Why? Vegetable gardening gets you outside and working in nature. There is nothing like it for stress-relief! It keeps you moving, puts everyone in the family to work, makes for a great education, and produces tasty, healthy food with zero food miles on it.  An abundant, well-tended vegetable garden is also a joy to look at. 

Here are a few resources to help you get started, all the way to harvest, and round again.

To get you started there are a gazillion resources on the net (and old-fashioned books). Some we like are “Starting a vegetable garden” and “Vegetable Gardening for  Beginners.” We love GrowVeg, a software tool that allows you to plan and track your garden from seed to harvest, in both space and time. It also offers a series of fun videos. Cornell U has a nice series of growing guides.

Join Wayland Grows on Facebook. This group of neighbors fields questions, gives encouragement, and shares pictures of gardens and harvests. Topics include veg gardening tips, soil health, fencing, composting, critter control, fruit trees, starting from seed, with some chickens, honeybees and mushrooms thrown in. Inspiration guaranteed!

Don’t have a green thumb or the time to do all the work? Energize Wayland is teaming up with Wayland resident Renee Bolivar, a certified professional landscaper and owner of Gardens By Renee, LLC. Her mission is to connect people to their food, nature and one-another. With your input she can design, build and maintain a Sustainable Landscape, a Kitchen Garden and/or a Pollinator Habitat. She also offers consultation and one-on-one garden mentoring for the whole family. Check out Renee's gardening tips on Facebook  and Instagram  and this one, on sowing carrots, on Youtube.

Don’t have a sunny spot or want to grow with others? The Wayland Conservation Commission offers Community Garden Plots where you can grow veggies, flowers and gardening skills in the company of many beginners and experts alike, in a field with great sun and great soil. Priority goes to resident for any open garden plots,  Non-residents can garden too, but they need to reside in abutting towns to be eligible for plots.