Curtis Park Garden

Even though it is early in the season, we thought our blogging audience might appreciate tours of our urban gardening endeavours. To start, here is our Curtis Park Garden Plot!

Curtis Park is near the famed 5-points area of Denver.

The surrounding neighborhood is steeped in history, culture and tradition!

 Welcome to our garden!

There are 20ish garden plots on this fertile lot.

Below is our plot--picture taken a couple of weeks ago.

We had our tomatoes protected by walls of water until the nighttime temps were high enough for them to

survive.

 Andrew is bringing in twigs we used to build our bean trellis.

 We planted 12 tomato plants: some cherry tomatoes, canning tomatoes and slicing tomatoes.

We bought them from hobby heirloom folks in the area.  Next year, we'll probably buy smaller starts. They are doing well, but it is taking the roots a long time to catch up with the size of the plant!

We planted carrots, turnips, onions and probably something I'm leaving out around the tomatoes. These are called "companion plants" because they work together to build the soil and ward off pests.

 In this section we planted an assortment of herbs and peppers.

The aromatic qualities of the herbs deter most pepper pests.

 Andrew is planting the 3 sisters: pole beans, corn and squash (cucumbers and zucchini).

We also planted a variety of lettuce, radishes, sunflowers, cantelope, watermelon, bush beans, crookneck yellow squash and broccoli. We're going to be busy come late summer!

 And here is the bottom of the trellis for the pole beans. In traditional Native American farming, they would start the corn before the beans so the corn stalks would be strong enough to support the beans. We planted both at the same time, so we expect the beans to need some additional support!

 Here, Andrew is putting the final touches on our hand-woven trellis. If you look closely, you can see the famous "cash register" building in the downtown Denver skyline.

We love making urban areas more food productive!!