Transition Bay St Margarets has established this public educational vegetable garden in the Spring, 2012. This garden is intended to inspire everyone about the ease and productivity of growing some of your own vegetables, and is located at the Crossroads immediately to the East of the existing landscape garden installed by the St Margarets Bay Garden Club.
In April 2016, we re-installed 4 large raised beds, following the fantastic landscaping that was done at the Crossroads in the fall of 2016. The current garden consists of approximately 320 square feet of growing space.
Contact us if you are interested in helping at the Educational Vegetable Garden during the upcoming gardening season!
2023: Our Twelfth Year at the Crossroads Garden!
We are into a very productive year due to all the rain and warmth. We harvested 503 pounds of vegetables for the St Margarets Bay Food Bank! We harvested chard, kale, potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, turnips. There is still more harvest to go - parsnips and more greens..
2022: Our Eleventh Year at the Crossroads Garden!
2022 was a productive year, and also a year of waking up to the pending food crisis in St Margarets Bay. In the spring, we installed new 2" thick hemlock boards and rich compost for the raised beds, and the seasons started off well with great harvests. Coming into late August, there were fantastic onions, beets, carrots and cabbage.
Over the Labour Day weekend, however, someone came in and stole about 200 pounds of these vegetables - all destined for the St Margarets Bay Food Bank. This is the first time that there was significant theft from these gardens, which is perhaps a sign of increased food costs and financial stress being experienced in the area. Even with this theft, we still harvested 271 pounds of vegetable for the Food Bank.
2021: Our Tenth Year at the Crossroads Garden!
2021 is proving to be an outstanding year due to the warmth and plenitude of rain. We are up to 437 pounds with one last harvest still to come. We will have 6 pickings of swiss chard and kale over the season!
2020:
Our 2020 season yielded 397 pounds of vegetables. We gave the potatoes a break this year, in order to get rid of the beetles. It was a relatively dry season, but we managed to keep good watering practices going.
2019:
Another successful season, we finished the harvest season with 339 pounds for vegetables! Overall harvest was lower than previous years due to dry spells and insects (the potato beetles finally found us!). The harvest included potatoes, parsnips, carrots, kale, onions, and cabbage. The St Margarets Bay Food Bank is greatly appreciative to receive these donations. Many thanks to our wonderful volunteers that keep coming back to lend a hand! We would also like to thank Knock's for a beautiful load of soil.
2018:
This season brought in 423 pounds of vegetables, which included potatoes, parsnips, carrots, chard, kale, beets, onions, and cabbage. For the first time, we noticed blight on the chard and beets, and decided not to grow those next year to let the spores die off. Harvest came in to the Food Bank in time for Thanksgiving boxes. Many thanks to our wonderful volunteers that keep coming back to lend a hand!
2017:
2017 has proven our most successful year to date at the Crossroads Educational Garden, with a grand total of 665 lbs of beautiful organic produce harvested for the St Margarets Bay Food Bank! This amounts to more than 2 lbs of food per foot in our 320 sq foot garden. Our harvest included beets, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, chard, kale, onions, and cabbage. With veggies bigger and better than even our master gardeners normally grow at home, we continue to be amazed at the output of this magical garden space. Many thanks to our wonderful volunteers that keep coming back to lend a hand!
2016:
The 5th annual big fall harvest of the Crossroads Educational Vegetable Garden took place on Saturday, September 24th, when we harvested an additional 343 pounds of beautiful quality produce !!! Over the summer, garden volunteers have already harvested over 160 pounds of Swiss chard, kale, carrot and beets. Despite the dry summer weather, we have had an excellent 2016 harvest. The final season's tally, after November and December harvests of chard, kale and parsnips was 561 pounds of vegetables for the St Margarets Bay Food Bank!!
2015:
An incredible harvest of 421 pounds of vegetables was brought in this year - from the same size of garden as last year! Proof that continually improving the soil will always increase yields. The St Margarets Bay Food Bank provided strong volunteer support over the course of the growing season with weeding and harvesting. Out hats off to all volunteers - it was a very successful season.
2014:
The Garden harvest in 2014 - Over 270 pounds of vegetables were harvested this year! The addition of three new beds helped raise the total harvest, with produce going to both the St Margarets Bay Food Bank and the Hubbards & Area Food Bank.
2013:
The Garden harvest in 2013 - Over 170 pounds of vegetables were harvested, including carrots, potatoes, onions, cabbage, rutabaga, beets, parsnips and chard. Tina and Jeremy at Mariposa helped with the weighing on their store scale. The harvest was donated to the SMB Food Bank with Dave Flemming.
2012:
Late September, several volunteers made the first harvest of potatoes, carrots, beets, red and green cabbage, onions, rutabaga and Swiss chard. Approximately 60 pounds of vegetables were harvested, and presented to the St Margarets Bay Food Bank.
