March Blooms at the Community Garden

Spring is here and there is so much to do at the community garden. You can see the grass has really greened up and it won't be long before it needs to be cut. This weekend we will concentrate on building some new beds and getting things tidied up. There are stakes to put away, weeds to pull and plants to compost.

Even though its only March, plants are beginning to grow. The garlic that we planted last fall is up and the Kale is looking pretty.

How can you resist Kale in a salad? Did you know that after Kale goes through a freeze the taste changes and it gets even better. There is no easier plant to grow than Kale.

The Primula are blooming in the rock garden. They are such a welcome site.

The Iberis or candytuft is opening its white blooms. It must love the warmth tucked in by that rock as my Iberis at home is way behind and nowhere near flowering yet.

More garlic in the allotment beds. I am still using last years garlic in cooking. The best thing I made last year was the garlic scape pesto.

More colour is provided by red cabbage in one of the allotments.

This vibrant Primula just shouts spring.

Check out all the cilantro babies. I think this allotment gardener will be so surprised as it was her first garden last year. The Swiss chard is starting to send out new leaves as well.

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Its Official!

Its official. We finally received our incorporation papers. I know, what does that have to do with a community garden? Well you just don't start planting as we found out very quickly. You have to apply for a name for your society through the provincial government. First you apply for a name by checking trademarks and copyrights. Luckily Ladner Community Garden Society wasn't taken. You pay a fee for the name right away. The next step is applying for incorporation. You want to form a society and have directors as you can't lease public space without going through this process. Okay, another fee, a hundred dollars to be exact. Applying for incorporation is writing bylaws which can be painful at best if you want to write your own. Thank you Mark for doing such a wonderful job writing our bylaws. If you don't write your own, there are easier ways such as following out set bylaws as given in the Society Act. Our hard work as paid off as we received our red seal of approval

Growing Your Own Food

Carrot harvest Growing your own food just became even more important than ever. As prices increased this fall we saw lettuce and cauliflower go up in price. Reasons for that are many but the drought we had could be one of the reasons. Overall the transportation costs of everything are up due to the high cost of fuel and that's being passed on to the consumer. Of course, many of us are not earning any more than we did before. I predict that 2023 will see another resurgence of food growing like we did at the beginning of the pandemic. Some of us may be doing it with less space than we had before so that creates more challenges. Just to let you know how popular gardening has become, our community garden has a waitlist of over twenty people. They may not get a spot in the garden for several years. It's probably time for a new community garden to be set up in the community. To save money in the winter think about growing crops that store well like carrots, potatoes, win

Ladner Seedy Saturday is Only a Few Weeks Away!

Yes, it's time for Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo 2018. Our organizing committee is busy behind the scenes registering new and returning vendors, booking speakers and organizing the seed swap for the event. Are you a vendor wanting to come to Seedy Saturday? We still have a few tables left for lease. I am excited about our two speakers coming this year. Janis Matson is a well known garden speaker and owns Shoreline Landscape Design. Janis is an instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Langley and also teaches classes at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Janis will be teaching us how to use ornamental grasses in the home garden. Our next speaker is Randal Atkinson. Known as West Coast Garden' s Plant Expert Extraordinaire, Randal is the go to person for design, plant selection, growing and care of plants. Randal is passionate about gardening and loves sharing his knowledge with the public. You can often see him teaching classes at West Coast Garden centre

Ladner Community Garden

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