Take a crash course in veggie gardening
Have you always wanted to know how to get started with a vegetable garden? Did you start a vegetable garden and failed?
Karen Harty, executive director of Grow a Gardener Inc., may have the answer. Harty, who runs the Edible Gardening Exchange and is able to eat from her garden all year, will be the speaker at this month’s meeting on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the North Fort Myers Recreation Center.
Harty, who teaches a 12-hour course on the same subject throughout Southwest Florida, said her lecture will be a lot more intensive, basically summarizing her long course in a two-hour time period.
“It’s really compact. It’s not going into major detail or nuances. It’s brushing through so people understand it’s a whole lot more than if they take my 12-hour class,” Harty said. “It’s a lot of information. It usually blows people away, and they realize they need more information.”
Growing a garden in Southwest Florida presents special challenges. The oppressive summer heat and sandy soil makes growing edible food difficult.
Harty said there are many more things people have to remember, such as roots, soil pH, insects and diseases, even when to plant, which is different from up north.
“We don’t put our tomato plants up in June, we put them out in October. Snowbirds don’t realize it’s completely reverse down here. We do all our growing in fall, winter and spring,” Harty said.
Making matters worse, beside the hot summers are the dry winters. Harty goes over the importance of keeping your plants watered, irrigation and the fact that in some areas you can only water on certain days.
As always, the meeting begins with an informal gardening chat at 5:30 p.m. Bring your own mug for free coffee and tea and consider bringing something to share with everyone, preferably from the garden.
New members bring $10 for the class plus $10 for a Lee Parks and Recreation lifetime membership card.
“It’s going to be intense, but they’ll learn a lot. They need to realize it’s not their fault. If they can take that with them, I’d be so happy,” Harty said.
For more information, call Harty at 610-530-8883.