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The Rural Voice, 1998-01, Page 42Gardening Great vegetables, no work with community shared garden By Rhea Hamilton -Seeger I used to be faced with the same dilemma each year: too many seeds and not enough garden. There is always a new annual or perennial seed I want to try and there is no empty space in the flower garden. So I sneak it into the vegetable garden. Each year I seem to have more and more flowers and fewer vegetables. But there is a solution to the problem of flowers encroaching into the vegetable patch. Take out a membership in a community garden and have your vegetables grown for you. Last year I took the plunge and took out a membership in the Community Shared Garden at Fran and Tony McQuail's farm southeast of Lucknow. I was both delighted with the selection and must confess that we were hard pressed to eat all our vegetables each week. Which shows me we don't eat enough vegetables. The community garden works on the most basic horticultural premise, shared risk, shared bounty. Members buy a membership and agree to share the risk with the farmer. If one crop has a low yield that is just the way it is. Yet if the yield is bountiful then everyone shares in that too. Fran emphasizes to members that everything has a season and new members soon come to understand that tomatoes ripen in late July or early August and not a day sooner. Like the rest of us, Fran spends time poring over the catalogues — selecting untreated organic seeds for the garden. She orders from Wm. Dam in West Flamboro and Rawlisons in Truro, Nova Scotia. The lovely oriental greens were from Johnny's Seeds of Maine. Fran refers to the notes she keeps on each variety's progress and yields. Experience has taught her to read the fine print on the seed packets to get the best results for her money. Weather is always a major factor. 38 THE RURAL VOICE The cold wet spring of 1997 delayed planting and germination. The peas were slow and had a poor yield. But the three weeks of heat in June helped many plants catch up. When our summer heat petered out in August, the eggplant and peppers quit setting fruit but the tomatoes and corn more than made up with their bounty. As gardeners we can all appreciate what goes into growing a large vegetable garden. Fran and her family are growing for 30 families and they work tirelessly all through the growing season. She begins in February ordering seeds and starts some of the hot weather crops like tomatoes, peppers and herbs in her expanded greenhouse. There are two days per week that are designated pick-up days. Fran marks on a large chalk board what is in season and usually has handout sheets with information about the new vegetables and recipes for a vegetable of the week. My first pick-up in late June included a beautiful bag of oriental greens, green onions and mesclun. Everything is always so clean. Greens that wilt in the heat are set in large coolers with ice in the bottom and damp cloths over top to keep everything fresh as the moment it was picked. Little did I know how much work went into harvesting the vegetables for the pick-ups. I have a working share which means I get to help out for a set number of hours in exchange for a lower share cost. I thought the clean produce was just a product of a clean, well -mulched garden. While the garden looks great, the truth is that the vegetables are gently rinsed off and some ragged looking leaves nipped back. The harvest begins before eight in the morning and the vegetables are picked, cleaned and readied for the first pick-up at 10 a.m. Fran keeps a close eye on the different crops as they ripen in order to pick at the peak of maturity which can be a very hard thing to do when you pick twice a week on set days. There is the obvious advantage of enjoying a wide variety of fresh vegetables available all summer long at an affordable price. But for many families there is the added joy of trips to this working farm that shows us and our children how our food is produced. There are the colts and lambs in the spring and haying done the old-fashioned way with Belgian horses. There are chickens and geese to greet you in the lane and kittens in the barn watching for the occasional mouse. There are social events planned around the garden, like strawberry socials and corn roasts. Being part of the Community Shared Garden is all part of putting culture back into agriculture. Take a good look in your community and locate a community garden near you. Just think of the number of new perennials or exciting new annuals you can plant in your "ex -vegetable" plot.° Rhea flamilton-Seeger raises two children, and is a skilled cook and gardener.