The first week in April I filled my little greenhouse with trays of seeds and watched them sprout and grow. And grow. Soon they outgrew the confines of the greenhouse, but the garden needed more plants.

Enter Superhusband, who built two large, sturdy cold frames. We rushed the trays of eager plants out to the cold frames and started more seeds in the greenhouse. Shortly, burgeoning squash, pumpkins and cucumbers began peering over the tops of the cold frames trying to clamber out. We moved them to a holding area in the middle of the strawberry bed, shuttled replacements from the greenhouse to the cold frame, and started more plants in the warmth and generous light of the greenhouse.

All the plants are now flourishing in the Alexandria Community Garden. Town administrator Christie Phelps and I started the garden last spring. (I'm her assistant in the office; in the garden, she's my assistant.) Feeling depressed by the sparse grass and dingy subsoil sand and rock, and poor quality sand and rock at that around the Town Hall, and being frugal Yankees, we tilled up a 12-foot-wide strip between the building and the parking lot, improved the soil with lime and compost, and planted vegetables.

In late May this second season, we dug the squash, cucumbers and a few melon plants into their new home, surrounded with black plastic. They soon began to flower and by mid-June had set a respectable crop of two-inch squashes. Eggplants and peppers seemed less pleased by their move from the protected areas; weeks after their transplant, they're only now beginning to take hold. Tomatoes have grown tall enough to require staking. All have bloomed, and several have set tomatoes already.

Lettuces and cabbages came directly from the greenhouse and are doing well; the cabbages have already begun folding their leaves over each other as if in prayer. Green and yellow string beans, planted a couple of weeks ago, are fairly leaping up into the sun. We seeded mixed greens and after only a few short weeks have started handing out quart bags of lettuces and mesclun.

We put up a sign at the Town Clerk's window: Would you like some fresh salad greens? See Cat or Christie. This morning I harvested and gave away four quart bags of mixed greens, two of baby spinach, and two each of baby summer squash and zucchini.

The strip garden wraps around three sides of the building. Out back is a pile of horse manure where we’ve planted pumpkins that will provide the Alexandria Village School kids with jack-o-lanterns come October. This spring, we added seven blueberry bushes and 100 strawberry plants to the planting beds.

We've learned that people really like the idea of a town vegetable garden. Even if they don't ask for produce, they just like seeing it growing there. Christie and I gather the vegetables daily and set them in the lobby of the town hall for anyone who wants them. (We cut the salad greens to order.) The vegetables serve as a reminder of how good fresh food is, and we make sure people know that just about anyone can grow their own.

Almost every day I have somebody in here who wants to learn more about growing vegetables. Christie lets me leave my desk, spend 20 minutes to half an hour with these folks, show them what we've done, and explain how they can do it themselves.

Last year, we didn't keep track of how much produce we gave away and how many people wanted information about growing vegetables for themselves. This year, I'm keeping a tally.

We financed the seeds, soil-improving materials, and plants (though not the greenhouse or cold frames) with a grant from the N.H. Master Gardener Association. Last year we spent most of the money on tools. This year we're putting most of it into soil amendments. In just two years we have improved the soil tremendously.

All has not been skittles and beer. Last year we were hit with the late blight and lost 100 heavily laden tomato plants. This year I peer nervously at the garden each time I return from a day or more away. Something has nipped off a few tomato plants, and just yesterday a wretched rodent ate three full trays of seedlings I'd admired in the morning, planning to remove them to the garden on the weekend. In the evening, I found three trays of stubs and a red squirrel. While I didn’t get any fingerprints, the red squirrel is my prime suspect.

The first year the farmer who rototilled the garden leaned down from his tractor seat, fixed me with a steely glare, and said, “Ya do know, it’s just brown sand, don’cha?"

I acknowledged that I was indeed trying to grow stuff on sand. “But, I have a plan!” I exclaimed.

He nodded, “Well, just so ya know.” And he rumbled off nodding to himself­the equivalent in a Yankee farmer of a belly laugh in other folks.

Yet last week he allowed that the garden looked good. That was nice. But did he have to seem so darned surprised?

By: Carol “Cat” White, Master Gardener

Photo credit: Vegetables at Alexandria Town Hall, courtesy Carol White.