Our “Good News Garden” is a joint ministry of St. Luke’s and St. Titus’ Episcopal Church in Durham. The garden is named after St. Phocas, the patron saint of gardeners.
Even though we’ve still got cold weather with us, spring is definitely on the way. The days are ever so slowly getting longer. If you look carefully, you can see that the plants are beginning to respond. Buds are getting fatter. Little bits of green are peeking up just at the surface of the soil, and daffodils are even daring to bloom here and there.
Sarah Woodard, Carla Knipp and Mary Beth Berkley visited Saint Phocas Garden on February 11. We found that the broccoli is still considering making new florets, the collards have put on a little growth and the onions and garlic are about 4 inches tall now, in spite of the cold.
There wasn’t much physical work to do at this visit so we did some planning for spring. As requested by Greg Jacobs, we will be planting peas, spinach, beets and lettuce for our spring crops this year. We will use the old tomato trellises to trellis our peas and plant spinach at their feet as spinach is always hungry for nitrogen and peas are expert at pulling nitrogen from the air and putting it into the soil with the help of soil bacteria.
If you were hoping for more peppers and tomatoes, fear not. It’s still too early to plant them in March, but we will definitely be planting more in late April/early May.
We plan to meet next on March 4 at 3:00 and resume weekly visits thereafter. We hope you can join us!
stlukesdurham.org 