Eagle Heights Community Garden Seed Fair

The Seed Fair

A few months ago, I decided to try for a community garden plot at Eagle Heights Community Garden, an on-campus community garden situated between Picnic Point and the Eagle Heights university housing complex. I thought it would be a fun social activity and a relief from research and office work. With that, I asked a few of the graduate students from the UW Department of Landscape Architecture, primarily Robbie Greene (Prof. Verde), to join me in my adventure to spread the work around and make it even more social. Well, we put in the application and - guess what - we now have our own little garden plot, Plot #1114 (soon to be renamed something more creative)! Today was the first milestone in the garden process, the Eagle Heights Community Garden Seed Fair.

Garden Plot Map

The seed fair was held at the Eagle Heights Community Center early this morning. Registration was at 9:30AM which meant an early rise on a Saturday. The garden organizers give gardeners a few tickets to exchange for seeds that have been donated. The next 30 minutes was spent scrambling around the room searching for the seeds you want in your garden. I was able to get most everything that we wanted to plant, but had to supplement the list with a trip to a store where I needed to pick up some gloves and seed starting stuff anyway.

The Whole Garden

Plot #1114

As you can see, the garden is a bit desolate at the moment with dead stems, tools, pots, frames, and other miscellaneous garden equipment strung about (at least it is contained to the individual garden plots). The ground is starting to thaw a little and it is getting somewhat warmer here earlier than usual. However, I am not going to let that fool me into planting things early and risk a late frost. I will start the seed germination over the next few weeks and hopefully have everything ready to be planted in early to mid May. With any luck at all, this little 20' x 30' space will be transformed into a diverse vegetable/herb/flower gardent over the next 2 - 3 months. Needless to say, I am excited to get started...

Below is a list of seeds I picked up today:

• Spinach
• Oregano
• Basil
• Butterfly Flower Mix
• Marigolds
• Green Beans
• Pickling Cucumbers
• Sweet Onion
• Carrots
• Swiss Chard
• Butternut Squash
• Zucchini
• Slicing Cucumbers
• Beets
• Lettuce
• Radish
• Rosemary
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Chili Peppers
• Bell Peppers
• Sweet Peppers