The TJMS Community Garden 2024 Season is Under Way.
The TJMS Community Garden has been a Plot Against Hunger participant for over a decade, donating produce to AFAC and other local food pantries. The Jefferson Community Garden is the largest school garden in Arlington, and we are taking our community responsibilities seriously. But more than that, we are working to become a hub for joyful community and learning. Have you ever thought of starting your own garden, but you feel a little overwhelmed? Volunteering with our experienced gardeners is a great way to learn more about starting a garden, managing pests and diseases, and how to plan for seasonal harvests. A sunny Saturday morning in the garden is a great family activity, and it's the perfect place to meet friends to socialize while volunteering and getting a bit of fresh air and exercise.
Bring Friends or Family and Join Us in the Garden:
We would love you to join us in the garden. We have regular garden workdays every week from 10 AM to noon Saturday mornings. Not quite ready to start gardening today? Sign up for our newsletter and we'll send you weekly updates about our workday plans, and pictures of what we're doing in the garden.
Stay tuned to our Facebook page for late-breaking schedule updates and weather cancellations.
Garden videos:
Our native asters and goldenrod. A veritable 🐝 ...
At first, we thought someone had gifted us a hawk ...
A pollinator garden full of blooms, but this butte...
You know you’re a gardener when getting a tr...
The only thing more beautiful than an eggplant flower is a deep purple eggplant. #schoolgarden #communitygarden #eggplant #fallharvest ... See MoreSee Less
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We're starting to think about this year's Harvest Festival. We'll have zucchini bread and basil sugar cookies from the garden. (Sadly, no pumpkins this year, so no pumpkin cookies.) What's your favorite baked good from Harvest Festivals past? Do you have a favorite garden recipe for a baked treat we should try? ... See MoreSee Less
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Sweet potato biscuits are a favorite recipe we make with my students! ffm.org/recipes/sweet-potato-biscuits
We just passed 1000 pounds donated to @afacfeeds this week. You can see this year in red in the graph, compared to our top year (2023) in blue. We're coming from behind, but if we can keep the squash, okra, tomatoes, and beans going, we've actually got a shot at beating our record this year, because we've been increasing at a faster rate than previous years at this time. And our newly planted squash and zucchini bed hasn't even started bearing (much) yet. Fingers crossed! #datanerds #schoolgarden #communitygarden @arlingtonfoua ... See MoreSee Less
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Very. Impressive! That was a lot of hard work!
Garden workday Saturday 10-noon. Bring water and a long sleeve shirt. ... See MoreSee Less
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No Workday Tonight
(Sorry, but we'll see you in the garden on Saturday morning!) ... See MoreSee Less
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CANCELLED: NO WORKDAY TONIGHT ... See MoreSee Less
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Yesterday was our first day of Garden Club for the year. Lots of students harvesting beans, tomatoes, squash, okra, and peppers, plus one very satisfied looking grasshopper. Between yesterday and today’s workday, we harvested 64 pounds of produce to donate to @afacfeeds, bringing our donation total to 849 pounds for the year. #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger #outdoorlearning ... See MoreSee Less
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Join us Saturday morning 10-12 in the garden to harvest, fertilize, and tie up our vegetables. ... See MoreSee Less
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A lovely blue lobelia that we added to the native pollinator garden last weekend. #pollinatorgarden #schoolgarden ... See MoreSee Less
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This year we are trying growing beans on a net instead of up twine. I’m not sure whether or not it’s a resounding success yet, but it’s fun to see the beans hanging through the part of the net between two rows like in this photo. #schoolgarden #beans #organicgarden ... See MoreSee Less
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That’s cool, we haven’t tried that method yet at my school for beans. I’m curious how easy it will be to roll up and store the net
Wonderful program!
Garden Workday
Saturday 10-noon
(We need extra help this week) ... See MoreSee Less
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Some of our managers are out sick and some are dealing with back-to-school busyness, so we'd love some extra community support this weekend as we catch back up with garden tasks that fell behind last week. See you in the garden Saturday at 10.
This morning, these squash were white with powdery mildew. We are spraying a few test plants with diluted apple cider vinegar (2.5T/gallon of water) to see if it can clear the powdery mildew without burning the leaves, then we will do the rest on Saturday. #schoolgarden #communitygarden #squash ... See MoreSee Less
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Interested to hear if that works. We are close to giving up on squash between the borers and the powdery mildew!
This is what 110 pounds of squash, zucchini, okra, beans, tomatoes, and peppers looked like at drop-off yesterday! It’s the combined harvest from Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (since @afacfeeds was closed for the holiday). #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger #communitygarden @arlingtonfoua ... See MoreSee Less
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@afacfeeds is closed for the holiday weekend, so today’s bumper crop will be hanging out at home until Tuesday. What’s your guess as to how much it weighs? It looks pretty similar to last week’s haul, which was about 45 pounds. Look at how well our zucchini have bounced back from squash vine borers— this is the first harvest that has had more green than yellow in the squash box.
Image description: boxes and bags filled with okra (so much okra!), green beans, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and habanero peppers. ... See MoreSee Less
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Garden workday Saturday 10-noon ... See MoreSee Less
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We’ve been struggling to keep our raised bed full of squash sufficiently watered in the past few weeks. The squash in the ground has hardly needed any water at all, so we are planning on opening up our last unplanted section of the garden and transplanting these seedlings tomorrow morning. These are our “second generation” squash and zucchini plants, after a whole row of zucchini was decimated by squash vine borers last month. In the past, we haven’t had great luck getting a second generation of squash to produce much, but this year the ones we transplanted from the raised bed to the ground are already huge and starting to bear. If we can keep these babies alive after we transplant them, we may boost our total garden yield by a few hundred pounds— we are getting close to 50 pounds a week from our current generation of squash, and if they don’t die they will bear until almost Thanksgiving. We will plant these with plastic cup “cuffs” at the soil line to discourage squash vine borers. #squash #schoolgarden #plotagainsthunger ... See MoreSee Less
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Sometimes it is just an off year. My tomatoes are producing poorly, very small and only a few green ones so far
Tomatoes, on the other hand..
Wonderful project
Passionflower in the pollinator garden. This fall, we plan to transplant some of these to the arch over our gate, so we can see how they do for us in full sun. #schoolgarden #nativeplants ... See MoreSee Less
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How do you control it? My single plant has morphed into a massive number of seedlings- they are everywhere in my back garden, choking out other plants!
It’s a lovely cool morning, see you in the garden at 10 ... See MoreSee Less
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A wonderful program! My g’kids are at Fleet and will part of your great garden program soon. Peace.
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