Growing Together: May newsletter

This Month In The Garden

Bed Preparation Tips

We have been working hard to prep our beds for the season and thought we would share our steps with you!

Rake off straw (if you have any covering your bed from last season).
Pull out all weeds in the bed and in the perimeter pathways - be efficient, use a stirrup hoe or weeding tool to get the root too.
Use a broadfork to aerate the soil - work your way down the bed.
Measure out bed dimensions- our beds follow market garden sizing at 30” wide with pathways at 18". Use a hoe to roughly mound up the bed to ideal dimensions.
Add organic fertilizer (we use Pro-Gro) and sprinkle evenly over the entire bed as best you can or add compost. Sometimes we add both, especially at the beginning of the season.
Use a tilther to incorporate amendments and smooth out beds. If a tilther isn't available, use a metal rake.
Cover the bed with straw (leftover from last season or new).
Spread wood chips along pathways, approximately 1-2 inches thick.

You are all set to plant! If planting in straw covered beds, simply make a hole or row in the straw and plant.

Garden Like a Farmer FREE May workshop

Our 3rd in the series of Climate Resilience through Nature-based solutions is all about Dealing with Pests.

Workshops are FREE thanks to sponsorship by the City of Burlington Conservation Legacy Fund.

Registration helps us gauge participant numbers and in case of weather or last minute updates we can contact you.

Learn more and Register

Get started growing your own vegetables with these Free Plants!

Our greenhouse team has been hard at work and on May 23 we want to share the fruits of our labor with the community.

One of our grant projects for the 2026 growing season focuses on growing culturally meaningful crops to support access to traditional foods for immigrant communities in Winooski and Burlington. At this Spring Plant Giveaway we will share a variety of crops from the African, Asian, and Latin American diasporas that are hard to find in Chittenden County (unless you are seed starting them yourself!). We will also have extra seedlings to share from varieties we grow for our collective garden sites in Burlington, including mostly vegetables, plus a few herbs & flowers.

Learn More