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!

2025 Garden Plots Are Available!

 The registration form for the 2025 garden plots is ready for sign-ups! New and returning gardeners fill out the form on the "Rent a Garden" tab. 

Do you want to learn how to grow your own food, garden alongside your neighbors, and supplement your grocery budget with garden veggies? Please join the Campbell Community Garden! Prices range from $35-$65 a year. 

When can we plant tomatoes?

Will it ever warm up? It is still too cool to plant tomatoes and other warm weather crops outdoors, tomatoes need night time temperatures that are consistently over 50° and soil temperatures over 60° Peppers would like it even warmer!

Until it warms up I recommend moving tomatoes from  4" pots into a gallon sized pots, then to a 2 gallon pot. Setting them in the sun each day (or sheltering them from rain and hail) and moving them inside at night. Once the weather has warmed, dig a deep hole, remove the lower branches and leaves and plant the tomato deeply, allowing the stem/trunk to sprout roots. The video below was taken 4 years ago, since then I've perfected my tomato growing method, now I train them onto a trellis instead of staking them; however you choose to grow them. be sure to use a very sturdy support.

Trellised Tomatoes.
Each plant is pruned to 2 to 3 main stems that are tied to the cattle panel trellis.

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

Training Tomato Plants

Our tomato plants have really appreciated the recent warm weather and are starting to really grow and flower, a few even have small fruit. Tomatoes left to grow on their own tend to vine and sprawl all over the ground. Taking the time to train them to grow up onto a structure of some kind will reward us with healthier plants with fruit that can be easier to pick. Campbell Gardeners are employing several different methods of training their plants.

Traditional style tomato cages in yellow and red complement the marigolds for a pretty combination...imagine red ripe fruit in this colorful  mix!

One of our Square Foot Gardeners is trellising their tomatoes on netting and PVC pipe.

This gardener decided to try out a combination of metal T-posts and wire after figuring out the cost to outfit his large number of plants with traditional cages...I think we could name his system a "Tomato Corral"

This gardener isn't growing tomatoes sideways, it just looks that way. They are staking their plants to wood stakes and are using old pantyhose and pipe cleaners to keep them in line.

This gardener is using stakes and twine to make a cross between a cage and a trellis.

This gardener found a very attractive solution to tomato cages that want to topple over. They enclosed the cages in bamboo tee pees.

For detailed instructions on how to prune and train tomato plants, see the two videos below.
Here is a video from the University of Main Extension Service that show how to stake indeterminate tomatoes:



Here is a link  from Fine Gardening Magazine on pruning and trellising tomatoes.

Growing Vegetables in Containers

If you don't have a big yard for a vegetable garden, or just want to get a little vegetable gardening in before we get a community garden plot in the neighborhood, try growing in containers.

This 10-Minute University (really almost 30 minutes) video, by Clackamas County, was filmed at the Oregon City Farmers Market. It has good tips to get you started. And here is a link to an article on growing veggies in containers from Around Town Magazine.


Master Gardener 10 Minute University-Growing Edibles in Containers from Clackamas County on Vimeo.

Here is a highlight Master Gardener, Darlene Reimer's tips from the video:

• Bigger is better than small when it comes to containers, roots need room to grow.
• Good drainage is important; containers must have drainage holes.
• Don't use garden soil in containers, use a good quality soil less mix that will drain well.
• Mix a slow-release fertilizer into the soil as you fill the pots.
• Water the plants well before planing them in the container and then water them in.
• Keep the plants watered and fertilized as the season progresses.