Rotary Community Garden and Food Forest of Coral Springs

Join us on March 4th at Riverside Park! You can register at:

https://www.coralsprings.gov/Events-directory/Sustainability-Events/Waterway-Clean-Up

This time of year the garden always looks lovely and the vegetables are being harvested. We will having a volunteer workday on Sunday, February 5th from 9-12. Please join us as we weed, water, mulch and celebrate the garden together!

Sweet potatoes are a great choice for a South Florida garden. They are easy to grow, and both the tuber and the leaves are nutritious. Sweet potatoes are a heat loving vegetable so they are perfect for growing in the hot summer months. Here in South Florida you can grow them year long. They take about 4 months before they are ready to harvest. Once harvested, sweet potatoes need to be cured by resting in a dark place with good air flow. This allows the tuber to develop the sweetness it is known for. Try them, you’ll like them!

A few tips:

1-they grow well in loose organic soil – raised beds are perfect

2-only need 1 inch of water a week – don’t overwater

3-you can fertilize lightly

A huge thanks to all the folks who came to our first work day on Saturday, October 1st. The storm had knocked down a lot of banana trees and a very tall strawberry tree in the Food Forest. We chopped and dragged a lot of debris to the parking lot for pick up. Phew! Hard work! With help from the Rotary and friends we were able to remove the big tree as well. Volunteers also worked in the garden chopping up the black velvet beans and weeding. Most gardeners were able to spend a bit of time working in their boxes to prepare for the garden season. Thanks to all! We love our volunteers!

Three students from Coral Glades High School spent some time in the garden on Labor Day weekend weeding and mulching a section of the Food Forest. They are members of the Save What’s Left Club at the High School. The club is focused on environmental activism and community service through events like beach cleanups, garden maintenance and garbage removal. The club also recycles trash into new items through arts and crafts. Thank you Peyton, Gabby and Ciara for your dedication to our community and for helping out in the garden!

We love our volunteers!

Years ago, a couple of gardeners planted coontie in the pollinator section of the Community Garden. It is the host plant for the Atala butterfly which is a Species of Extreme Concern in Florida. We saw a few last year, but this year we had a population explosion! There were a couple of hundred! Caterpillars ate the coontie until it almost disappeared! The remarkable thing about them is the eggs hatch at the same time, the caterpillars make their cocoons at the same time, and the butterflies emerge with in a few days of each other. It was beautiful to watch them floating in the garden and Food Forest. The Ackee trees were flowering at the time and the Atala butterflies covered the trees for a couple of days.

If you have been by the Community Garden you may have noticed a new addition. The Garden Club of Coral Springs, not to be confused with the Community Garden, has installed The Plant Exchange in the front fence. Anyone with extra plants can drop them off and those looking for plants can find some interesting specimens. Some are labeled and others are easily recognizable. Fruit trees, landscape plants and some vegetable plants can be found here. The variety of plants changes almost every day as there is a lot of interest and activity! If you need a plant, come check it out!

Gardeners and volunteers gathered at the Sawgrass Nature Center classroom on Sunday for a sign making project. The garden committee wanted to label each of the 55 trees in the Food Forest so visitors would be able to identify each individual tree. A decision was made to make colorful, friendly signs that would be staked near the tree for easy identification. The painting project was attended by adults and youth, who produced the following beautiful signs. A huge thanks to all who participated!

Look for the signs in the weeks to come after we weatherize them and begin to install the signs throughout the garden.

Everyone loves sunflowers! They are colorful and cheery and are always a standout in the garden or a bouquet. There are many varieties, too! But there is more to a sunflower than meets the eye – there are other benefits to growing these eye catching blooms in your garden. Sunflowers are great at attracting pollinators. Bees love them! Research has shown that bees can see uv light and detect faint electrical fields around plants. Towering sunflowers are like a beacon drawing them in. The seeds produced by sunflowers are highly nutritious and the sunflower stalks can be used to support other plants. All good reasons to include sunflowers in your garden.