Community garden greens up city life
Indian cucumbers, Thai hot peppers, leafy greens, sugar cane, berries, tomatoes and potatoes are a few of the varieties of produce you can see as you walk through the plots of Pflugerville’s community garden.
On a sunny spring day at the garden, Ed Mustoe tended to his vegetables, harvesting carrots and some squash.
Mustoe, 72, has had a plot at the garden since February. He has planted turnips, peas, lettuce and cucumbers in addition to his carrots and varietal squash. He tends to his garden every two or three days, he said.
“The city has provided everything that I needed: the plot, compost and mulch,” he said. “I’m just very thankful that I’m able to have a place to have a bigger garden that I do at home.”
The city also provides water for gardeners who bring their own hose.
Although Mustoe grew up on a farm in Virginia and has been gardening since moving to Texas in 1970, he still doesn’t consider himself an expert gardener.
“I’ve learned through the years that some things I can grow in Texas and some things I can’t,” he said. “It’s important to get an early start and just keep after it.”
The Pecan Street Community Garden, located off East Pecan Street west of Texas 130, began in 2008 with 36 garden plots, said Eddie Garcia, Pflugerville Parks and Recreation community services coordinator and manager of the garden.
Today, the garden has about 57 plots that are mostly 400 square feet, with a few 100 square-foot spaces, he said.
Five of the garden’s plots are also compliant with accessibility regulations in the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said.
Gardeners pay to rent the plots by year or half a year. Fees range from $12.50 to $50, with seniors and students paying half-price.
The garden is completely organic with strict rules that no inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or soil can be used, Garcia said.
Flowers like marigolds and sunflowers, with their edible seeds, are grown in the garden. Sometimes rabbits are spotted hopping from plot to plot.
In the fall, Mustoe said he’ll plant “every kind of green imaginable” — including kale and collard greens — for his wife, since he is not keen on how spinach tastes.
Mustoe said he has felt a sense of camaraderie at the garden with fellow plant lovers. “Sometimes my wife and I come out here and just sit,” he said. “People come and go and people chat.”
Garcia said the gardeners are as diverse as the things they grow.
“One of the neat things about the garden is we have about 20 different cultures or people from different countries,” he said. “A lot of the produce that they’re raising are seeds or plants that they brought from their country.”
Many people who rent space at the garden, like gardener Marsha Mason, do not have the space to garden at home.
“This is my third year here and I think it’s just an excellent opportunity for people to grow their own food,” she said.
Mustoe said the part of gardening he enjoys most is “being able to sit down at the table with my wife and everything at the table I grew or I caught, because I catch fish, too.”