This Summer I’ll be growing food all over town. The black dots indicate where. The lower one is at the Ecological Food Garden at the popular Hannah Williams Playground, which we established last Summer. In the middle, the left dot is at my house, the one on the right is my daughter’s school’s garden, which I’ll be minding over the Summer while school’s not in session. The most northern one is a friend’s place where one of my hives is located. The one next to that is at the Community Gardens, where I was allotted two adjacent 20’x30′ plots.
At the Hannah Williams Garden most of the plants that made it through Winter.  We’re expecting lots of strawberries, and all the onions are roaring, and the comfrey is humunugous already, attracting lots of pollinators. We’ll divide all these and puts them  in empty spots, spread the wealth that way. A local preschool also wants to bring the kids over to do some planting: there is a whole section set aside for just that kind of thing.
As for our Community Garden plot, they’re indicated by the white arrow.
On these plots I’ll be growing annual edibles that, after they’re established, won’t require me to hop over there every day – a six-mile trip there and back. They’ll be dry beans (Calypso, Red Kidney, Cannellini and King of the Early, all Fedco seeds), two kinds of sweet corn (which silk out at different times, hopefully thereby minimizing cross-pollination), and Mammoth Grey Stripe  sunflowers (the kind you grown for eating the seeds). I’ll also get to know all the good people who garden there. It’s an extensive garden, with about 100 gardeners (I estimate) of all ages and – I heard – lots of gardening experience and skills.
When I went over there to check on my plots, the head of the Conservation Commission and one volunteer were trying to stake out the temporary plots that get plowed each Spring. I got roped(almost literally) into helping and the three of us made quick work of it. Standing in the field, the turned soil crunching underfoot, talking gardening, food, and the goodness of people: it was good.
Update {5/29}: plots are tilled!
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