A History of the Garden

A Brief History of the Garden

By Patrick Madden

The MG Vegetable Garden really started in 2009, when our neighboring farmers, the Galushas, plowed the plot of land behind the greenhouse for us. The idea of starting a vegetable garden has been floating around for a while, but it never got off the ground until this year.

The plowed soil was left fallow for a year, which made it perfect for gardening this year, and it was plowed yet again earlier this year. At a Youth Environmental Squad meeting during the winter regarding compost, Kaatje White, Karen Lobdell, Petra Mijanovic, Katherine Keys, and I started talking seriously about starting a community vegetable garden this spring.

Williams College (read: Kaatje White) helped out immensely with the initial planning stages of the garden by donating a heat mat for the greenhouse so we could start our own seedlings (we shared this heat mat throughout the winter and spring with Linda Wagner and the Williamstown Elementary School).

We then proceeded to have a few initial organizational meetings to discuss what we wanted to grow and what we wanted to do with the produce. I was able to procure a phys ed. period devoted solely to gardening, and the project took off from there.

Katherine, a member of the special education staff at the high school and an avid/learned vegetable gardener, and I worked on the garden first period every morning. We first physically manipulated the soil to make the raised beds and rows, and then we worked on getting and sowing the proper seeds and seedlings.

The process was also helped immensely by Laura Bentz, parent of MG student Iain Kuttner, who donated two sets of organic heirloom onions and three different bags of Moose Tuber organic potatoes. Green River Farm has also donated seedlings, and Williams College has donated sheets of floating row covers for our raised beds.

This project has been successful so far and will hopefully become a yearly tradition (and grow even more) once I head off for college next year. The Youth Environmental Squad will work on ways to get younger students involved and integrate the garden into the various science curricula at Mt. Greylock to ensure the project lives on.

All harvested produce from the garden will be available for garden volunteers, donated to local food banks, and used in the school salad bar in September.

Thank you for your interest, and email greengreylock@gmail.com to get involved!