Community Gardens!

     Last Sunday a group from the Tennessee Valley Community Garden Association toured several member gardens...here's a quick peek.
    First up was the UAH Garden, spearheaded by Claire Heardy.  This is a "claim it and work it" garden, open to students, faculty and employees of the University.  Several folks grabbed a plot and have already started growing this year and it's going to be quite pretty once everything grows up.

There's a very attractive layout and there's even  a picnic table to rest for a bit.

  Then it was on to the CASA Community Garden where Karen Voelker explained that the food from this garden, grown by volunteers, gets delivered to the elderly, homebound clients of CASA.  They are always looking for more volunteers and it is a great way to learn more about gardening from the pros!



       We swung across to the 305 8th Street site.  This is a group home for developmentally disabled adults and they've started growing food for the table, mostly salads. 

    Next on the tour was the Lowe Mill garden, Flying Monkey Community Garden which is growing by leaps and bounds even moving into the interior courtyard.  There's some fun ideas here, which is no surprise given the artistic community there.  They are hoping to start a farmer's market in time. They, too, are always looking for more dirty hands!

    I dropped off the tour here and  Lee took the rest of the tour, since he'd been pruning a new orchard in the morning.  They first went to Howe Street, where a new community garden is taking shape, we spied this one on our last alley tour.  The early succession planting has begun way in the back.  Can't wait to see this one growing this summer!

     A quick trip up the mountain to the Monte Sano Community Garden.  This garden is a rented space garden, with each gardener taking care of their own plot and helping with the common areas.  This is one of the most well organized gardens, with a very effective use of space.  Notice the deer fencing. 

     The final stop before dark was a neighborhood effort in north Huntsville that is growing great!  Eric has a plot behind his house where he's growing for himself and others.  It's looking really good.

    His neighbor, Bill, is also going large.  The fall/winter garden you can see way at the back will be overtaken by a larger summer planting that's being prepped now.   You'd be lucky to live close to these folks.

    That's it for this tour... If you are involved in a community garden project of any kind, contact Tennessee Valley Community Garden Association or if you would like a consultation on your garden project large or small call us.



Garden Tour

So we are driving aound a bit looking for a potential new customer's yard and what did we find tucked into downtown spaces?

Boxes for square foot gardening and neatly stacked urbanite for future use?

Nice neat beds with lovely mulch just waiting for planting!

Then around the corner... those are young fruit trees, a lot of edible plants could be grown between them for several years.

Up through town to the area where the customer lives, and up the alleys around Oakwood Avenue.



Neighbors - Growing Together


I know we often have WAY too many green peppers for our own use, even after we've pickled/salsaed/frozen what we'll use through the winter, not everyone in the neighborhood needs to grow them.  While the planning is gearing up this spring, talk to your growing neighbors and plan a little so that more varieties of vegetables can be grown.

Easy as 1 2 3 4

          Building a framed raised bed of most any dimension is easy. The one we are using today is 4' x 8'. We used three 8' L x 10” H x 2”W boards, cutting 1 in half for the end pieces. Notice we screwed the boards together “end on”. This made the exterior dimension of the frame 48” versus placing both end pieces inside the long rails, which would have created a 48” interior space. Truly personal preference.

This unit is being used as a "jello mold" for soil at the CASA garden off of Bob Wallace. The soil in this area is only 2" – 3" deep with limestone gravel underneath. When you can't dig down, grow up.

Removing the top layer of weeds isn't absolutely necessary, but it was a glorious morning and it took about 3 minutes to using a broad hoe.

        Leveling the frame and removing the top layer of weeds was quickly done. It isn't perfectly level; there is a piece of concrete under the middle of the back rail that could not be removed without compromising the fence.
The key to weed control is an underlayment. We prefer cardboard in this situation but there was none on site today just newspaper, so we placed newspaper in the bottom, at least 8 sheets of paper thick to smother new weeds and to help keep Bermuda and vines from running under the frame.

On top of the paper we placed leaf mold from the City's leaf pile. We have no extra soil to use on this property; in fact we make soil to keep the gravel covered. We used three 8 cubic ft wheelbarrow loads to fill the frame. That is just shy of 1 cubic yard. ( 27 cubic feet) Then we added one 8 cubic foot wheel barrow load of compost on top. The bed is over filled now, but with a good soaking this mix should settle quickly and be ready for planting soon.

Total time for this project (with materials on site) and while also helping direct volunteer gardeners was a little over 2 hours.

     If lack of soil or adequate space is an issue, consider this form of container gardening. This soil- less mix is essentially composting in place. You can use other mixes or topsoil to fill your framed bed. This is a low cost way to start gardening on a small scale yet grow an amazing amount of food over the course of a year.

The best time to start a vegetable garden is right now.