Home Gardener, Community Garden Update

Back in May a small group of hard working Lutherans got together one Saturday morning at their church and built four raised garden beds, each about a foot tall and 13 feet long by a bit more than three feet wide, of red oak.  They were filled with compost from the Hellertown Compost Center and wood mulch from the same place covered the paths between the beds and made a wide border around the beds.  The red oak was thick, unfinished and quite lovely to behold.  It smelled very nice too! 

The beds were up for grabs, Pastor Phil took one, another parishioner took one and a third was shared by two families.  I took the fourth as no one signed up or followed up on my verbal invitations at church to grow vegetables in it.

A family donated some tomato, broccoli and cabbage plants for us to use in the garden.  And someone brought some bags of garden soil for supplemental usage in the garden beds.   Pastor Phil planted some peppers, tomatoes, several types of lettuces and beans.   Norine planted her bed with many things, the obligatory tomatoes, some orange peppers, radishes, kohlrabi, and a lovely bamboo teepee around which she planted a variety of seeds; English seedless cucumbers, pole beans and cherry tomatoes.  Judy put in tomatoes, peppers and a hill of cucumbers.  Her garden share mate Diane planted a sturdy looking eggplant and a row of green beans.

I planted my bed with some of the free plants; a few cabbages and broccoli, a plum tomato and a cherry tomato. I put in some melon plants I purchased; two hills of watermelons and two hills of cantaloupe.  I also planted okra along two sides and in the corner I placed a few kernels of broom corn someone gave me.  I did use one of the bags of soil to supplement the soil around the row of okra seeds.

Things began to sprout and grow in our gardens.  After a few weeks I noticed that Pastor Phil’s tiny arugulas were not progressing and had paled to an almost white color. My okras were not getting any bigger.  The two corn plants that sprouted were tiny and stunted looking, ditto for most of the other things in my garden.  What was going on? 

Norine, an experienced gardener, and I discussed our plants’ failure to thrive.  She faulted the woody mulch we had filled our beds with and said that it was not fully digested into compost.  And all the wood in it was sucking several critical nutrients, right out of the plants, especially from all of the baby plants.  This was accounting for their pale color and failure to grow.  She suggested that the lack of true soil was the root of our garden malaise which had embraced all four beds.  Luckily she also suggested an answer, Epsom salts.  They needed to be sprinkled all around the gardens and watered in.  The Epsom would correct the soil to the point of allowing the plants to grow and get more the color they should be.  Magnesium sulfate as Epsom salts are chemically known are great for soothing baths, for use as a drying agent and for improving garden soils. 

I went right over that afternoon with a half container of Epsom salts I kept for bath usage.  I sprinkled it over three beds, I ran out before I could put any on Pastor Phil’s unfortunate plot.  Then I watered it in well with the hose so it would take effect as soon as possible.

Within a week we noticed things perking up.   Well, greening up and growing at last! What a relief.  I have since put half of another box of salts about the garden including some on Pastor Phils’ bed.  All is improving.  In fact, we have many eggplants; two have been donated to the local food bank, ditto for the cucumber crop and I am the proud parent of several melons, although not yet near ripe.  Now if only we could keep the deer, rabbits and even Canada Geese from nibbling on our tomato plants!

The take away is, if you use the town mulch in garden beds be sure to supplement with a good sprinkling of Epsom Salts to counteract the nutrient draining effect of the decaying wood in your mulch.  It really works and it is cheap to by at Giant, CVS, or any other local drug store.