Tip-toeing through the tulips proved to be too big a challenge, and Baltimore officials have decided to let the bulbs bloom before attempting to plant the third season of the City Hall vegetable garden this year.

It has been chilly, but the beds around War Memorial Plaza are expected to blossom soon. And when the tulips die back, volunteer members of the Master Gardeners and members of the City Department of Parks and Recreation will begin planting vegetables.

"This is likely the last year for the tulips," said Melissa Grim, acting chief of horticulture. "We decided to let them put on a good show."

It proved difficult -- physically and aesthetically -- for volunteers to plant early spring vegetables around the tulips. "It was a challenge," said Grimm.

That means there won't be as many of the greens and early peas as there have been in past years. The crops that go in -- probably in mid-May -- will be warm weather crops, such as tomatoes and peppers.

All of the food harvested from the City Hall gardens goes to Our Daily Bread, which serves hundreds of meals twice a day in the city. The fresh vegetables have been a welcome addition.

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Volunteers and city workers harvested a dozen crates of spring greens from the vegetable gardens planted around War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall, and then hurried to deliver them before they faded in the hot sun.

It is the second year of the program, which delivered more than 1,000 pounds of fresh vegetables to Our Daily Bread last year.

But it is in danger because proposed city budget cuts would eliminate the Univerity of Maryland's Extension Service in the cityand, with it, the Master Gardeners program whose volunteers manage the massive garden.

Continue reading "Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden: abundance in tough times" »

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Photos courtesy of Angela Treadwell-Palmer

Baltimore City's Master Gardeners, whose program is threatened by proposed city budget cuts, turned out Thursday  to harvest the first of the spring crops in the City Hall vegetable garden -- 17 crates of fresh greens.

This is the second year for the garden, which is planted in the cement planters around Baltimore's War Memorial Plaza.

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Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden, which generated more than a ton of produce to help feed the poor and homeless at Our Daily Bread last year, is in trouble.

Budget cuts proposed for the University of Maryland Extension Service in Baltimore City would jeopardize the Master Gardeners program, and it is those volunteers who did the lion's share of work on the garden last season and were expected to do it this year, too.

And nobody seems to understand what's going on.

With the help of the venerable garden writer Adrian Higgins, let me see if I can explain.

Continue reading "Extension Services and Master Gardeners" »

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Proposed cuts to Baltimore City's budget would put the second season of the famed City Hall vegetable garden, which produced more than a ton of food for the homeless last year, in danger of an early frost.

Cuts to the University of Maryland Extension Service in the City would likely eliminate the service altogether, and with it the Master Gardeners Program, which provided most of the labor and expertise during the garden's first year last year.

Bill Vondrasek, chief horticulturist for the City Department of Parks and Recreation, which is in charge of the city gardens, said he would still try to plant a vegetable garden around War Memorial Plaza, "but it probably wouldn't be done as well."

Vondrasek has to maintain the city gardens anyway, he said. "I used to plant flowers. I might still try to plant vegetables. But it would be a lot more difficult without the Master Gardeners."

Angela Treadwell-Palmer, who designed the vegetable garden last year and this year, said the spring crops have been planted and the seedlings started for the summer vegetables. But without the Master Gardeners, maintaining the 1,100-square foot garden would be difficult.

"The Master Gardeners are a lifesaver," she said.

Citizens will gather Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at, coincidentally, the War Memorial Plaza, to express their opinions on the proposed city budget cuts. Representatives of the extension service will be there, said director Manami Brown.

Continue reading "Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden: On the chopping block?" »

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Photos courtesy of Angela Treadwell-Palmer

Landscape designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer gives us a first look at her plans for the second City Hall vegetable garden in Baltimore.

Instead of the fussy Victorian style of last year's garden, which made maintenance and harvesting more difficult, Treadwell-Palmer is using a more minimalist, modern approach this year.

Continue reading "Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden: a first look" »

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Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

More greens. Fewer cherry tomatoes.

Those are the plans for the second season of Baltimore’s City Hall garden, which produced more than 2,000 pounds of fresh produce last year for Our Daily Bread, the city’s largest soup kitchen.

“We’re catering to what Our Daily Bread is requesting,” said Bill Vondrasek, chief horticulturalist for the Department of Recreation and Parks, which helps care for the gardens. “They specifically told us what they will eat more of and what they didn’t each much of,” he said.

It is much easier to saute baskets full of greens to serve 700 homeless men and women than it is to get 700 servings out of the tiny Hansel and Gretel eggplant, explained Angela Treadwell-Palmer, who designed last year’s garden. 

Continue reading "Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden: what's in and what's out" »

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Baltimore's City Hall Garden, and yours truly, Garden Variety, made the big time with an appearance on Garden Rant, perhaps the most popular garden blog out there.

Susan Harris, one of four bloggers on Rant, is a resident of Tacoma Park, and she took time to visit the City Hall garden last week and talk to designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer about the lessons of the garden's first year.

You can read Susan's impressions on Garden Rant.

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Continue reading "Vegetarian birds" »

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War Memorial Plaza, just outside Baltimore's City Hall, was the scene this weekend for the 22nd Annual City Farms and Community Gardens potluck supper.

Baltimore has more than 600 vegetable garden plots in the city, and more than 200 of the citizens who tend those gardens gathered Saturday evening to show off their produce - and their recipes.

The Sun's Dan Rodricks was there and filed this report.

War Memorial Plaza is home for this event, but it was an even more appropriate location this year. As reported here on Garden Variety, planters surrounding the plaza have been planted with vegetable crops for the first time ever.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Karl Merton Ferron

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Continue reading "Baltimore's City Hall vegetable garden: an update" »

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When you garden, you are likely to step on a few blooms.

It looks like you can step on a few toes, too.

Mayor Sheila Dixon's decision to allow the city's Department of Parks and Recreation to plant vegetables ourside City Hall was met with delight from the folks at Our Daily Bread, who will benefit from the harvests.

But some noisy old crows came out to pick at the idea.

In a letter to the editor Robert Abramson implied that it was a waste of money, despite the fact that the seeds and most of the labor will be donated.

There was a real "fiddling while Rome burns," tone to his complaint.

City dweller Sam Sessa, who blogs on Midnight Sun, is convinced the pigeons will do all the harvesting as they did with his garden. And, in an e-mail to me, another reader said that the pollution in city will taint the vegetables and make the poor sick, and they will sue the city.

I am thinking that it is more likely that politics will taint this ambitious project.  I am afraid if it fails - in even the smallest way - a political reason will be found for its failure.

Let's lighten up, people. Cities all over the country are planting vegetables in public places, most often to benefit the poor. They will meet with varying degrees of success and the gardeners will learn from their mistakes. Even a handful of tomatoes and peppers can ease someone's hunger.

If you want to find fault with such a decent enterprise, you should wear a "curmudgeon" sign around your neck.

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Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's ambitious plans for vegetable gardens outside City Hall, outlined in my story in The Sun today, made me think that perhaps we should be planting edible landscapes around all our public buildings: libraries, schools, courthouses and firehouses - for the benefit of the poor or for those who work and learn in those buildings.

And it is evidence that the pendulum has swung from the 1960s, when Lady Bird Johnson inspired the nation to plant wildflowers along highways and on other public land. Beautification was the watchword then. Food safety and healthy eating are the anthems now.

Flowers vs. vegetables. It is an old rivalry. Especially since the ancients found so many uses - medicinal and food - for flowers.

I like what Roger Doiron said in today's news story. The edible landscape advocate said that these kinds of projects can make cities rethink their ability to feed themselves, that urban areas are not condemned to poor nutrition and hunger just because the earth is paved over there.

I wonder, too, if this sudden explosion in interest in vegetable gardening will make flower gardeners like me feel guilty. Like we aren't contributing to the common good with our hydrangeas and our coneflowers. Like we are wasting our land and the sun and the rain that feed it.

And I wonder how the nation might have reacted if Lady Bird Johnson had urged us to plant corn or soybeans along the highways and in the median strips, instead of waves of colorful wildflowers.

Photo courtesy of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

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