Grace's Place Garden

Gardening project in progress at site #1 of Grace's Place Garden. There will actually be 2 different gardening sites for Grace's Place. One will be in a fenced in area and the other gardening site will be on a vacant city lot and more open to the community. We were blessed to receive a donation of cement blocks from Wellnitz. On site #1, we are creating some raised beds constructed out of cement blocks. We anticipate the community using this garden will not be able to bend down and work in the garden as would other populations. Next up for this garden site is to add wood chips on the group around the cement blocks and of course add top soil and some type of compost to the raised bed. We used recycled cardboard as a barrier to prevent weeds.

Work at Grace's Place Garden

This might not look like the ideal spot for a garden, but wait and see! Plans are in the works to clean this area up and build a raised bed garden. The thought is to create 2 gardening sites in this area. One will be raised beds for a certain population in the community that might not be able to garden traditionally. Another site down the road is in the works that would be on a leased city lot and be more "traditional". Stay tuned to see how this spot is cleaned up and transformed into a community garden.

Fence at Epworth - Part #3

Finally got the fence up at the Epworth Veggie Garden. This project has been 3 weeks (3 Saturdays) in the making. There's actually a bit more work to be done such as putting the wood chips around the fence on top of the weed fabric. Everyone seems incredibly pleased with how the fence turned out. The posts are made of cedar with makes them one of the most "environmentally friendly" choice (as opposed to treated wood 4 x 4 posts). The cedar should last quite a while. We cemented in the 4 corner posts and just tapped in the dirt really well with the other 12 posts. We put up a green vinyl covered "rabbit" fence which blends into the landscape nicely and will help keep out four-legged critters. (Can you see the fence inthe picture above? Its there - click on the picture and it should open up a large image)

Fences are often a big topic of discussing in community gardens. Fences can serve a number of different purposes. Some fences are designed to keep others out. These fences might be made of barbed wire or types of metal. Fences might have locks on them as to only allow those with a key to enter. Some community gardens lock items in order to keep them safe. Our decision at Epworth Veggie Garden was to have a fence that would define the boundaries of the garden, keep out the dogs and rabbits, but still be inviting for others to come into the garden.

Epworth Veggie Garden

The plan today was to start planting some of the cooler weather veggies (carrots, garlic, onions, lettuce and radishes) in the garden. The temperature was over 70 degrees today and it was a wonderful day to be outdoors. We're scheduled for some rain later on this evening. We were only able to get a few things done before the thunder and lightening began to roll in. Added some more soil to some of the raised beds and got some garlic planted. We started planting some lettuce, but didn't get too far with that project. Maybe Saturday will be a better day?

Takin' it to the Edge (Buckeye Lake)

Wednesday night is Buckeye Lake night. We were off to Water's Edge to work on the garden. Started off with a great dinner: ham, scalloped potatoes, salad, corn, bread and chocolate pudding. Headed outside and started to move the garden to the new location. Water's Edge is expanding their building so we are shifting the garden to accomidate the construction. We began by taking apart the fence and pulling up all the metal stakes. Then we figured out where we'd like to put the new garden and put up the stakes and "loosely" put the fence back. Next week we will spend some time "tightening" up the fence.

Maple Grove UMC Garden

Worked out at the Maple Grove UMC garden tonight. We are going to be meeting out at the garden every Tuesday night at 7PM from now until the end of the gardening season. On today's list was: raking up some of the straw left from last year and pulling up the weeds in the 2 small raised beds. Didn't take too long to get our list "mostly" completed. We did hope that we could till this evening, but the weather has been threatening all day and the ground conditions weren't favorable for tilling. Hopefully in another week or two we will begin planting.

Fence at Epworth Veggie Garden - Part #2

Work continues on the fence at the Epworth Veggie Garden. Looks like its going to be a 3 week project. This morning we put in the rest of the cedar 4 x 4 posts. Last Saturday we put in the 4 corner posts so we had 12 additional posts that went in today. Bill and Phadia rented a gas power post hole digger which was a tremendous help in getting the holes dug. It took a little to find a good system to get the holes dug, but once we got the tall folks with some muscle in the mix we were able to knock out all 12 holes in no time. We did not put any cement in with the posts, just made sure we tapped in the soil really well.

Another item we worked on in the garden was to add additional colors by repainting some of the raised beds and the posts for the hanging plants. Last year we painted everything blue and it seemed to some folks to be too much blue. I tried to pick out some colors that might be found in a garden, but the color you end up with doesn't always match what you had in mind to begin with. We thought about planting some veggie in the garden too, but it looked like it could start raining at any time and the weather report calls for possible snow showers tomorrow.