Our Secret Garden: Patch Blogs

This year, started a small community garden and invited Walsh faculty and staff to join first. My husband and I decide to give it a try because we liked the idea of saving some money on produce, having organic veggies available to us, and getting the kids involved.

Being a runner, I decided to go ahead and run down there one day to check on our garden shortly after we had planted our plot. As luck would have it, the garden, which is right off the , is almost exactly 2 miles from our street, perfect for when I am doing a 4 mile run.

I usually like the freedom my Garmin running watch gives me but I started going down to the garden every time I was going to do 4 miles because I liked checking in on our plants and I really like the Hoover Connector Trail. I do a little weeding, water the plants, and check in to see how our neighbors plants are doing too. I love our little garden.

Unfortunately, I did lose one of our plants early on. I am pretty sure it had a powdery mildew and didn't want to risk infecting other people's plants in the garden so I regretfully ripped it out. That was a sad day but the other plants seem to be doing just fine.

We had friends who said they didn't know if a community garden is really worth it because you have to spend the gas money to get there anyway. Not for this runner turned gardener!! I run there and run back most days I check on it. Occasionally I will drive to check on it but usually when I am going to Washington Square for something anyway. Rarely do we make a special trip in the car. My husband and daughter even biked there the other day to check on things. Our secret garden has given us some extra motivation to get out and get moving!! Bonus!

The other day was an interesting run because as I was checking on things after weeding and watering, I realized there was a rather large, ripe zucchini ready to go. Hmmm ... I didn't want to drive back to get it so I plucked it from the vine and set off for my 2 miles back home. I felt pretty silly running home with a zucchini in my hand and did get some strange glances but was very excited to show the family the first bounty from our garden. So, if you see a woman running on the Hoover Connector Trail carrying produce, that would be me. This could get really interesting if we get a watermelon to grow!!