SWAMPSCOTT — With spring upon us, gardeners are starting to see green popping up everywhere. In the Seaside Cooperative Garden, that is a sign of good food to come.
“A lot of the stuff won’t go in for a little while, but we’re getting it ready,” said the garden’s president, Sierra Muñoz. “We’re tilling the soil and trying to keep everything tidy.”
The cooperative vegetable garden is entering its third full year running, and leaves are starting to appear in the raised beds the team tends right next to Bertram House on Humphrey Street. Peas and carrots planted in March are inching up, and garlic plants interred in the fall for overwintering are already nearly a foot tall.
Muñoz said that, when the garden started, all of the materials used to build the beds were donated. Additionally, all of the seeds and soil they use are organic, which insures that the products they grow are both environmentally friendly and of the highest quality.
A newly-built raised bed sits waiting to be filled with herbs and pollinator plants.
“The more bees, the better for our veggies,” Muñoz said.
Members of the cooperative decide together each year what to grow, and while there is a lot of overlap between each season, they make sure to rotate crops to preserve the nutrients in the soil. Instead of each member having their own plot, like most community gardens, members all work together on the whole garden and everyone shares in the harvest.
Last year during the pandemic, they had to readjust their usual planting and harvesting plans to allow for social distancing. Members had to sign up for times to work in the garden to ensure there were never too many people in the space at a time.
Muñoz said that it was challenging to lose the community feeling of working together in the garden, but she is looking forward to a new year with more and more people being vaccinated.
“It’s outdoors and it’s masked,” she said. “It feels like a good thing to be doing.”
The members of the garden are a diverse group, ranging from seniors with over 40 years of gardening experience to young families with children who have never touched a shovel before. The space includes a children’s plot for kids to contribute, and Muñoz said that her own children love coming, often spending a whole day in the garden eating nothing but cherry tomatoes.
As a professional environmental educator who grew up with parents who gardened, she said that she loves offering her kids and those in the community a chance to connect with nature.
“It’s an amazing team effort,” Muñoz said. “It’s an awesome group of volunteers and community members that want to grow things together.”
Tréa Lavery can be reached at [email protected].
