My project is The Lookout Community Garden. For my first grant received from the NSG at the end of 2021, I started the gardening group for this Community Garden project. I received my second grand in June 2022.
With my first grant, we started Spring vegetables planting spinach, lettuce, radish and carrot from seeds and seedlings in mid-March. Spinach, lettuce and radish did really well and were harvested from May to June. Everyone loved and enjoyed the fresh vegetables that they picked from the garden plots. In June, we cleared most of spinach and radish, left some of the plants to flower and go to seeds and seed pods. Carrots were harvested in July and plot was cleared to plant runner beans.
Summer planting started at the end of May, we transplanted tomato and cucumber seedlings to a few of the plots. We have to transplant another batch of tomato seedling because the first batch didn’t do well with the cold weather. All the tomatoes were not ripe until mid-August.
We planted five different varieties of cucumbers from seeds using cucumber trellis to let the cucumber plants climbed in order to grow more cucumber plants. Residents in the group and in the community were able to share the harvest in August. Everyone loved the fresh and delicious cucumbers picked from the garden.
In June, we transplanted the sweet and hot pepper seedlings, but those pepper plants were not doing so well until August. Right now, the sweet and hot peppers have not ready for harvest yet. I hope the temperature will stay warm until mid-September to allow most of the pepper plants to fruit and ready to be harvested.
We also planted other types of vegetables and herbs, e.g., Japanese white eggplants, long eggplants, okra, tomatillos, nasturtium, calendula, cantaloupe (or honeydew), sweet and Thai basils, mint, chives, potatoes, zucchini, squash, goji berries, rue, chamomile, etc. Some of the plants were re-seeded from last year, seeds given to us, seeds from fruits we ate, etc. Residents enjoyed chamomile tea from the fresh flowers.
The biggest challenge for this project is the cold weather this year, it was a very slow start for most of the vegetables and herbs. The other challenges are residents from other properties came and picked our produces, residents in the group pick everything for themselves and not sharing with others, ate the radish seed pods, picked the unripe zucchinis, sweet peppers, female cucumber flowers, etc.
Overall, this project is considered quite successful as everyone loves to see the community garden that they have never seen before with all the plants doing so well and lots of harvests to share in the community. We managed to share gardening knowledge and experience with residents in the group and residents that visited the community garden. The main purpose of the project is to build a stronger community, get everyone involved, connect and communicate, learn how to share knowledge, experience, harvest, and teamwork. I hope we are able to continue with this project year after year.
Pictures link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xvodgZNG9EgvQ3JXRNnYsjn_nePeAz0v?usp=sharing
