![]() The leaves are nutty, chewy and a little bit earthy. Turns out, you can also eat amaranth greens. I was about to chuck the amaranth when a fellow gardener told me what I had. Bonus! I knew about amaranth from a porridge I once made from its seeds, but I didn't know what the actual plant looked like until I met it in my garden. ![]() I see no signs of life from the beet seeds I sowed last May, but I do have a bumper crop of amaranth that showed up on its own. "Tiny little blossoms like on a cucumber or a melon can't be seen by a bee from far away, so you need those colorful flowers to draw them in," he says." He suggests marigolds and zinnias, which flower all summer long. But Maynard says they increase yield by attracting pollinators. Flowers can seem like a decadent waste of space in a tiny veggie garden. It ripens while still green so a gardener can harvest it long before it tempts others. His favorite theft-proof veggie is the green zebra tomato. He recommends cherry tomatoes and okra, which are less eye-catching than a big tomato, pepper or eggplant. ![]() "Small, fast growing things are less likely to be stolen," says Singer. But I also understand the heartbreak of eagerly watching a tomato ripen only for it to end up sliced on someone else's sandwich. My general philosophy is that if someone really needs my head of broccoli, I don't mind it walking off. Theft is an unfortunate reality for many community gardens. The day after Halloween, she collects hay bales that people are ready to toss and leaves them in her garden so she's set for spring. "I make sure that I mulch a lot," she says. The mulch also keeps down weeds and, according to Marien, can prevent a fungus from moving from soil to tomato plants. He places a 2-inch layer of straw over his plot to seal in the moisture. "People who don't mulch have to water every day," says Singer. The mountain of mint I'm yielding is too formidable to mojito my way out of it. Some gardens don't allow mint." If you happen to be someone who, like me, did not hear this good advice until it was too late, I recommend mint pesto. "Watch out for plants that use a lot of water and are invasive and can take over," says Bill Maynard, a board member and past president of the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA), who also runs the community gardens program for Sacramento, Calif.'s DPR. To keep the heavy fruits from plummeting to the ground, gardeners support them with "hammocks" fashioned from one of the most stretchy, breathable fabrics out there - pantyhose. His group offers carpentry courses where gardeners learn to build trellises stable enough to hold just about any plant, even watermelon. "Go as vertical as possible," says Josh Singer, the community garden specialist for D.C.'s DPR. Faced with tight quarters, resourceful gardeners train plants upward. Community garden plots can be as small as 4-by-4 feet. This summer, with proper watering, they're prolific. ![]() Last year, even as the rest of my garden succumbed to neglect, the cherry tomato plants kept pumping out jolly little fruits. She recommends that newcomers try herbs like parsley and leafy greens like kale, chard and mustard. Some crops are more foolproof than others, says Stacey Marien, a librarian with 16 years of experience planting in D.C.'s Friendship Garden. Here is their (and my) best advice for getting the most veggie for your effort in a community garden. In the hopes of improving next year's yield, I reached out to community garden experts for help. ![]() This summer, I righted many of my wrongs from last year and also made some fresh mistakes. But coaxing tiny boxes of land to produce quality vegetables in urban settings requires real skill. In my city alone, the Department of Parks and Recreation oversees more than 30 community gardens made up of about 1,200 individual plots. Yeah, my first year was a miserable failure, and not just because I let the weeds win.Ĭommunity gardens are rapidly gaining popularity. ![]()
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