Good Gardens: Get Your Best Garden Yet

Get your best garden yet with Good Gardens online presentation.  Gardening and growing your own produce can be fun, easy and satisfying.  By planting the right things together in the right soil, you can get a surprisingly large yield.  Learn more from experts.

Transition Bay, SMB Gardening Club. and Bay Seniors are partnering to offer an exciting garden-themed program, with great tips for gardeners of all ages and experience levels, including easy ways to grow delicious food for our own table.

A presentation on food and flower gardening in containers will be given by Karen Lewellen of SMB Gardening Club.  A Climate Victory Gardening talk on ways to grow food successfully in this changing and less predictible world will be offered by Bob Cervelli of Transition Bay.

This will be offered on the Bay Seniors Facebook page as two videos downloaded at 2 pm on May 13.

Free. No registration needed.  All are welcome to watch and share.  Donations gratefully accepted. To donate please click on the donate link on the Transition Bay mainpage near the bottom.

========================================================

Home gardening enjoyed a huge boom in 2020, with sheltering-at-home Canadians having more time to watch the flowers—and veggies, fruits, and herbs—grow. St. Margaret’s Bay was no exception to that trend.

Claudy Levy, Gardening Club board member, says we face specific considerations.  “We’re coastal, so salt air and ocean winds are factors,” says Claudy, “And mostly rural, so wildlife like deer, rabbits, and raccoons munch on our gardens.  ”Claudy says the Bay’s often larger rural properties can inspire gardeners, especially newbies, to create larger gardens than they can realistically manage. Before we take up our spades for another season, she suggests considering how much money, time, and energy we actually have for our garden. “It’s better to start small and build your confidence and enthusiasm with success,” Claudy says.

When it comes to starting small, the Bay Gardening Club advocates container gardening. “Depending on the container size and shape, and the selected plants, you can get a lot from one container garden.” says Claudy. Containers can sit on a porch or deck, and can combine flowers, veggies, and herbs to become decorative accents, as well as practical providers of food for the table. But it’s important to choose the right container, soil, plants, and location.

A second presentation from Transition Bay’s Bob Cervelli will offer tips on growing a vegetable garden to help increase our household’s food security and variety. Bob compares this movement to the Victory Gardens of the two World Wars, in which home gardening was seen as one important way to support the war effort. Bob’s presentation will discuss “the incredible capacity for us to grow significant amounts of our own food supply on little land and with only a modest effort.” His presentation will include information on foods that are especially nutritious and easy to grow.

The three groups are delighted to advocate container and food gardening to their members. Carl Breckenridge, Bay Seniors board member, says, “Container gardening is a great way for people of all ages and states of health to still be able to enjoy the benefits of gardening, and growing some of our own food makes so much sense.”