It's Planting Time! (Finally!)

Traditionally, in this region of southern Ontario, you want to try to have your first round of plants in the ground in and around May 24th. This year has been particularly rainy thusfar, and the tricky thing about community gardens is that unlike traditional agriculture, most workers are volunteer based and can only manage working at the garden part time. These two factors have postponed our abilities to do significant planting here at the Lakeshore garden. Until NOW!

With the help of one of the grade 11 classes who braved the impending rain this past Thursday, we were able to plant much of the garden with peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, arugula, spinach, turnip, celery and kholrabi, all within a 2 hour window! Impressive!

Many people feel that if it's raining, or has been raining, then there's no way to get anything productive done in the garden. This is true only if you have a garden prone to getting severely muddy, in which case you can add drainage systems to ensure that when the soil dries, it does not become hard and therefore difficult for plants to thrive in.

Wet soil can actually be a great help in pulling out weeds that will be looser by the porous soil, and likewise can make for easy planting.

The only time you want to stay out of your garden/fields when it's wet is when you have plants that are prone to transfering disease, such as tomatoes or strawberries. It is important not to brush up against these plants or touch them when its wet, because you could then spread any potential diseases they may have onto your other plants. Not so great.