Getting Started

The Hereford Mini-Farm has generously donated half of their garden space to the TJ Demo Garden. The space holds lots of promise and we are eager to get started. Thank you Hereford!

Approximately 35 different species of Jefferson-documented useful plants will be grown in the garden, including cotton, flax, indigo, peanuts, sesame, red clover, marshmallow and soapwort. We will be starting many of these plants from seed. In fact, our first seedlings are already flourishing, thanks to the students enrolled in Gardening in Winter, a Hereford short-course taught by Hereford faculty fellow Elaine Durand. In addition to seed-starting, the gardening students will be helping with several tasks in the garden’s early stages, such as soil amendment and bed-building.

During the first class on January 30th, the students sowed seeds for the Hereford Farm Garden and the TJ Demo Garden. Only two species needed to be started for the TJ Demo Garden at this early date–calendula (Calendula officinalis) and onions (Allium cepa). The bulk of the seeds will either be sown indoors in mid-March, to be planted out in May, or direct sown as the weather allows.

One week after the seeds were sown, the calendula and onions that Kaela started are looking great!

We will be transplanting the TJ Demo Garden seedlings in the coming weeks. Please check back soon to see how the seedlings have grown!