Hello and welcome to the first post of the UC|Sustainability Gardening Blog series! Although there was snow on the ground a couple weeks ago and Winter seems to be lasting forever, many are already looking ahead to the arrival of Spring. We have already started planning our Spring garden, and this year we are going to take you along for the ride with regular blog updates on our garden’s progress. We encourage you to take this journey with us and to get started planting your own garden, whether it's a container garden on your balcony or a garden bed in the ground, every gardener can make a positive difference! Growing our own food is becoming increasingly important not only to ensure access to healthy and sustainable food, but also to help pollinators and increase biodiversity. We can also garden to improve soil health by using regenerative farming methods, which we will talk about in future posts.
As we progress through this growing season, we will explain each part of our growing process to help others get started. If you have any specific gardening questions that you’d like us to address in our posts, please email us at green@uc.edu. Also, stay tuned for our Virtual Earth Week events in April. We will be doing a guided seed-planting event on April 13th where we will answer your questions all about plants while we plant our own herbs and flowers.
For those unfamiliar with our garden, it is located off campus behind the UC Early Learning Center on Ruther Avenue. Each year we grow food to donate to the Bearcat Food Pantry, and we aim to educate students about the importance of sustainable gardening. We also hold activities with the kids at the early learning center to teach them about gardening and where their food comes from. We typically have garden workdays where volunteers can come get their hands dirty in the garden, but we unfortunately cannot hold these events this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, we will aim to share our progress and educate others about regenerative gardening on social media and through our blog posts.
This year, we have already gotten started planning out what we are going to grow and when we are going to plant each crop. If you are interested in trying out some gardening yourself, we would recommend that you now start researching what you'd like to grow. Certain plant varieties are better-suited for container gardening or in-ground gardening. Some plants grow better in mild Spring or Fall temperatures, while some are Summer crops. While shopping for seeds, there will be information on the back of each seed packet about when to plant them, how long the plant will take to reach maturity, and more. However, if you are unable to plant your seeds on the exact day or time specified, don't worry. As long as there are enough days left in the season for the plant to reach maturity, it can be grown!
There are also some great resources online about starting seeds. The Old Farmer's Almanac has a customizable vegetable garden planting schedule that can be found here. Gardening is all about experimentation and learning what works for certain plants and what doesn't. If one of your plants doesn't exactly thrive (or dies), you can simply "harvest knowledge" and try again!
If seed starting isn't your thing, no need to worry! You can also buy plants that have already been started from your local garden center once Spring begins. Be sure to research these plants as well, and learn what they require to stay healthy. Buying started plants can be a little more pricey, but it saves the time and effort needed to start seeds. There are, however, many more plant varieties available to grow from seeds than as started plants.
We hope this introduction was helpful, and we encourage you again to let us know of any questions or topics you'd like us to address in our future gardening blogs! Just shoot us an email at green@uc.edu