Garden Chats

You are invited to the Campbell Community Garden to take a casual deep dive into timely gardening topics. We will gather in the garden to learn and ask questions about our gardens. Feel free to bring a picnic dinner, bring a folding chair or blanket and a friend. If the temperature is extremely hot, we may reschedule.

Wednesday, July 16th, July 23rd 6:30pm - INSECTS, Sarah will show you what to look for when scouting for insects, how to nurture the good ones, and how to combat the bad ones. NOTE the date change!

Wednesday, August 6th, 6:30pm - FALL & WINTER GARDENING, Sarah will share tips on how to set up your garden to grow through the winter and how to set your garden up for a successful start to spring.

Wednesday, August 20th, 6:30pm - SAVING THE HARVEST, Sarah will share her creative tips on how to save your overabundance of summer produce. 

Do you want to garden at the Campbell Community Garden? It's not too late, we have a few open gardens, sign up on our "rent a garden" tab!

Fall Gardening Starts NOW!

The Campbell Community Garden has a few plots open right now. Our rental season usually goes from January 1st through December 31st, but anyone who rents a garden now will get 15 months of gardening for the price of 12!

The Campbell Community Garden in January, YES you can grow veggies in winter!

Fall is a great tine to start gardening. There are many things one can grow over the winter in Milwaukie. Hardy greens, root veggies, garlic, If you live in Milwaukie and want to start gardening, go to our Rent a Garden page to get signed up.

Gardens For Rent

Fall and winter gardening starts NOW! We have 4 open plots at the garden, all ready for planting fall veggie starts and garlic. We garden year round, and if you join us now you will get the last few months of 2015 for free when you pay for 2016.

The Campbell Community Garden in December 2012

Go to our Rent a Garden tab to sign up!

Growing through the winter

Learn tricks for growing veggies and herbs through the winter at the Campbell Community Garden.

Join Sarah Smith (The Gardensmith Landscape Design and Campbell Garden director) at a winter growing class, this Sunday, October 19th, at  2pm

At the class you will learn what has and has not worked for us in our Milwaukie area garden, how to build a simple, inexpensive, cover to protect plants through at least the milder parts of winter, and how to get a jump on spring growing. The class will include handouts and a tour of the garden.

The Campbell Garden, Winter 2013. Soon after this snow storm, we harvested kale, chard, and lettuce!

We are entering our third winter gardening at the Campbell Community Garden and are looking forward to applying what we have learned in past seasons to an excellent winter harvest in 2015. Through our Harvest Sharing Program, we have donated 1,324 pounds of produce from the garden this year; we probably won't meet our goal of 2,000 pounds before December 31st, however we may be close!

Winter Growing Class

• Sunday October  19th
• 2pm to 3pm, (Stay after to help plant kale in our Harvest Sharing Garden)
• At the Campbell Community Garden (park at SE 47th & Adams Street and walk down the alley)
• This class will be held rain or shine -winter gardening can be wet!
• If you want to sit, please bring a folding chair.
• Free with a suggested donation of one packet of seeds (radish, carrot, and cilantro seeds are most needed), or a roll of Velcro plant tie, jute twine, or blank plant tags, or a jar of peanut butter for our neighborhood food drive. 

RSVP's are requested, please click here to fill out our RSVP form.

Questions? call Sarah Smith 503-653-0015

Gardens For Rent!

There are a few open garden plots for the 2015 growing season.

Why start a garden in the fall? 

• Rent a garden now and get a jump on spring.
• Fall and winter gardens are at a slower pace than spring and summer gardens - a great time for beginners to learn!
• Kale TASTES best in the cool season
• Rent paid now at the CCG will extend through 2015...15 months for the price of 12!
• Some of our open gardens are already planted...instant harvest!

4 foot x 12 foot gardens are $30 for the year
10 foot x 10 foot gardens are $40 per year

We tend our gardens organically, using natural gardening techniques. If you want to grow your own food, please join us! Call Sarah Smith for more information: 503-653-0015 or register on the "gardens for Rent" tab.

End of the Season Update?

There is no such thing as an "end of the season" at Campbell Community Garden! We are growing year round!

The last update to this website was in late August, not because we haven't had anything to report, but because we have been busy harvesting and planning/planting for winter and spring. Over the next few weeks we will be making updates to the site, including a new page about the Campbell Garden Harvest Sharing Program (we have donated over 800 pounds of veggies this year), and updated info on garden sponsors and supporters, and we will open registration for garden plots for the 2013 growing season.


Campbell Community Garden, October 2012



Growing like crazy!

The Campbell Community Garden is in full veggie production now! We are busy harvesting as well as planning for our fall and winter gardens.

Campbell Community Garden Harvest Sharing beds; our herb bed is in front, with tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant behind; out of view are cucumbers, squash, leeks, beans, and more!

The Campbell Garden Harvest Sharing Program has been great for our gardeners who are on vacation or otherwise not able to harvest their veggies. Between vacationing gardeners and our dedicated donation gardens, we are donating 60 pounds of veggies a week.

Produce donated on August 20th includes summer squash, cucumbers, dill, thyme, basil, parsley, leeks, eggplant, a few tomatoes and peppers, kale & chard.

It is amazing how quickly the summer squash and cucumbers grow!  What to do with out of control zucchini? See the video from Mavis at  One Hundred Dollars a Month:


As soon as it is time to rip out the squash and cucumber plants, we will have new things to plant in their places. We intend to grow year round in the Campbell Garden.

Seedlings of kale, chard, cabbage and basil

Improve your garden and help raise funds for Campbell Garden

Dean Innovations Finer Outdoor Living is helping Campbell Community Garden raise money to build our shed and purchase garden tools  by donating one dollar for every yard of Premium Soil Blend sold in August (up to $500!).

Call Dean Innovations today at 503-281-1637 and and mention the
GIVE BACK Special to help Campbell Community Garden reach our goal. Here is a link with more information, and a thermometer that shows our fundraising progress: Dean Innovations Community Giveback.

Premium Portland Soil Blend

Premium Portland Soil Blend is well suited for mixing 50/50 into your existing garden soils to create beautiful, nutritious, well drained planting berms or vegetable beds. You will also get excellent results using this for raised beds, new turf, and plant hole amendments for shrubs and trees.

While one might not think of starting a new garden bed in August, it is actually a perfect time to do so:

• Fall and winter maturing vegetables like kale, lettuce, and broccoli need to be planted now.
• Garlic & onions for next summers harvest need to be planted in October
• Building and improving shrub and perennial beds now will mean they are ready for fall planting.
• $1 of every yard of Premium Soil Blend will go to Campbell Community Garden!

So, if you have considered adding more growing space in your yard, maybe for a bigger patch of tomatoes next year, or for more shrubs for privacy, now is the time to do it!

Fall Gardening

A revised proposal has been submitted to the school district for the use of the Hector Campbell School grounds for a neighborhood community garden, we are waiting for their response. Ideally we would start working on the new garden this fall before the soil is too wet from winter rains; but if not, we will just have to wait until spring. Anyway, fall is a great time to learn new gardening techniques, plan for spring planing and next summers harvest, AND plant a winter garden!

Learn


Lettuce growing under plastic in January

Clackamas County Master Gardeners Fall Garden Fair: Saturday October 8th at the Milwaukie Center, 5440 SE Kellogg Creek Drive, from 9:30am to Noon. Attend "10 minute university" seminars, have your soil PH tested, and have questions answered by Master Gardeners. Click HERE for a complete schedule of the days events. And while you are there take a walk around the building and check out the Centers Community Garden beds.

Plan

Take time to think about what vegetables your family likes to eat, how much they eat, how you would prepare home grown veggies, and how you would store your harvest. Think about which plants you should grow from seed and which you should plan to buy as starts from the market. Take time to look through seed catalogs and study online resources like the OSU Extension Services results of their vegetable variety trials. 

Kale grows well through the winter.

Plant

Don't stop growing food just because summer is over! Our climate allows us to grow some things year round with just a little protection from the cold. Some edibles must be planted in the fall: October is the time to plant garlic to be harvested early next summer. See the OSU Extension publication "Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest" for a good overview of winter gardening. Most of the crops will need time to establish themselves before the real cold weather sets in, so it may be a little late to start seeds, but veggie starts can be purchased at the farmers market or at the nursery.