Garden for Your Health
Contributed by Sammy Taylor, Meadow Lakes Bloomers
This Memorial Day weekend is always a good time to start gardening so you can have fresh and nutritious veggies later this summer. All you need is soil, a container or spot to grow, proper nutrients, and the seeds or starts.
For those of you living in rocky places or apartments with no ground to cultivate, you can still get your hands dirty and keep your body healthy by growing vegetables and flowers in containers. Anything that can hold dirt and didn’t have pollutants in it before your garden use is a possibility for planting. Let your imagination be free from preconceived ideas of what a garden looks like and get those seeds and plants in some dirt. An old Easter basket, a cracked bowl, a rusty pot, an old lamp shade in a saucer, a broken wheelbarrow, a wheel rim, you are simply holding dirt.
Now for the soil! Regular native dirt will work so long as you add a few nutrients. Of course, it would be wonderful if you have been throwing your kitchen and yard “waste” into a pile and have compost handy. If you didn’t save your biological waste, please start now. If you can’t use it, some other gardener can. Besides, keeping organics out of the trash will keep our wild furry neighbors out of the trash, as well. Your trash barrel will smell better, too! Get already-prepared compost at Valley Community for Recycling Solutions on Chanlyut Circle off the Palmer/Wasilla Highway for $5 per bag or a truckload for $50. If you have corrugated cardboard that got wet, it won’t recycle for its normal uses, but it works well in the bottom of containers to provide cellulose for the soil.
For other nutrients, you can go to a big box store, or better yet, a locally owned garden center. There are also some inexpensive ways to get the nutrients plants need. You can get goat manure for free at Cottonwood Creek Goat Farm and at other places. Just text Mike at 907-715-4799 to schedule your pick up. He has bags available, but it would be helpful to bring a pitchfork to load your bags. Please schedule your visit when Mike is available, between 1 and 6 PM is best. Your plants will thrive when there is some nitrogen-rich material that will decompose quickly, like goat manure. Aged sawdust or old leaves from many trees are also helpful for plants. For a full guide to making garden soil, check with our local Good Earth Garden School online, our local cooperative extension, or come talk to gardeners at the Memorial Day sales or at garden club meetings here in the Valley.
If you haven’t purchased your seeds, many local stores have them. For those plants that should be started indoors ahead of the growing season, you can get starts at local greenhouses in the area, Arctic Organics in Palmer, and at the two plant sales held this Memorial Day weekend. Meadow Lakes Bloomers has a Friday and Saturday sale, 10 AM to 5 PM, at the Meadow Lakes City Center Mall on the Parks Highway opposite Pittman Road. Valley Garden Club members sell their plants on Saturday at the Boys & Girls Club on the Palmer/Wasilla Highway.
However you garden, you will reap benefits not only in tasty, nutritious food, but also in the physical and mental benefits of such activities. Besides, it’s fun. So have some fun and get gardening!