Foliage and Folia

After a decade in apartments, I have finally my first garden! There was a community garden in Eagle Heights, but we never got around to becoming members. And the backyard on Barbara Street was fenced, locked and off-limits. Aurora Street was a concrete jungle where residents used planters for cigarette butts and Melville Ave had a little strip of dirt (not soil) where we failed to grow anything but used car parts that kept turning up with the digging.

In order to make up for lost time, the plot this year is 35 feet by 50 feet. Because why fail at something small when you can go down in flames on a huge undertaking instead? (Speaking of failure, I have one more bread recipe suggestion from a good friend that arrived recently. More on bread difficulties after I give that one a try.) There's a five-foot strip down the center mulched with hay for the cart to drive through, and about ten rows of plantings on either side.



I found MyFolia.com -- a site that helps you track your garden plantings, trade plants with other growers, and connect with gardeners in your area. You can also blog on the site, but I tend not to post in other blog-friendly places (like MySpace) because I have Liloia.com. The site is in beta, so the closest active gardener is three hours away; however, I did find someone with a few registered window boxes in Burlington.

What I'm curious about are the trading features. While I'm more than willing to share plants, there are definite rules for doing so. The site appears to be UK-based, so I doubt it's legal for us to ship plants to each other. I suspect the site will be more useful to trading as more people come on board. Vermont is a grower-friendly state and when more of us register, we can swap in person.

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