Planting Day!!!

Hello All

We are a group of Dietetics students at the University of Northern Colorado who are starting a community garden in the UNC garden plots. For some of us this is our first garden and a few of us have had a green thumb for many years and are just hoping to share our knowledge.

This blog is going to focus on the progression of our garden, the weather and its effect on our plants' growth, and recipes utilizing our crops. Our main goal for this project is to provide nutrition education and fresh produce to the community all while learning about gardening together.

We planted our seeds and seedlings last Monday and are very excited to see what happens over the next couple of weeks!

Our garden plot before planting.

The seeds we planted: Sweet basil, Lettuce, Cucuzzi squash, Carrots, Peas, Salad burnet, Parsnips, Spicy Basil, and Cantaloupe. We also planted radish seeds.

We planted marigolds to help keep grasshoppers and other pests away from our crops. The marigolds also marked walking paths in our plot.

Two gardeners planting peas. The wire is there so the pea vines have something to climb and support them when they start producing peas.

Gardeners planting lettuce seeds. Lettuce has to be planted in raised mounds of dirt and watered very gently.

Planting green onions and preparing the soil.

A gardener planting a marigold.

Thyme, oregano, and a marigold.

Cilantro

Bell pepper seedlings

Cucuzzi squash seeds

Our garden plot after planting, labeling, and watering.

We were going to plant tomato plants also but the Colorado weather is wild and there will be a freeze in the upcoming week. Tomato plants need hot weather to grow and produce the best tomatoes so we are waiting until next week to put those seedlings in the ground.

As the garden starts to grow I will be sure to put up more photos and updates on how each crop is doing!

Update as of May 18th 2011

The weather has been incredibly rainy here the past couple of days and the next time we are supposed to see the sun is supposedly Saturday. I hope this will make for a very green garden!