Vegetable Garden | Campus Vegetable Garden Beckons Passing Snackers
By now, you may have noticed the lush vegetable garden beds outside the wrought iron fence surrounding Allen Centennial Gardens at Observatory and Babcock drives.
A little white sign tucked in between the plants offers passersby this invitation:
“Need a snack? Come over and have a bite. We’re showing space-saving ideas for vegetable patches and showing that veggies can be pretty and yummy. Go ahead and munch on a tomato as you wait for the bus!”
As vegetables ripen, it’s a tempting invitation.
“We are inviting people to pick from the produce growing outside the fence to encourage them to see what fresh locally grown food tastes like and to come inside the fence to look at the rest of what we have growing,” says garden director Ed Lyon.
“It’s part of our focus on expanding our educational efforts about growing fresh produce in limited spaces and in areas that are not being used effectively otherwise,” says Lyon. He refers to it as “sort of a version of front-lawn gardening.”
There is a large variety of produce growing in the streetside gardens. Among them are tomatoes, leeks, squash, cucumbers, colorful chard, kale, beets, various peppers, including jalapenos and more. Many of them aren’t quite ready for harvesting yet.
In the beds along Babcock Drive there are lots of tomato plants that are supported in various ways, from the traditional single stake to mesh trellises, round and square cages, bamboo and metal supports.
“We are also trying to demonstrate ways of growing vegetables more vertically with the various structures you see outside and inside the gardens,” says Lyon, noting that there are several support systems that demonstrate how it can be done.
Visitors who don’t have much room in which to dig up and create a garden bed at home will learn how produce can be grown in
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