This is the third year that we have ran the community garden, and we have better knowledge and experience with crops that we should be growing, when to start seeds indoors, transplant, and direct sow seed outdoors. Residents in the community were also looking forward to see what will be grown in the community garden this year.
We grew spring vegetable, peas, spinach, green onions, onions, and lettuce at the end of March and beginning of April. Garlic planted last September was harvested at the end of June this year. After clearing the garlic and spring crops, we planted kale, sweet basils, okra, bell peppers, hot peppers, cucumbers, bitter melon, tomatoes, and much more!
We also added a garden plot for Asian herbs this year, plants we grew were shiso (perilla), Vietnamese coriander, curry leaves, Chinese celery, red leaf amaranth, and Thai basil. This gave us the opportunity to teach some residents how to use, cook, and eat those herbs.
We have two plots of other herbs; mint, oregano, rosemary, thyme, spicy basil, chives, chamomile, and parsley. Residents can get fresh herbs for their cooking whenever they want.
Our goji berry plant was so big that we can harvest a few hundred goji berries everyday in July and August. I made osmanthus jelly with the fresh goji berries and rock sugar for residents to taste and everyone like it.
Everyone loves eating the cucumbers raw, a three years old boy wanted to pick the cucumber when he got up in the morning and eat immediately after washing.
Kale was also a favourite this year, and those plants will probably survive until the winter. Bitter melon plants were very successful and we harvested very fresh and nice bitter melon. Residents in the neighbourhood came by everyday to look at our community garden, they envy our community for having the community garden and the food that we were growing for the residents.
In early September, a VanDusen Botanical Garden Chinese Medicinal Plant teacher came to get some goji berry cuttings to propagate herself and also gave to her students. She liked our community garden and she got some perilla, chamomile, mint, rosemary and rue for drying and propagating.
We are glad and happy to see that residents liked and enjoyed the food we grew. It gives us a lot of encouragement and motivation to continue and even do better the following year. The community garden allowed us to have opportunities to communicate, share our knowledge and experience, and also making our community a happy place to live in.
Photo album link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xvodgZNG9EgvQ3JXRNnYsjn_nePeAz0v
