Gardening
Gardening
The Co-op current has two raised bed gardens and, with the advent of the concrete canoe, will shortly have a third. Here I will offer no advice, because even after growing the garden last year, I have little experience with gardens, but I will explain what I, and those who helped me, did in the summer of 2008.
Dirt
In the beginning, there was no dirt, so we procured it through a number of sources. We decided not to purchase or pick up dirt from Craig's List, because the fill that comes out of the ground in Pittsburgh and its environs are filled with clay and are unideal for growing vegetables. We picked up the bulk of the dirt from around campus: behind Scaife, near Phipps, down Neville - and carted it up to the Co-op.
We supplemented the fill dirt with bagged dirt we purchased from Home Depot - organic potting soil, organic top soil, mushroom compost. The last one was important. According the the man who maintains CMU's lawns (who also used mushroom compost) it contains a modicum of nitrogen (in fact, it's NKP content is 6-0-0) that helps promote plant growth.
Plants
In the main garden, we did not plant seeds. Instead, we waited until June 1st and bought plants from organice farmers retailing in the Strip. We bought six varieties of tomato plants, two varieties of eggplant, and herbs: rosemary, thyme, and basil (regular and thai). Later, I purchased a zucchini plant from Home Depot. It perished after flowering extensively, and never fruiting.
In the side garden, I planted cherry tomatoes - two varieties - which we again got in the Strip district. In the lower part of the corner garden we planted wild strawberry and mint that came from Tom's house. There was a also a small flower garden there, but we didn't take care of it well, and it died.