Gardening is all about trial and error. What works? What doesn't? Our Garden in a Box season is teaching us lessons about the continuous improvement of the program. What will we include for next year? What will we carefully trim away? What will we grow? In this post, we are highlighting a few of our gardeners and their harvests!
Our Garden in a Box program is designed to help those with limited space, mobility, and/or experience successfully grow their own vegetables. Our hope is that they will get excited about gardening and maybe even grow some of their own food. Participants this year were offered a variety of seedlings to choose from and a 15-gallon cloth container (with soil) in which to plant. They were given a Garden in a Box binder full of Cooperative Extension gardening publications, tips, a monthly calendar, and a journal. They are also offered initial planting advice and continuous support from volunteer Garden Coaches.
One great idea from a former garden coach is to offer participants "recipes" for assembling their container garden. Our gardeners might benefit from suggestions on what combination of plants will grow best together in limited space. We have found that some gardens containing both cherry tomato and cucumber are suffering from a lack of space! The PRFC demo garden required some intervention when the cucumber tried to climb the cherry tomato! Both plants were sent to time-out and I wedged a piece of scrap wood between them to keep them separated.
Gallery 1: Lisa's Garden
Gallery 2: Beth's Garden
Garden in a Box is a collaborative project of PRFC and the University of Maine Piscataquis Extension, funded by the Quimby Family Foundation. You can sign up for the 2022 Garden in a Box waitlist by visiting this page.
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