webinar called "Community Garden Confidential." 

First of all, it's free! I'm offering it on two dates. Click one of the dates below to sign up!

• Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 7:30pm Central time
• Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at 9:30am Central time

I developed this webinar for a couple...

Even if you're a member of a community garden, you may not know everything about community gardens. Those who aren't members yet may have preconceived ideas about how they work. Here are three surprising facts about community gardens.

1. There are different community garden models

Community gardens can have a variety of different models based on the goals the founders (or founding organization) intended for the garden. The...

Till and Trowel is about the skills and knowledge you need to be successful in your community garden. In most of the United States, right now (December) is the "off season," meaning it's too cold to garden outside. 

Typically community gardens operate on a calendar. They open in the springtime and close again in the fall. 

To be ready for their spring opening, they accept applications for membership a few months before...

The growing season is over. It's sad; but honestly, I'm ready for a break. 

On Saturday I took down everything at the garden plot. The only plants still at the plot were peppers and spinach. The peppers were all wilted and the remaining peppers were mush - they had not survived the freeze. The spinach plants did survive the freeze and I had a nice little harvest of baby spinach! Enough to add some flavor to two breakfasts...

The most significant lesson I learned in the 2020 garden is about sunlight. I did not manage it well and some of my crops suffered as a result.

What Went Wrong

The underlying theme of my problems with sunlight was that I grew some tall vegetables and flowers in rows that ran north and south.

Because the sun moves across the sky from east to west, in the morning, all of these tall plants would cast a shadow to the west,...