Community and Container Gardening Mid May Update

It was the best of times, it was the worst...

After such a harsh winter where we live near Binghamton, New York, my spouse couldn't wait to get his hands dirty at our community garden.   The ground had been plowed.  But it remained closed.

Frustrating!Normally, in our zone 5b climate, it's bad enough that we have to wait until the first week of May to plant, at the normal opening of our community garden at Otsiningo Park, in Binghamton.  Only one lucky year, we were able to start gardening in mid-April.

This year, the first week of May came and went with no opening.

Although we own a house, we have a small plot of land, and not that much of it is in full sun.  We found out the delay was caused by a water pipe problem. We were lucky - we nearly lost our plot for the year.

As it was, as soon as spouse saw the open garden, he immediately planted our onion and leek plants, which had already arrived in the mail.  Onions are one of our, if not our, best crop.

Today, my spouse drove down and spent 4 1/2 hours doing various chores and more planting.  Right now, there isn't much to take pictures of at the community garden.

Meanwhile, we take advantage of whatever sun we have, in the back of our house, with pots and with Earth boxes.  Our major foe here is groundhogs, and I'm sure they will be here any day now.

Here's what we have so far:

Italian parsley, elevated to deter said groundhogs.

An earthbox, planted with lettuce, spinach and other assorted greens.

A pot of arugula and some of our transplants (some homegrown, some not).

And a bunch of flowers, some of which I will show you on May 15, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

We still plan to grow ginger this year, after our "shocking" ginger success last year. Hopefully, it wasn't a fluke, but we need to plant soon.

Meanwhile, the transplants above await the last frost date.  Technically, for us it's around May 10, but we came close to a frost last week, and my son (who lives about 20 minutes from us) got down to 24 degrees on that same night.  So, a little caution is in order. Our community garden is several miles away and we just can't run down there and start covering things.

I will try to give you an update every two weeks - but you know how I am with my blogging promises.

Are you growing a garden this year?