Community Life Garden

A big THANK YOU to Valley Soil and Forrest Products at 21415 E. Manning Ave, Reedley, Ca for generously donating 9 cubic yards of garden soil. This garden soil will be used by our community garden members to rejuvenate our plots’ soil for the Spring and Summer growing seasons. Please help us thank them by visiting them for your high quality garden, landscaping and driveway material products. They provide great customer service and they deliver! valleysoilandforestproducts.com

Companion planting or as I call it, companion gardening, involves learning about which plants work well together. Before, I mostly planted seeds and waited to see what came up. I figured weed pulling and watering was all that was needed. Then I learned that the better the soil mixture, the more plant growth you will have. Now I’m learning that companion planting has many benefits. Companion planting is the practice of planting two or more plants together for mutual benefit.... It helps with nutrient uptake, crop protection, pest management, and positive hosting of beneficial bugs. The attached Gardening Soul post has some great secrets for companion planting and popular planting combinations. As you continue to plan out your Spring garden, take a look at some of these great recommendations. Keep gardening for your future!

CLG Garden Plots Available: We start with a total of 30 garden plots as we begin 2021. Most are in use by our Community Gardeners. The rest are community plots maintained by our Board Members, gardeners and volunteers that help with the watering and weed maintenance. These community plots help provide food to our local pantries. We currently have some garden plots available for adoption. This means you can adopt a 4 x 8 garden plot for a season for free. You do have to main...tain your garden plot and assist with garden maintenance. We have Master Gardeners and Community Gardeners that can help you in your learning process. Please let us know soon if you’re interested. Plots tend to be adopted quickly. Keep gardening for tomorrow!

Welcome 2021! Winter started last year on Monday, December 21st. Our broccoli and cabbage plants have been tucked in since then. The nets have kept the grasshoppers away. Now that it’s getting colder, the nets will be removed soon. Our Community Gardeners continue to keep their plants growing. They keep getting bigger. By February or March of 2021 we should get some nice harvests. Our Calendar of events for 2021 will need to wait. Our February Gleaning Day will also be postponed. The garden oranges should be ready by then but the pandemic rages on. We will also pick our vegetables sometime in March. Let’s hope for improvements in the next few months.

Merry Christmas!