Community Garden, Year Two

OK, so we sucked weren't great at updating the blog last year. The garden wasn't that great either, in fairness -- too much rain and too little hot. The only 'good' thing was that everyone else at the community garden said it was their worst year ever, so we didn't feel quite as bad about our own dismal yields. So, we're trying it again this year, and hopefully things will go better this time! We did move to a new plot area, on a bit of higher ground, and we opted for two plots rather than just one -- not only to spread out a bit, but because I wanted to have a little seating area so that we could sit and relax, or read, or listen to tunes, or whatever for a bit after tending to the garden. Of course with busy schedules and demands from husband, kid, and/or dog, who knows how much leisure time we'll really have (but they don't have to know watering only takes 15 minutes and not 45, right?).



At any rate, here is the double plot after it was tilled and compost spread over it. (My city provides free compost to residents, so I loaded up several leaf bags full (well, 1/3 full, as they get too heavy) and took them over. Not a bad idea, though I recommend making the transfer in a day or so. We ended up having to wait a week-plus, and not only did my car start to smell, but the compost moistened the bags so they were ripping apart during the transfer.)

Day one, which wasn't until June 1, we dug trenches and got half of the plants in the ground. (I got the impression last year that most of the time planting usually starts just after the middle of May; last year was a late start on May 26, so we were very late this year!) I tried starting some things from seeds this year -- success rate at getting the seeds to grow at all was probably about 90-95%. (We got several free seeds from wintersown.org -- more tomato varieties than we could ever want in one season, and various other veggies and flowers. I selected 7 tomatoes to start and random other seeds.) Unfortunately because we had a late start in planting (weather delay, then waiting on the tilling) a lot of the seed pods didn't make it, either to planting or shortly after. Some of the tomatoes are hanging on, though! We also started filling in the trenches with wood chips, since it was supposed to rain that night, and we learned the hard way last year that trenches quickly turn into mud pits!

Mom and Jill did some more planting that Tuesday; I had a meeting so couldn't go. I did go after Cardio-Boxing class a couple of days later and finished up the planting. You can see from the picture how muddy the trenches were, and the pool of water at the end of some of them (top of photo). Gross.

No doubt the excess water isn't going to help our plants any, but hopefully we'll be able to mitigate the worst of it! I was out of town for the next couple of weeks, but Mom and Jill continued getting things set up, filled in more of the trenches with wood chips, and put up the fence. One thing that we grew very successfully last year was weeds, and this year looks to be just as prolific (though it is more weedy growth in this plot, rather than primarily grass as it was last year). Last year we just pulled the weeds -- tons of work and we never seemed to get ahead of them. This year we're trying newspaper as a weed block.When I got home, Mom and I did a 'trial run' on one row and covered it with wood chips. It worked so-so, but the wood chips available were heavy with pine needles, and didn't cover the newspaper well. (Plus it took about two wheelbarrows full to cover the one row!) A few days of heavy rain followed and half of the wood chips got washed away. (Meanwhile finding places to walk without sinking several inches into the mud was quite the challenge! We did put some more wood chips in the worst parts of the trenches, and even put some newspaper underneath, but the muck and mud are pervasive!)

The weeds grow quite well!

After re-thinking the wood chips, and some Internet research, we decided to try straw instead (still with the newspaper underneath). One bale didn't cover nearly as much as we were told it would, but after four bales we got all of the newspaper down and straw over the vegetable rows, some super-mucky parts of the trenches, and the seating area. (The two side edges are basically 'flower rows', although one side does have some overflow of strawberry and watermelon, neither of which seem to be doing well. Annabelle planted some sunflower seeds, six on each side, so hopefully they'll add some color.)

Squashes, cucumbers, and eggplants at the top, lettuces below (left to right if you're looking at the plot from the path).

Potatoes at left front, beans in the back; carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts on the right.

Lettuces and potatoes/beans (there are some peas, too). The seating area is where the yellow table and grey tote are -- the blue and pink are in the garden behind us.

Roots and brassicas ;) , tomatoes above (to the right, really), and peppers, onions, and some basil past the tomatoes.

 

The whole thing; kinda looks like a heap of straw....

I finished the straw up on Friday (June 26). Next year we have to plan better, so that it doesn't take us a month just to get the garden set up! (Actually next year we're going to try landscape fabric before we even start planting!) We still have to put down more wood chips in the trenches and the seating area, but at least the plants are protected and mulched, and hopefully we've slowed down the weed growth a tiny bit! It's about time to fertilize again (Mom had some old powder she put down about a week ago) and I've got some DE (diatomaceous earth) to dust for parasitic insects. We also need to plant some actual flowers (rather than waiting on seeds) in the vegetable rows, especially among the squashes -- they're starting to blossom, and last year we didn't get any squash because there we no bees around to pollenate. (Well, there were bees around, just not in our garden because we didn't have flowers in the right places.) Looking at companion planting guides, it seems that Nasturtium is a good choice -- so we just have to find somewhere that carries those flowers!

At any rate, that's the 2014 garden progress to date. Hopefully we'll update more frequently this year, if only so that we can look back as we're preparing for 2015 (and beyond)!