More progress! We have well over half of our community garden now planted! We still have more work to do with this garden, but this is a major milestone.
Sitting at one week to our typical last frost date, our first objective is to get all of our brassicas into the ground. These plants are quite cold hardy, so even if the weather turns on us, these plants will still be just fine. By this point in their lives, they’re definitely ready for more soil, too!
About 2/3 of this garden’s focus is on brassica production. Brassicas are a fantastic cold climate veggie with a ton of crop variability and also versatility in the kitchen. This includes those popular veggies like cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and several others.
We find the cool subarctic in-ground soils are quite optimal for these plants. While you certainly can grow these veggies in containers and raised beds, and we’ve done it, in-ground gardening is a lot less expensive than most other methods. Our general strategy is to use the lowest cost method that works well and successfully gets a plant to full maturity.
We have some more follow up to do on this garden tomorrow, so we’ll be back with more on that. We’ll have this large garden almost 90% done by tomorrow, with only our squash and a few other stragglers remaining. We generally prefer to hold back on these frost sensitive plants until after last frost, since an unexpected frost would spell the end for these plants. Also, since this garden is away from our home, our ability to respond to unexpected frosts or weather conditions like hail are limited.
Looking at our weather, it is quite likely we’re actually past our last frost at this point. Our 10 day forecast indicates there’s zero weather threats of any concern. We could likely trudge ahead, but the size of our gardens and amount of time we have limit us far more than the weather. We have plenty else to focus on, too, plus we need to visit this garden regularly in coming days!
