How to Make Your Garden Grow

Spring is mud season in the Northeast: the time of year when the sun is not yet strong enough to burn off the moisture left by melting snow or heavy rain. But under the mud, life begins to stir. At the Yale Farm, an acre of agricultural space near central campus, stoking that productivity is a year-long process.

In one of the farm’s ten growing fields, garlic planted around Halloween is beginning to put out 2-inch sprouts; elsewhere, cover crops like rye and vetch are helping keep hillside soil in place and introduce valuable nutrients. With this kind of hands-free cultivation, says Jeremy Oldfield, the farm’s manager of field academics, “value is being added when you’re not there.” In April, the cover crops are churned back into the soil, to break down and enrich the earth.

With April comes the return of workdays on the farm — volunteer events each Friday and Saturday, open to the entire Yale community and the general public. Friday afternoon workdays end with wood-fired pizza in the Yale Farm pavilion, live music, and a short “Knead 2 Know” presentation, showcasing student research into food systems. Elsewhere on campus, the Yale West Campus Farm and the Yale Divinity Farm also welcome both warmer days and volunteers to work the soil. These events offer a chance to connect with the land, contribute to the farms’ operation, and build community.

“When you’re weeding or harvesting with somebody, barriers between people begin to thin out and conversation flows,” Jeremy says.

This spring, in addition to clearing the fields of winter’s growth, volunteers at the Yale Farm will spend time sowing new crops, including carrots, beets, and snap peas. The season can be tricky, Jeremy notes, because of the fickle weather. “It can be 70 degrees one day, and below freezing the next few nights,” he says. “You need to plant things that can handle big swings in temperature.”

A spring workday at the Yale Farm; Photo by Reese Neal ’25

From farm to garden

For spring prep at home, Jeremy offers a few tips to make the most of the season:

Plan for the warmer months. “It is such a fun thing to have a planting calendar, and to decide which parts of your garden are going to be what and when,” Jeremy says. He suggests browsing Northeast seed companies like High Mowing Organic Seeds or Johnny’s Selected Seeds and buying now for the planting season. (Many public libraries, including the Wilson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, also offer free seeds.)

Enrich your soil. “In April, you should think of yourself as a soil gardener rather than a crop gardener,” Jeremy says. The farm typically builds up its compost pile in the fall — with tomato stalks, broccoli stems and leaves, and other detritus from the summer bounty — and uses it in the spring to cover as much ground as possible, adding “layers of fertility.”

Bring the heat. Even as the spring air warms, soil tends to hold a chill. “It’s like a lake — the first warm spring day you probably wouldn’t choose to take a dip, because the water will still be arctic,” says Jeremy. The earth needs to be warmer for fruiting plants like tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and peppers, he adds. “At the farm, we stretch black tarps over soil to trap the sun and heat and bring the temperature up sooner rather than later.”

Start inside. Give your seeds a head start on a windowsill — but only one with 6-8 hours of solid sun. Without it, the plants will start to grow longer stems in search of better light — a phenomenon known as a leggy seedling. “It looks like it’s growing really impressively,” says Jeremy, “but these noodley stems don’t do well once they’ve been transplanted outside.” The farm takes this approach with its more delicate spring plants, like tomatoes, peppers, and lettuces, starting them at the Yale Science Building greenhouse.

So much of being a gardener is putting your feet on the ground and looking around.

Cultivate a daily relationship with your plot. “So much of being a farmer or a gardener is putting your feet on the ground and looking around,” says Jeremy. “People might think in late August or early September that you have a magic green thumb, but you know you were just there every single day.” For Jeremy, the spring return of Yale Farm’s flock of chickens, which spends the winter at a larger local farm, acts as an extra goad for his attendance. A group of volunteers known as the Chicken Tenders take care of the flock, says Jeremy, but “there’s no way that I’m not going once a day to make sure that everything’s okay.”

Find joy in each spring’s new life. Even though Jeremy has been tending the one-acre farm for more than 10 years, he still finds himself looking forward to spring. “Yale Farm is so well situated with so many different flows – new student farm managers, new faculty bringing their courses onto the farm, new conversations with our community partners about what crops they need,” Jeremy says. “We are always dealing with something that feels very new and fresh.”

This year, that includes strawberries. “We planted 1,000 strawberry plants last year, and you start to get a really strong crop on their second year,” Jeremy explains. “I’m counting down to that moment when the Yale Farm is just swimming in berry juice.”