Youth Garden Plant Sale and working in the Kitchen Graden

After getting up early to help set up our last LCDS tuber sale of the year, I drove over to Springfield to the Food For Lane County Youth Garden. I had heard about this garden for years but had never had the chance to visit it before today. It is nestle between busy Gateway Blvd and MLK Blvd in a quite oasis. The event that finally brought me here was their Annual Plant Sale. Apparently, this event has been going on for many years but I just became aware of it a few days ago.

A field on the farm was set up with row after row of green, lush plant starts. Thankfully they provided free boxes with which to transport your purchases. Since I was a rookie here, I had overlooked that important detail. I was also glad that I had arrive 20 minutes before opening. By the time 10 AM arrived, there was a very long line and parking was at a premium.

Right at 10 AM they sounded the whistle and shopping commenced!

They had an amazing amount of both vegetable and flower starts. Everything was very clearly labeled and there was a great selection of varieties with in each plant type.

There were lots and lots of shoppers but it wasn't so crowded that it was difficult or unpleasant. Really the only hard part was remembering the size limitation of my garden so that I couldn't buy one of everything!

I ended up with 4 purchases:

• 2 - 3" pots of Sunflower "Giant Sungold". Each pot had 2 healthy plants to I got 4 for the price of 2!
• 6-pack of Cosmos "Dwarf Bright Lights"
• 6-pack pf Cauliflower "Snow Crown"
• 6-pack of Zinnia "Yellow Flame"

When I got home from the sale and had some lunch, I decided to work in the Kitchen Garden. It had been more than a couple of week since I last spent some time working here and it definitely needed some work. I began by giving the whole garden a good weeding. Then I planted 3 of the Snow Crown" cauliflower that I had purchased that morning. Yes- I actually planted something the same day that I bough it!

I know absolutely nothing about growing cauliflower. I desperately need to read up on its care but for now I just stuck the plants in and gave them a good watering.

I also brought my rusty trellis out of storage and placed it over the many volunteer morning glory plants. Then I started thinning out the plants. I pulled up a whole bucketful and I know that I have still left in too many. But for now these have a bit more room to grow and I can do a second thinning later.

I then brought out my tomato cages and single leaf trellis and set up that part of the garden. Once that trellis was positioned I was able to plant the "Heavenly Blue" morning glory plants that I bought last week. I also transplanted a small "Heavenly Blue" plant that had come back from seed. This is the first year ever that I have had seed sprout the next Spring from the previous year's "Heavenly Blue" plants. They apparently have a much lower rate of germination then the morning glories planted around my other trellis that come up by the hundreds each year.

Once the morning glories were in, I also planted the "Matina" tomato that I bought last week. All in all, it was a productive day. I got the kitchen garden in shape and many of the plants that I have purchased in the last few week are in the ground. In a few more weeks, I will "finish" the kitchen garden for Summer when I put in the Winter Squash, the rest of the tomatoes, and all of the other heat loving vegetable.