Gardeners overcome spring rain and hope for bountiful harvest

This is a fresh gardening experience for Julia Neufeld as she works in the community gardens at Mennonite Heritage Village. 

Although she’s been gardening for a few years, it’s a little different this time around. 

“We just moved in January from Paraguay to here,” Neufeld says. “So, it's our first summer here. In Paraguay, it was very hot so now we are enjoying this summer with these temperatures.” 

Steinbach also gets a lot more rain, she adds. 

The rainy spring weather has created some challenges for getting gardens planted and seeded during the usual time of late May or early June. 

Dianna Sesay got a late start getting her plants into the ground, but she is hopeful there will be a lot of produce before the growing season ends. 

Her garden plot contains plants for tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and cucumbers. 

She has plans to make a special cooking sauce. 

“It’s an African sauce, I cook African recipes a lot. It’s like a bell pepper-tomato base they use for almost all of the stews, so I want to do that.” 

Sesay tells us it was just too wet to get into the garden for most of the spring. 

With a forecast for warm weather this summer, there is optimism for a good harvest. 

Her husband is from Africa and Sesay says her family enjoys a variety of foods, including stews made with spinach and cassava leaves, as well as tacos. 

She says it was initially a challenge to find recipes for her husband’s favourite dishes but found a few good ones through online searches.