In 2021 I fell in love with gardening, but at that time, it did not love me back! In those days I was living in a second floor apartment with only a balcony to use as a growing space. I purchased a few containers, some herbs, and a couple plant starts (tomatoes and one cucumber plant) and was confused and discouraged when everything died.
In the late winter of 2022, I went to my local library and borrowed as many books on gardening as I could get my hands on. I figured out what I did wrong with my first container garden. The long story is that basically it was hot and sunny on my balcony, which I thought was a good thing, but since I was growing stuff in plastic containers, that just made the plants overheat and wilt. Combine that with how I knew nothing about the important role that pollinators play in a garden, and well, before everything died, I had a whole lot of leafy plants and not much fruit.
Later in 2022 when we moved to Franklin County and into a house with a yard, I was determined to successfully grow my own food. While I’ve had ups and downs thanks to pests (squash bugs are the devil’s minions, you won’t convince me otherwise!), and crazy weather patterns (I’m looking at you summer of 2025), I’ve mostly been successful. One year I had so much success with pickling cucumbers that I ended up with over four dozen jars of refrigerator pickles 😀 I gave a lot of those away!
Even though I have a yard now, I still take advantage of the free garden beds at the community garden in St. Clair. If you didn’t know, the Scenic Regional Library St. Clair Branch has a community garden with around 20 or so garden beds that are able to be “checked out” from the library, the same way you’d check out a book, DVD, or other library materials using your library card. I like gardening at the library because it’s a slightly different environment than my home garden in that the area gets sun throughout the entire day, and it has other gardeners there, which is something I don’t get at home.
For me, that’s such a bonus because when I’m tending to my community garden bed in the middle of the brutal summer heat, battling weeds and pests, it’s reassuring to see a fellow gardener doing the same to their garden bed. Conversations naturally occur over commiserating about things like squash bugs or pesky squirrels and birds taking nibbles out of your tomatoes.
There are a couple drawbacks to having a garden space that isn’t at your own home, mainly that you have to remember to make a trip to the library to check up on your growing space, as well as water and maintain it. If checking out a garden bed isn’t something you’re interested in, there’s also a seed library inside the library that you may get a few seeds from for your home or community garden bed.
If you’re not familiar, a seed library means that there’s a variety of seed packets – everything from heirloom tomato varieties to lettuce and other greens, and flower seeds – and this can also be accessed with your library card.
Visit the Scenic Regional Library St. Clair Branch at 515 E. Springfield Road in St. Clair to find out more, or just to take a stroll through the community garden to take a peek at what’s growing.
Small Town Socialite 