A Gardener's Retreat

With the help of its founders at Post Oil Solutions, a group of gardeners are working to take the community garden at Upper Dummerston Road to a new level. First, a name: A Gardener’s Retreat Community Garden.  Prior to this, the garden had not been officially named, making it difficult to refer to.

Not unexpectedly, gardeners have drafted a new set of policies and an application to boot.  Please download the attached Policies and an application, if you’re interested in gardening.  Garden plots continue to cost $25 a season for a 10X20 foot plot.

Gardener’s Retreat Community Garden Policies

Gardener’s Retreat Community Garden Application

Members met out at the garden on June 24 to kibbitz, compare notes, and talk about garden matters. Among our accomplishments, we narrowed down the list of possible garden names and decided to request votes by July 10. We also set garden workdays for July and a July meeting date. Read on for the straight dope:

Voting On A Garden Name

The group narrowed down the list of names to four possible choices that most people were amenable to. Those names are:

• Horse & Goose Community Garden
• Community Garden At Upper Dummerston Road
• Green Meadows Community Garden
• Green Goose Community Garden

Workdays and Meetings

The group also decided on dates for next work days and garden meeting.

July 8, 2009 – 9-11 AM – Workday

July 12, 2009 - 1-3 PM – Workday

July 22, 2009 – 5:30 PM Meet and Greet, 6:00 PM Meeting

According to Dora, the biggest maintenance issue right now is grass which is growing everywhere with great vigor. There will be need of weeding in the perennial plot. And Carole wants to put in a cutting garden in Plot 1 by the water barrels so she’ll need help clearing that bed. (Carole rec’d a plant donation from Walker Farm on behalf of the garden.)

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Attending the meeting were Dora, Nancy, Lise, Francis, Chris, and Heather.

Assorted short and tall members of the community garden assembled for another “workday” on April 30 to put up the deer fence. Fortunately, the call for tall gardeners was heeded and there were plenty of people of sufficient height to staple deer fencing to the poles. Work commenced at 4pm and was finished by shortly after 5. Which was good because just about then it started to rain.

There were so many gardeners on hand that some of us were freed up to do other things. Dora and Carole enlarged the rhubarb plot and transplanted two healthy specimens from an empty plot. The new rhubarbs are huge so hopefully they’ll like being with the others in their new location.

Joe got out his trusty human-powered push mower and mowed more of the perimeter. We expect to get a lawn mower this season so gardeners will be able to mow whenever the mood strikes them.

Over in the herb garden, me and new gardener Ian weeded out grass. We found that grass likes to throw out roots close to the surface making it relatively easy to weed. That said, we only managed to clear about 15 square feet of garden so the project will continue. New plants are welcome but respect old plants. Hopefully, the weeding process will make it more apparent where the old plants are.

So there you have it. A lot of work was accomplished in a short time, and everyone seemed to enjoy the camaraderie of being there, working together toward a common goal. Meanwhile, the garden is the better for it.

The Community Gardens had their first workday on April 26 to start putting up the deer fence.  About six people were on hand to do the actual work of digging the holes and putting up the fence posts.  By noon, all the fence posts were up and ready for the final task of attaching the mesh fencing.  At our next workday on April 30, we’ll be finishing the deer fence.  Tall people are encouraged to attend for the height-sensitive work of stapling the fencing to the polls.  

Nancy brought lots of seedlings and others brought seedlings and seeds.  There were a variety of vegetables and flowers to sample.

Nancy also spent part of the workday cultivating the center plot (one of the garden common areas) and planting out strawberry plants.  We’ll all enjoy nibbling on those, once they start to bear fruit.

In other good news, Joe and Carol loaned the garden their push mower.  Dora mowed the perimeter of the garden and Chris mowed pathways. A permanent mower for the garden is still on the list.

Dora and Chris contemplate the rhubarb

Just wanted to alert everyone that as of Sunday, April 19, the manure and hay had been delivered. Thanks to Dean Hamilton for delivering for us.

Community gardeners are free to use what they need but there is a charge of $2 per bucket of manure and $3 per bale of hay.  Make sure you pay Dora for what you use.

Sorry, no pics this time but you can probably imagine what hay and manure look like.

Addendum: We were just there (April 23) and here’s what our manure looks like.  ;)

We were out at the garden yesterday, March 28, and the snow is all gone at the garden.  It looks ready to work in fact, although we will want to watch that frost date.  Here’s a picture for anyone who doesn’t believe me.

What’s amazing is that on March 20, just a week before, there was still a good six inches over everything.  Things change fast this time of year.

Today is the first day of Spring and we stopped out to the Community Garden to see how our plots are coming along.  Remarkably, the entire garden is still under about half a foot of snow, maybe more in some places.  Here are a couple pictures for your enjoyment.

Still a bit of snow at the Garden.

This is the first post on the new Community Garden web site.  Welcome aboard!