Lincoln Community Garden Ready For New Season

LINCOLN —Lincoln Community Garden is beginning its fourth year to provide fresh produce for GRACE Place in Lincoln. Fruits and vegetables grown in the garden are handed out to families in need.

The garden is an award-winning project among master gardeners in Washington County. It received the 2016 Washington County Master Gardener Project of the Year award and Rob Hulse, mayor at the time, was named the 2016 Friend of Washington County Master Gardeners.

Master gardener Jim Sposato oversees the garden on behalf of the city of Lincoln and has already been hard at work, with some help from volunteers, readying the garden for another season.

Sposato has installed a solar electric fence this year to hopefully keep out the deer.

“I think they are coming in early in the morning,” Sposato said.

Last year, the garden lost most of its green bean crop due to deer. Deer also like okra, and Sposato is hoping he will have okra to give away this year.

For the past three years, the garden has supplied fresh produce to more than 1,000 families in the area.

The harvest in 2018 included the following, 15 gallons of kale, 10 gallons of lettuce, 5,677 tomatoes, 419 onions, 674 zucchini, 850 yellow squash, 1,337 cucumbers, 336 pounds of potatoes and 985 peppers.

This year, Sposato plans to plant garlic, raspberries, two kinds of potatoes, onions, green beans, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, peppers, okra, cucumbers and corn.

Groups that have volunteered at the garden or donated money, seeds or plants in the past have included Chicken Holler in Farmington, American Legion, Farmers Coop in Lincoln, Washington County Sheriff’s Office and its community service program, St. Thomas Catholic Church, Lincoln Middle School EAST Lab, city of Lincoln employees and other master gardeners in Northwest Arkansas.

COURTESY PHOTO Melissa Zabecki, a master gardener, plants garlic in raised beds at the Lincoln Community Garden. The garlic was donated by Farmers Coop in Lincoln.

PHOTOS BY LYNN KUTTER ENTERPRISE-LEADER A solar electric fence is a new addition to the Lincoln Community Garden this year with hopes to keep out deer. The deer especially seem to like green beans and okra.

Volunteers work on a regular basis at the Lincoln Community Garden. Here, they are planting potatoes for this year’s garden season.