Salem Community Gardens

in full swing....

2009-06-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

Palmer cove is looking lovely this year. The new gates are a great addition. I am seeing a lot of new faces and some really superb gardens. I personally decided to plant a lot of seedlings at home this year and transplanted them last week. I did this mainly for convenience purposes and so that I could take better care of them. My yard is sunny until mid June and now its shady most of the time (which is ok because on those hot days of summer we can enjoy our cool backyard). This happens just in time to pull up the mature seedlings and transplant them into Palmer Cove. In our home garden we have had spring onions, basil and chives for over a month. Its been so nice to just walk out the door and grab what we need. The snow peas are growing wild this year!

I set up a group over at flickr Salem Grows- flickr. Once you join you can pick individual pics to share with the group. If you are on Facebook we also have a group. It can be found under Salem Community Gardens.

Any news anyone wants to share? How are your plots turning out?

call for blogs and pics....

2009-04-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Do you have a blog? Planning on blogging about your garden this year? Taking pics of your veggie's progress? Using Flickr? Please let me know so that I can add a link. Our family is going to keep a blog about about our community garden, our small home garden, our local food co-op share and trying to can all of our veggies. BTW we still have a few jars of sauce made from our community garden tomatoes, green peppers, onions and zucchinis and 3 large bags of frozen pureed tomatoes from last year (now to find the time to create another blog!). I am especially looking for folks over at Mack Park since I am over at Palmer Cove.

In the meantime 2 pictures from the community garden...

Fist Annual Meeting

2009-04-12T23:18:00.000-07:00

SAVE THE DATE – SATURDAY, MAY 2nd – for our first annual meeting!

potluck dinner (4:30-5:30), meeting (5:30-6:30)

It will be held on the first floor of 5 Broad Street (Senior Center).

We’ll have activities for the kids and volunteer signups for the adults.

Look for your invitation with details in the mail.

from jen- If anyone can take digital pics for me or even a little report of how it goes I would be so grateful! I will not be there because I bought tickets for a show months ago. Either send them to doucettelyatgmail.com or post them on flickr with the tag salemgrows and I can just pull them from there. Thanks!

Pallets!

2009-04-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

WE NEED FREE PALLETS!

We are planning to set up two three-bin compost systems this year
– one in each garden. For each one we hope to start with a base of
free wooden pallets – we’ll need 13 for each garden. We also plan to
get a chipper-shredder this year to keep debris pieces small which
will speed up our compost. Anyone who sees free pallets is encouraged
to grab them and drop them off at either garden (or let one of us know
where they are so we can swing by and pick them up). Thanks!

Garden Clean-up, Opening, Manure, Water and Compost

2009-04-12T23:14:00.000-07:00

GARDEN CLEAN-UP, OPENING, MANURE, and WATER

We are hoping to have a garden clean-up day scheduled some time in
April. Ideally it will correspond to our manure delivery this year,
but we’ll see. We will e-mail with clean-up date(s), but feel free to
get started now if you have an assigned plot. I think the water was
turned on in May last year – it will certainly be a while for water at
the taps – but we will keep you posted.

COMPOSTER RAFFLE & WORKSHOP

A big “thank you” to Jennie Cudmore and Crunchy Granola Baby – they
are raffling off an Earth Machine Composter and a handcrafted worm bin
(complete with starter worms) to benefit Salem Community Gardens.
Stop by the store for tickets! Lisa Spence will be conducting a
workshop aimed at home composters at Crunchy Granola Baby on April
25th (see www.crunchygranolababy.com for details). If you can’t make
this, not to worry! We will run composting workshops at the gardens
over the course of the summer.

SEED EXCHANGE – new this year!

2009-04-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

Due to popular request, we are starting a seed exchange this year. If
you have extra seeds, please bring them to Crunchy Granola Baby
(across from City Hall and Salem Five Bank) or drop them in the mail
slot at 182 Federal St (for Mack Park) on or before Friday April 10.

Seeds will be available for pick-up at Crunchy Granola Baby the

following week.

Either keep the seeds in their original packaging or enclose a copy of
both sides of the packet with the seeds. To ensure that seeds are more
likely to be viable, only give seeds intended for planting in 2008 or
2009. If you gathered the seeds from your own plants, just put them in
a labeled envelope.

Extra seeds will be available at the general garden meetings and
maintenance days in April & May. If you have a seed request or excess
later in the summer, contact Alexa or Paris.

It's Never too Early to Apply for Next Season!!

2009-03-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Download and mail in the garden application at the left. We won't know how many spaces are available in the gardens until we complete registration of last-year's gardeners. We will mail out re-registration packets by Jan. 20th, 2009. Then we will contact everyone on the waiting list in February 2009 with plot assignments. Plots are assigned in order of when we receive applications. So if you would like to be included on the waiting list, complete an application and mail it to: Salem Community Gardens, P.O. Box 82, Salem, MA 01970

We have decided to delay our appeal to the Park & Recreation Commission for an additional community garden in Salem until 2010. We know there are enough interested Salem residents to fill another garden, but we'd like to take this year to get the Mack Park and Palmer Cove Gardens running smoothly!! Anyone interested in helping us expand next year is encouraged to contact us at info@growsalem.org.