A Plan is Growing in Camden

The little community garden we recently started in Camden (through my job with the Camden Children's Garden) is really flourishing right now. Here's a picture of it a few months ago, when we first started it:



And here it is now, full of vegetables, some ready to harvest:



In the last few months we've planted lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, rutabaga, swiss chard, mustard greens, spinach, cabbage and escarole. Over the last month we've harvested several pounds of lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, kale and swiss chard. Things are really looking good over there and we haven't watered once since we planted. Amazing.





We also had that (mostly) dead tree cut down and planted trees and shrubs along the edge of the garden. The shrubs were donated to us and the trees were planted with help from the New Jersey Tree Foundation (we got serviceberry and cherry trees, as per my request!).



This garden is very close to the Children's Garden and we're starting to think of it more as a mini-farm. We're expanding our ideas on how we can provide fresh produce to the citizens of Camden (a city of 80,000 with only one grocery store on the edge of town). That might mean starting a CSA! This garden is very large and there's not a whole lot of community involvement yet. We might reserve part of it to cultivate ourselves, like we're doing now, and sell at very low prices to the community as a subscription. I'm beyond excited about this!










Things are in the works, so wish us luck!