The Morgan Hill Community Garden

06/12/2026

Think before you squish! Spider 🕷 relocation is always an option if I’m the house, but most are beneficial to your garden

You saw a spider in the bathroom and your first thought was "is that a brown recluse." It almost certainly isn't. There are three thousand spider species in North America. Exactly two are medically significant. The other 2,998 are catching the insects you don't want in the house.

The two to know: black widow — shiny black with a red hourglass, found in dark undisturbed spaces like woodpiles and sheds. Brown recluse — limited to the south-central US, violin-shaped mark, avoids contact, bites mostly when pressed against skin in stored clothing. Both are rare encounters. Fatalities are extremely rare with treatment.

🌿 The five you actually see every day are all harmless. The jumping spider watching you from the wall hunts by stalking — she can't hurt you. The wolf spider running across the floor looks terrifying and carries her babies on her back — also harmless. The cellar spider in the corner kills other spiders, including black widows. The garden orb weaver catches hundreds of insects per web per night and eats the web to rebuild it by morning.

Two out of three thousand. The spider in your bathroom is not one of them 🐾

06/07/2026

Some highlights from yesterday’s garden class 🌱🌞

We talked about succession planting, transplanting, harvesting potatos, and MORE! Garden abundance was also shared 🥔🍠🌿🥒

06/03/2026

For container gardening 🪴

Grow bags work best when the plant has enough room 🪴 A simple size guide I like to follow:
🌱 1-gallon bags for smaller herbs.
🥬 3-gallon bags for greens and green onions.
🌶️ 5-gallon bags for peppers, beans, and compact crops.
🍅 10-gallon bags for tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, and zucchini.
🥔 15-gallon bags for deeper or heavier feeders like potatoes, carrots, okra, and dwarf fruit trees.
One thing I always watch with grow bags is watering, because they dry out faster than regular pots.

06/02/2026

Just 5 garden bed plots left! Join an amazing community of gardeners and find your happy place 👩‍🌾👨‍🌾🌼 email [email protected] to reserve your space and get growing 🌱

05/31/2026

Our garden is a sanctuary for all! One of our gardener’s beans made for a great nest 🪺🕊

05/13/2026

Soil is the lifeblood of your garden.

The garden center sells a different bottle for every soil problem. Low nitrogen gets one formula. Low pH gets another. Poor drainage gets a bag of perlite.

Compost fixes all four — and you can make it for free.

A single layer spread on a bed each spring adds nitrogen as it breaks down, nudges pH toward balance over time, improves drainage in clay by feeding the organisms that loosen it, and addresses compaction biologically through the earthworms and fungi that build air channels as they work.

It's the only amendment that improves structure, nutrition, biology, and water retention at the same time.

The rest of the list matters when you need something specific — but compost is the foundation everything else builds on.

🌱 Ranked by what they actually do:

- Compost — does everything above. A yearly layer on the surface is enough for most beds

- Cover crops — the amendment that grows itself. Plant clover or vetch in fall, cut it down in spring before it seeds. The roots fix nitrogen and break compacted ground from below

- Leaf mold — decomposed leaves. Low in nutrients but holds moisture better than almost anything else. The fix for sandy soil that dries too fast between waterings

- Worm castings — concentrated biology, but only when fresh. Dried bagged castings lose most of their value on the shelf. A small handful per transplant hole goes a long way

- Aged manure — nitrogen-rich, but needs to sit for months before use. Herbivore sources only. Check where it came from — herbicide residues in horse manure can linger in soil for years

- Biochar — holds nutrients and water in sandy ground, but needs to soak in compost or worm-casting liquid before you apply it. Straight biochar ties up nitrogen in the soil for the first season

- Wood ash — raises pH and adds potassium. Use only if a soil test confirms your ground is too acidic, and keep it away from blueberries, azaleas, and rhododendrons

The soil doesn't need more products. It needs more biology 🌿

05/10/2026

Don’t worry, bee poppy 🌼🌞🐝

05/03/2026

Caterpillar knowledge 🐛 to support our amazing pollinators 🦋

Not every caterpillar is a problem. Some will become the butterflies and moths your garden depends on for pollination later in the season.

The key is learning the difference. Once you can recognize which species are worth keeping, your approach shifts. You stop removing everything—and start making space for the right ones to grow.

That doesn’t mean letting all caterpillars stay. Some can quickly damage plants if their numbers get too high. A healthy garden is about balance. Tolerate some feeding, protect vulnerable plants when needed, and step in only when damage becomes excessive.

A thriving garden supports both stages. Caterpillars now. Pollinators later.

Work with that cycle—and your plants, and the ecosystem around them, will be stronger for it.

05/03/2026

Grow your own ginger!

A piece of fresh ginger from the grocery store is also a seed. If it has visible buds — the small greenish nubs on the surface — it's ready to plant. 🌿

Six steps to homegrown ginger:

Cut the rhizome into sections, one or two buds per piece. The bud is where the shoot emerges, so make sure each piece has at least one.

Soak the pieces in room-temperature water for 24 hours. This softens the outer skin and wakes up dormant buds, especially on store-bought rhizomes that may have been treated to slow sprouting.

Plant bud-side up in a pot of rich, moisture-retentive potting mix. Barely cover the rhizome — about an inch of soil on top is enough.

Place in bright indirect light. Ginger is a tropical understory plant and scorches in direct afternoon sun. A north or east-facing window works well indoors, or dappled shade outside in summer.

Mist or water lightly to keep soil consistently moist but not waterlogged. Ginger rots in soggy soil — good drainage matters as much as moisture.

Harvest when the leaves yellow and the stems begin to fall over. That's the plant signaling it has finished its cycle. Dig up the rhizome, keep a piece with a bud attached, and replant to start the next round. 🌱

In most of the US, ginger grows as a container plant or warm-season annual. In zones 8 and warmer it can overwinter in the ground with mulch. 🪴

11/14/2025

Chamomile 🌼 season!

Chamomile blooms change fast — here’s how to pick them at the perfect moment:
• Too young: Bud still tight and green
• Still too soon: Center is flat with green showing
• Perfect for harvesting: Center is raised, plump, and bright yellow
• Almost too late: Petals drooping outward
• Too late: Center elongated, petals falling off