Community Gardeners at Bridge Gardens

Each year, our community garden plots at Bridge Gardens are leased to 24 people interested in growing their own food. The variety of vegetables, flowers and herbs is surprising, and every year something new can be learned. From vegetables like tomatoes, beans, zucchini and cucumbers, to herbs, stalks of corn, huge dahlia and gladiolus flowers, you never know what you’ll see growing there.

This week, we caught up with community gardener Bernard Hayduk who let us know that he was trying peanuts for the first time. Peanuts are a legume related to peas and beans, and like potatoes, produce their fruit under the soil. Above ground, it is a green leafy plant that produces yellow flowers before the peanut pod begins to grow below ground. Bernard let us know that he will harvest the plant when the leaves turn yellow, pulling the entire plant out to under the peanuts hanging from the roots. Generally, they are hung to dry for about a month and then can either be roasted or eaten as is.