BCG Presents…Cultivation Conversations

Feb 15, 2024 | Articles

Hello friends and gardeners! Welcome to the Biddeford Community Garden’s 2024 blog series.  Here, you can read about the ways BCG is working to bring our mission statement to life and how you can get involved in these efforts! Featured topics include our community collaborations, upcoming events and workshops to attend, gardening tips, a focused installment on gardening’s impact on mental health, and much more! 

At Biddeford Community Gardens, we are devoted to building and sustaining a vibrant, healthy, and equitable community through the creation of safe green spaces where residents can grow food in a supportive and educational environment.

The main focus of our work is to address food insecurity within our Biddeford neighborhoods. By collaborating with organizations like the Biddeford Food Pantry, Youth Full Maine, and the Bon Appetit Meal Program, community gardening is an opportunity to positively impact your neighbors. We encourage volunteers and donations of all kinds!

Education and inclusivity are important in our approach to community gardening and with the help of our Garden Team, supported agricultural opportunities can bring together our diverse populations. Not only does gardening restore weakened relationships with the Earth, it encourages awareness and understanding of those that share our place here in Maine. By including Biddeford’s City government, schools, and Nonprofits within gardening projects we hope to create a stronger localized food system that persists well into the future!

Along with this blog, our Biddeford Community website offers a number of resources to help you navigate our garden network. For new and returning readers, I encourage you to explore the site and learn all about BCG! For now, here is some general information found on our site:

Our current garden network consists of 4 main locations:
Mission Hill Community Garden– 39 Sullivan Street
Pierson’s Lane Children’s Garden– 61 Bacon Street
Rotary Park Community Garden– 550 Main Street
William’s Court Community Garden– at the intersection of South St. and Green St.
For more info on these gardens, click here. 

Interested in getting involved, learn how to join BCG.

Want to support Biddeford Community Garden’s mission? Consider making a donation.

About the the Author: Hello Biddeford community! My name is Faye Veilleux, I am BCG’s new student intern! I am a senior enrolled at the University of New England studying Applied Social and Cultural Studies, minoring in Environmental Studies and Philosophy. One of my roles will be to host this Blog so the Biddeford community can stay updated on the progress of our organization and when involvement opportunities arise! As another part of this blog series, I will be focusing discussion on the relationship between mental health and gardening. These posts will also include activities and resources you can use to better understand how the environment impacts your well-being. Just a few words about myself..I grew up in Southeastern Massachusetts and on the coast of Southern Rhode Island. While gardening was not an influential aspect of my upbringing or my community’s food culture, being in the presence of nature played a large part in my appreciation for all that it provides-both mentally and physically. As I continued schooling, I felt that the environment should always be a focus of my studies and eventually shape my career path. As a college student my educational and professional aspirations revolve around the study of food systems, the social complexities that come with American citizenship, and ways that our natural environments and food sourcing practices shape the health of our communities. I am excited to share with you my experiences with Biddeford Community Gardens and the ways this organization is not only educating about gardening practices but strengthening Biddeford through the promotion of new perspectives about food, the environment, community, and health!

10 Crops You Can Still Plant In August!

Aug 15, 2022 | Articles

Square Foot Gardening

Jan 15, 2021 | Articles

Spring planting will soon be at hand…no, really it will!! You want to grow so many
things…lettuce, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and beans, and peas, and broccoli, and peppers,
and onions, and kale, and parsley. Oh yeah, PEAS! Must have peas! How will you fit that in your
8’x3’ BCG bed? Will your tomatoes take over and shadow out everything else? Will your lettuce
be calling for help from under the zucchini? Could be.

Enter Square Foot Gardening! This system was developed for maximizing your productivity in a
small raised garden. At its very basic level it is a system that divides your bed into 1’x1’ squares
(for a total of 24 in your 8’x3’ bed) and assigns a number of plants per square foot to each
different crop plant you want to plant. It helps to know just how much you can put in a small
garden so as not to overcrowd it so here are the guidelines for each plant:
Keep these guidelines in mind when you are planning what you want to grow so that you get
the most out of your garden this year. There are good resources on the internet for learning

more about square foot gardening, such as https://gardenerspath.com/how-to/design/guide-to-square-foot-gardening/.
Looking forward to a productive garden year!

Survival Crops

Mar 24, 2020 | Articles

The best crops for the most abundant yield.

This is my opinion based upon modest experience. Regardless of taste or desires, I posed the question: If I had to grow enough food to feed me over the Winter with a limited garden area and only three crops, what would I grow? First, I will list my criteria for choosing my three crops.

Optimal Criteria

1. Most likely resistance to pests and crop failure.
2. Most abundant yield per square foot of crop area.
3. Most balanced and completely nutritional diet at mealtime.
4. Most likely to keep for several months with minor refrigeration.

Three Choices

1. Sweet Potatoes
2. Green Beans
3. Kale

Sweet Potatoes provide many valuable minerals (if you eat the skins) and starches for energy conversion.
Green Beans provide valuable fiber and protein.

Kale provides all the rest of the vitamins and minerals and other important nutritional elements not abundant enough in the first two.

All three crops yield abundant harvests, keep well for long periods in storage. You may want to par boil the beans then freeze them. Keep the kale unsealed plastic bags in the vegetable drawer. Store the sweet potatoes in paper bags in the vegetable drawer, keep them dry.

Spring Garden Clean Up

Mar 5, 2020 | Articles

Leaving your garden clean-up for spring?

So lately, I’ve been thinking about why my garden habits, and therefore my garden, have drastically changed over the past three decades. As with anything one sets out to do, a learning curve reveals itself; you can choose to resist or follow this curve. I chose to follow every time because, as it turns out, nature knows what she’s doing.

One of the biggest shifts happened at the beginning of a winter where I found myself not able to clean out the garden prior to the first heavy snow. “Well, there’s one less chore I need to do this week. Too late, missed my window.” My mind ranted at my inefficiency as it also struggled to let go of the guilt and shame of not accomplishing a seemingly important garden task, a task I was convinced mattered. Silly mind…

As the season progressed I noticed a wider variety, a larger number, of birds hanging around my yard. They would flutter in from bushes and rest in the higher branches of trees surrounding my chaotic snowbound garden space, casing the scene before diving down onto a dead seed head, tiny taloned claws grasping the stem as their small, sharp beaks quickly picked apart the plant material in search of the sustenance needed to survive these long, cold New England winters. It was then, in those moments of observation I realized how much I had gotten wrong about cleaning and organizing my garden in the autumn.

Daily I would trudge across my yard to see what other serendipitous things were happening amongst all the leaf litter and lifeless weeds, the way frosty ice crystals danced along every exposed edge, seemingly frozen chrysalis clinging to broken branches or hidden under dense blankets of oak leaves waiting for the first hint of warmth to awaken their metamorphosis, other larvae tucked in dark corners also waiting patiently for the spark of sun to trigger their feeding frenzy. A fanciful, sometimes magical, kingdom was thriving all because I didn’t rip and tear into the beds, shaking them down, tidying them up, making them look organized, neat, perfect…perfectly sterile.

Later that winter I decided to research why we even clean out our garden beds before winter. I learned those who have gardened for decades will leave the clean-up for spring because it shelters the eggs, cocoons, larvae of many beneficial insects (a good jump start at pest control), feeds the birds during times of scarcity, reduces soil erosion, adds nutrients to the soil (feeding all those helpful microbes) and – for me – the best part was the beauty held in the mess, the discovery of a whole, healthy, symbiotic microcosm preparing for the onslaught of Spring.

Wendy Johnson,
Gardener, Herbalist, Massage Therapist