Wasatch Community Gardens Blog

A couple of weeks ago we WCG bloggers/gardeners got together for a little potluck. Sort of a get to know you/ get to know what we are doing gathering. We had a good time. We ate lots of food, talked a lot of gardening, and talked a little blogging. I tend to have a hard time with potlucks mostly because I think I am not creative enough to bring anything good. I like to think of my wife as the creative part of our team. I asked her what I should take with me. She recommended bringing my favorite salad of hers, just a simple little tomato cucumber salad. Brilliant in its simplicity I think. It got good reviews at the gathering and a request for the recipe. Now I tell you in advance, this may be the only recipe I post, as I don't fancy myself a creative cook. But...

I just finished the Tomato Sandwich Party Poster. What do you think?

Last week, Wasatch Community Gardens hosted the hottest par-tay in town: our annual Salsa Party and Competition. Our Fairpark Garden (1037w 300n) isn't really that big, but we fit about 150 people in the gates!  The community members that came either brought their homemade salsa or their stomachs ready for salsa tasting.  There was live music by the Bueno Avenue String Band as well as kids activities. I really wanted to get my face painted inside the "Sunflower House"...but I never stopped running around long enough to get that dragon I wanted painted on my forehead. I also never stopped running around long enough to try any of the salsas...which is a total bummer. There were 15 very different salsas this year competing for various prizes as well as the title of "best salsa in town". Below are the competition categories as well as the winners for 2010. Best Overall: Richard...

Most gardeners who grow summer squash usually end up with so many and so large fruits that they can’t even get rid of them in the trash pickup. We sneak them onto the neighbor’s porch at night. Our family and friends start avoiding us for fear of their obligation of taking more squash. Years ago a group of gardening friends even got together at a local pond to do zucchini boat races. We carved out those huge fruits (that somehow avoid our scrutiny to appear out of nowhere) into boats that we hoped would float. Most immediately sank; others were swamped in the waves of a light breeze; and one floated long enough to become the winner. There just has to be better ways of dealing with this dilemma. Over the years my wife, Karen, and I have come to a couple of conclusions. Eat them earlier and/or freeze them. We...

Michael is a 30-something father of two, a writer and a cook. He dabbles in gardening and is constantly wowed by people who really know how to grow. In Salt Lake, that turns out to be quite a number of people! Michael has lived in apartments, townhomes and single family homes, and his garden has been everything from windowsill herbs to a large backyard. His favorite: one of the easternmost community garden plots at the Grateful Tomato Garden back in 2002.   Michael's passion for sustainable agriculture took off when he served as Executive Director for Wasatch Community Gardens in the early 2000s. His favorite aspect of gardening is soil preparation, and he had the privilege of learning strain-free double digging from the master, John Jeavons. Michael loves to eat well, and thinks the best restaurant trend to develop in the past years is the farm-to-table movement. He looks forward to sharing his travels in the world of...

Wow.  Lame title.  And possibly more than a little confusing. Let me 'splain.  No.  Is too much.  Let me sum up.  {I'll give you a free subscription to the blog if you can name that movie!} My tomatoes are pitiful.  I am only slightly buoyed by the fact that nearly everyone else in the valley has lame tomato plants this year too.  Not that the plants are lame - no sir - they are over 6' tall!  It's the production that is pathetic.  My early girl has one orange tomato and 3 green ones. Not all is lost, however.  While searching for a screw that leapt from his hands, my husband spotted a treasure under the coop.  An EGG!  Our girls are only 4.5 months, so I wasn't expecting anything yet. But there she sat.  Green and slender and beautiful. As I walked around the coop, analyzing the best way to...

if we aren't gardening or farmers market-ing, we are out hiking and climbing I live in an apartment, but I still want to have fresh produce during the summer. I love a fresh garden tomato on my sandwich, so much better than those things that look like tomatoes you get at the grocery store. Right? Growing up we usually had something growing in the back behind the garage. Corn was a family favorite. But I was young then and I didn’t really pay much attention to any of it. My family moved when I was a sophomore in high school we created a spot in our back yard for a garden, and it gets better every year. I still don’t think I appreciated the idea of a garden until I moved to Moscow, Russia. There really isn’t much space for a garden when all you have is a 900 square foot...

Like many, I blame my mother for starting me on gardening when I was only eight when she gave me some popcorn seeds and a spot in the yard. After gardening almost every year for the past 40 I now consider vegetable gardening to be my best skill. During that time that skill improved the most during the two years I lived in South America as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I worked hard to apply those newly acquired intensive gardening skills during the subsequent five years that my wife and I lived in Alabama for my graduate degree in fish. Just after my return home I helped to start up Wasatch Fish and Gardens which was later renamed Wasatch Community Gardens. Although I represented the "fish" in the original Fish and Gardens because of my nine years in college and two more abroad working in aquaculture, my true passions with Wasatch Community Gardens have always been with vegetable gardening. Since I eight have always focused on growing...

I want it all.  I’m not ashamed to admit that.  I want the sweet taste of fruit in the winter, and I love the crunch of crisp greens when the earth is soggy and the sky is gray. The last two weeks have been consumed with various methods of preparing and canning apricots, so the sweet taste of local fruit in the winter can be checked off my list.  But what to do about my need for crunchy, nutrient rich greens? Pete Rasmussen, from Sandhill Farms, had all the answers at the WCG Fall Planting Workshop this weekend.   Fall is the perfect time for working in the garden.  It’s cooler, the days are beautiful, and – as it turns out – there are many plants that thrive in Utah’s fall.  With a little work and creativity, it’s possible to create microclimates within the garden and produce yummies year-round in the Salt Lake Valley....

Is your garden bursting with corn? Are you overwhelmed with zucchini? Getting buried by your tomatoes? Tired of all that fruit dropping on your lawn and making a mess?  Is your produce going to waste and ending up in your compost pile? If so, we have a solution to all of your garden woes. Donate! In partnership with Utahns Against Hunger, Wasatch Community Gardens will be providing local gardeners with a list of food pantries in our area, along with donation times and pantry specific donation information. There are thousands of families and people in need in our communities who do not have access to all the healthy treats that many of us are knee deep in this time of year. Please help us in our efforts to get healthy local produce to everyone who wants it, and take care of your over-abundance at the same time. And please remember all...