Bellevue Park Community Gardens

      This will be my fourth year for working my plot at Bellevue State Park.  I am a mere newbie, as some gardeners have been there since the breaking of ground 28 to 30 years ago.  The plots are 40 feet by 20 feet, and water is available by frost free spigots every 80 feet.  There are a total of 178 plots, with another seven or eight smaller plots.  I started over at the park to be able to have a veggie garden in full sun.  On these 90 degree days, it is more pleasant to garden in my partially shaded garden in the back yard.

Bellevue Park  -   July 3, 2012

       There is a Pin Oak lined drive to the left side of the barn that separates the two groupings of garden plots.  My plot is nearly in the middle of all the plots on this section closest to Interstate 95.  That is at times a drag to have to haul soil improvements into the middle, but probably lessens the pilferage from both two legged and four legged beasties being more comfortable around the edges.

Looking north to the sign to Philadelphia

More views of the extensive gardens

My garden, on the 40 foot side

      Here is a patch of swiss chard ready for some harvesting.  Lou's nephew planted his first garden this year, and planted the chard too thickly.  These are thinnings from his bed, to go along with two smaller plantings here and a larger bed at home.  Now I am the one with too much chard.  But since the squirrels ate my Bright Lights chard starts down to nothing, more is better than none.  The glass in the picture is actually a stack of most of the glass panels for my extensive cold frames at the park.  I am very happy to be able to store them all in such a small space.

      These pepper plants are off to a good start.  Most people have difficulty with peppers at the park, as the plants usually wilt and die at some point.  So it is a challenge to see if I can get a good crop.  All of my peppers were started by seed back in January, so it is already one success so far.

      The rest of the peppers at the park.  These were all extras after I planted 16 plants at home of eight different varieties.  A few plants have not even made it into the ground yet.  Usually there are losses at planting time.  This year I have lost only two plants, and have my first volunteer pepper plant.  That is a little sweet banana pepper in the above shot.

      What is this growing between the chard bed and the north side of the compost pile?  A couple of volunteer mustards, with the rest being arugula.  Did you read that Barb?  Arugula in the heat of July.  It is doing quite fine in the shade of the compost pile.  I have not seen any arugula start from the many places I threw seed pods.  But this planting must have resulted from some seed stalks that spent too much time on top of the pile before being cut into compost size pieces.  Maybe I will try to transplant some, or I may leave the patch as is just for snitching when I am at my garden.

Volunteer sunflower

      All of these pictures were taken around 5:45 AM this morning, during my attempt to beat the heat.  Is a sunflower really a sunflower before the sun is up?