The Garden Flourishes!

Hello, all.

Greetings from the midst of a beautiful summer day! Although the sun beats down on our garden, the plants are growing strong and healthy.
With about twenty gardeners coming every Tuesday from 6-8 pm, we have planted and are tending:
peppers: sweet and poblano plants looking beautiful with a few new transplants settling in
tomatoes - huge and handsome
sorrel
chives
komatsuna
radiccio
lettuce
bush beans
beets - just coming up
oregano
chard
cucumbers
peas

In our herb garden next to the greenhouse (which was recently meticulously cleaned and organized - thanks, gardeners!):
sunflowers
calendula
chrysanthemum
echinacea
chamomile - would migrate to every inch of the garden if we let it!
Italian parsley
Greek Oregano

In our permaculture section of the garden, we have planted thirty crowns of asparagus. About five are up and growing and we are looking forward to seeing how this new crop does in our garden. We also have some miner's lettuce seeds which we plan to plant as a ground cover around the asparagus. Miner's lettuce is a very interesting, small, lettuce-like plant that can be eaten raw or boiled like spinach. It is another new crop to Celeste's Dream Community Garden and we are excited to experiment with it.

On Tuesday, June 10, gardeners visited with naturalist Tom Ibsen who led us through the prairie savanna near Bethany and explained his project to restore its native ecosystem. Some of us were surprised to learn that the beautiful purple flowers growing throughout the area are actually a weed which disrupts the rest of the flora and fauna! Thanks to Tom for the enlightenment.