This community garden belongs to the Ashland Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that offers community services in East Baltimore. It’s one of the partners that University of Maryland Extension teams up with to reach people throughout the state for informal education on topics like woodland stewardship, watershed protection and restoration, and food safety and preservation.

On this day, folks from a variety of backgrounds have gathered to sharpen their urban agriculture skills. Morgan Jackson and Maggie Flaherty work in a quarter-acre city farm belonging to Atwater’s, a restaurant and specialty foods company with four locations. In the summer, they grow eggplant, squash, tomatoes, green beans and flowers, then sell the crops in a market in its Catonsville location, cook them up for staff meals or give them to employees to take home.

“Now that I have my footing at Atwater’s farm, I really want to connect more with urban growers in Baltimore City,” said Jackson, who hopes to add flax, sesame and crops from her colleagues’ home countries to the farm. “There’s a lot of knowledge to share, and camaraderie, too.”

As some gardeners picked basil and the classically Baltimorean fish pepper, others took in a lesson on how to assess their soil’s texture: silty, sandy or clay-y. “I like to say that your soil texture is like your family,” said Little. “You get what you get, and you’re stuck with it unless you move somewhere else.”

Backyard gardener Geraldine Willis brought along her own family connection that day: her 14-year-old granddaughter. “I’m trying to interest her in the outdoors,” Willis said. “She spends a lot of time indoors. She doesn’t like bugs.”

Willis, who grows cucumbers, zucchini, red beans, snow peas and more in her garden, hopes that her granddaughter will learn to take up her own innate love of dirt and everything that sprouts from it. “I’m very much an earth sign–I’m a Virgo–so I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m so grounded. I’m in the soil all the time.”