grown from seed

Thoughts on the Plot: My Community Garden Life in 2023

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Once again, I had too much going on in my life to make as big of a dent in my Mt Tabor Community Garden space as I’d hoped I’d be able to this season. But, so far, I’ve been harvesting quite a bit from the few plants I was able to get into the ground. Additionally, I’ll have a lot more in the coming weeks as the seeds I sowed late in the season are coming along well.

Then there are the established plants. You see, in this plot, I use the no till method. Weeds are pulled and mostly composted in the plot. Sometimes I use the green bins, but not as often as I did before. Now I just bury debris for the most part. Cover crops are used. But I don’t till the soil. I just add to it: compost, mulch, organic fertilizer, and sometimes burlap.

So all is not lost. It never is, and you just keep going, and sowing, in my case. Tomorrow I will go to purchase more seed starting mix, and I’ll pick up some organic compost and manure too. Those just get added on top as I go and things seem to be going well—but it took a few years.

And it still needs plenty of attention. There is no easy low-maintenance anything in the garden. I don’t care what you’ve read online. This takes work, lots of glorious work, and the happier you are, the lighter it will feel. Making yourself lower maintenance, and your own needs higher priority, is the only way. I feel much lighter now, and gardening hasn’t felt this great in a long time.

This season I got around to cleaning things up late. As is usual, I received an email about the state of my plot, so I asked for help from two well-seasoned veggie gardening fiends, oops, I mean friends. Theo came to help me weed a bit after Evan and I smothered everything with a bale of straw. Many smothering jokes were made as we giggled and tossed the stuff in the air and I may have rolled around in it just since I seem like someone who’d know what a roll in the hay is, but to be honest, rolling in the straw, in the warmth of the sun, pretty much just made me want to nap like a cat. (My plot is in the middle in the photo on the right.) Maybe this is also just a sign that I’ve eased into middle age. I sure do cherish naps more than I ever have in my entire life.

Not long after Theo helped me clean things up Evan and I returned together again to plant some mums. They’re special selections for tea and are hardy, but Evan no longer wanted to keep them in containers at their apartment. That evening we enjoyed the antics of this feline who was owned by an unhoused individual who was parked nearby. Evan and I discussed ways to add value to my space by growing things that are impossible to find, or else just plain expensive.

I kind of vowed to myself to be a bit more daring in some of my choices going forward.

Regularly I bring home food now, and I carefully pose the produce for photos before chopping it up to eat. The plot continues to run a bit wild. Now that I’ve moved on from my job at Cistus Nursery, one of the goals I hope to continue to work on is the plot. This year I’m sowing additional fall crops for the first time. It’s exciting to me to try new things, to grow new skills, and to observe familiar plants in new ways.

I really enjoy growing food.

So this last week, during a heat wave, I started to sow crops of seeds for planting, and I’ve been able to select out packets of seeds I plan to plant in the ground ASAP. I need to weed more, I need to prune, I want to cut back the rhubarb and do something with it. I love my squash, and I eat all of the tomatoes each time I water as I pop them into my mouth with chive blossoms. I love the curly kale, and I pick a handful of leaves each visit. The summer squash is prolific, but I need to get a harvest basket so it won’t make my arms itch after I carry it to the car. Oh, and the basil! Oh how I love its fragrance! Pesto is in my future, lots of it, and with my new seed fridge, I can fill the freezer with more Ann-safe food to keep me healthy.

So, there are many veggies I still purchase, but their cost does make my efforts worthwhile. I just wish I’d planned this all better to be more productive—and yet, it’s very productive and I’m really happy. The plot is a small space, but I do what I can with it, and I look forward to seeing more and more being harvested in the coming weeks and months. It’s truly a gift right now, and I love the surprises it shares with me.

Geranium palmatum (Canary Island Geranium)

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Like many Portland area gardeners before me—and likely after—I’ve tried to grow Geranium maderense in my garden with little success. Yes, those experiments could have been successful if I’d been lucky enough to own a larger garden with a greenhouse for overwintering large specimens, but I don’t have that kind of setup, so I need to work with what I have available at this time, and because of this, I just gave up on it.

Enter Geranium palmatum, also a large species plant, but one which I was talked into trying by a few of my garden blogging friends. My first impulse was to say no to the free starts. I was terribly reluctant because of the previous failures and disappointments. But then the prospect of it actually working took hold, and I wanted to save seeds from the experiment, so I committed to it for 2 years to see if it would work (it’s a biennial or short-lived perennial).

The fact that I was offered seedlings from someone else’s garden in the Willamette Valley said to me that I might have a chance with it.

Luckily, the experiment turned out to be an incredible success. The plant was a real hit in my garden last summer.

The first year it was just lush foliage—but it grew well. The plant start I’d received had been in a 3″ pot so I didn’t know what to expect but I was told that it would get large quickly. And it did.

Last winter wasn’t too cold or rough for it. The plant began to take off as we warmed up, and I was surprised that during the winter it had remained semi-evergreen for me.

Then it bloomed its head off last summer, and I enjoyed the show.

So overall, I wouldn’t call this an easy beginner’s plant. It will require some more advanced gardening skills to plant it in the correct site, but it’s worth the additional light mental effort.

(If you’d like to read a nice post about the two different species mentioned written by someone else, I really recommend this one.)

You don’t see this plant offered often at nurseries since it’s really just a small start of a plant that will look much different later in the garden. Nurseries can’t keep plants like this in containers for long, and they’re a bit of a financial gamble.

We had starts of Geranium palmatum for sale at Secret Garden Growers but there’s a waitlist now.

If you’re interested in purchasing seeds, they’re currently available in my shop: Spiffy Seeds (Geranium palmatum)