Office Gardening

My sister works for a health insurance company in Eugene, OR. Saturday I got to see their office garden, they had a 2 hour work session to get the garden planted.  Now my community garden plot is a humble piece of ground on a former Poor Farm, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this when we first drove up. It is near the office building and parking area so easy to get to whether to weed or water.

Not only is the garden fenced, all planting areas are raised beds with bark pathways. Inside the fence there's a shed (with plan of the garden) and a compost area. 

When we arrived the tasks were to weed, turn the soil, fertilize, work in the fertilizer and plant. As you see the fertilizer and plants were neatly laid out next to each bed.

This is one bed my sister and I worked on from start to finish, we planted 4 types of pepper plants. After that we split up, I helped plant tomatoes in one bed, while she started weeding yet another bed that we planted with onion seeds. 

I talked to the woman who coordinates the garden. She said that when she first asked to do it, their company offered twice this space. The only condition was that a portion of the food be donated to the local food bank. In the last two years they've donated about a ton of food each year. The veggies are available to employees if they spend some time helping out. (My sister owes me a meal).

We were there for over two hours and the group who helped got all of these beds prepped and planted. The weather was perfect for gardening, sunny, with a cool breeze although it got pretty warm around noon. 

Most of the vegetables came from a local nursery, one that sells plants grown from Territorial Seed. Since it was Mother's Day weekend, we opted not to go to any nurseries. But, I will check it out when I go back to visit.