How Does Your Garden Grow?

Let me tell you about a serendipitous chain of gardening events that happened to us last weekend: we got an Ace Hardware post card in Friday’s mail announcing free gardening work- shops in Skaneateles Saturday morning. We already had plans for Syracuse First’s CashMob in the city at noon so squeezing in a workshop beforehand was just crazy talk. But, darn it, the Ace line-up included a demonstration by Jackie Coyle on pallet gardens and I’ve been super curious about those things. So we went with crazy.

     What a cool last-second decision that turned out to be! Jackie, an Ace staff member and an ornamental horticultural student at SUNY Oswego, showed us how to use an inexpensive weed blocking fabric to form the base of our pallet garden and gave us tips on the types of plant that would flourish in this environment. Lettuce greens, for example, would be happily at home in our box, Jackie said.

     As fate would have it we were already RSVP’d for Elderberry Pond’s spring garden workshop on Sunday afternoon and that lesson focused on – what else – growing spring salad greens! Far be it from us to ignore the Universe’s call to get moving with our own spring garden. We worked this week on putting together our pallet garden and planting basil and lettuce. 

     Thank you, Skaneateles Town Square Ace, for the complimentary pallets, and thank you, Jackie Coyle and Lou Lego, for the excellent gardening tips. We’ll keep you posted on how things progress with our Pallet Gardens On The Deck. 

     To be continued…