A common question
The weather is getting warmer and I have bought tomato and pepper plants. When can I plant them in the garden?
Answer: In Baltimore City, we recommend planting the “hardened off” transplants between April 15 and May 1, depending on where in the city you live. In the southern part, you may start planting tomatoes and peppers in the middle of April; in the northern part of the city you better wait until May 1. It is always safer to plant these vegetables later than earlier.
The oddest question
A kindergarten group of children visited our vegetable demonstration garden and, pointing to a cabbage, one child asked, “What’s that?” A green cabbage, I answered. “That’s fake, isn’t it?” said the little girl. Obviously, she had never seen a cabbage other than one wrapped in plastic from the supermarket. How sad!
Recent gardening trends
With food prices soaring, the economy in shambles and increasing awareness of the need to eat locally grown and healthier food, establishing productive vegetable gardens in backyards and even front lawns of city homes is the new trend and the Baltimore City Master Gardeners’ goal for the near future.
About Ursula
I have been a Master Gardener for the past 10 years. After I retired from a job in medical research, I found intense satisfaction in gardening and teaching people what I had learned in the MG course. I grew up in Berlin, Germany, and my only gardening knowledge I acquired for the first 30 years of my life came from the short time I spent on my cousin’s farm during WWII. She gave me a little plot to grow flowers, and what a wonderful experience that was for me! Later, when I lived in Baltimore, I still did not have a garden of my own, but I volunteered in the public park next door, and my fondness for gardening grew exponentially over the years.
