Community Garden Update 1

Spring has been busy planning the garden and getting everything ready for the gardeners.

Truckloads of three year old composted cow manure were dumped on the garden.

What a wonderful sight!

I spread a lot of it on the asparagus row.

A local farmer brought his Kubota tractor with a rototiller attached and mixed the leaves, soil and composted manure into a beautiful fertile mix.

 

 The asparagus was coming up strong in the 90 foot long row FULL of the delicious spring veggie!

Doctor Rowe's garden is still feeding many people in the village.

Many volunteers came down to periodically cut the asparagus during the past 2 weeks and share it with friends, the elderly and neighbors.  Everyone was thrilled to receive gifts from the garden.

  One afternoon two full bags of asparagus was collected.

 The garden was peaceful looking as we drove away that afternoon.

The weather has really slowed us down in our plans, but it has actually worked out well.

Last week we had 3 freezing cold nights and three frosts. On Saturday it snowed.
Then there were 3 more days of hard, cold rain that caused some flooding in different arts of the state.

Good thing noone planted anything or the extreme weather would of killed it all.

Then this week we returned to start measuring off the individual garden plots.

Cedar posts, stakes and a large ball of twine were donated by our local librarian and her farmer husband.

We quickly made a plan.

Mavis, the Garden Dog, supervised every aspect of the work.

Linda grabbed my measuring tape and a few stakes and measured off the 20 x 10 plots.

 

Cedar corner posts were put in by Brian.

Belinda got control of the big twine ball and started roping off the plots.

Once the rope was up, the garden really started to take shape.

With such great help and enthusiasm, soon there were

8 plots ready to go!

Brian on the edge of the woods putting in the last corner post.

The benefits of volunteering:  picking all the rhubarb and asparagus that is growing.

And the weeds too....

The garden is taking shape.

 Rhubard crisp is in Linda's immediate future.

Belinda likes to eat it raw.   A bit tart, she said.

Asparagus for supper.

400 seed packets were donated by Agway of Montpelier.

Most are organic.

 

Every imaginable kind of veggies, herbs and flowers.

 

It was like Christmas going through all the seeds and picking out different varieties to plant.

Any seeds that are leftover after the gardeners and volunteers pick them over, will be available for anyone in the village that need some.

 

We were all amazed at how it only took 90 minutes to get the plots set up, the 5 posts dug in, the weeds pulled and the ready to eat asparagus and rhubarb picked.

All the gardeners are meeting tomorrow night at 5 pm to pick the plots they want and get the details they need to know and to help put up the deer fencing.

Last Monday Linda and I drove the 80 mile round trip to get a solar charger and the deer fencing.

A herd of 6 deer bed down very near to the garden and we want to STOP their midnight munching madness IN the garden.

We purchased 40, 5 foot fiberglass posts, 200 insulators, 2 rolls of polywire and a solar charger.

Five of us dirt divas met in the cooler evening and started putting insulators on the posts.

Many hands made the work fun and fast.

Then we measured and placed a fiberglass post every 6 feet, all away around the entire garden.

It looked good.

The math came out perfect and we used all of the 40 fibergalss posts that we purchased.

The rest of the fence will go up in bits and pieces as we meet at the garden.

The solar charger goes in next.

Once that part of the project was done, it was time to go thru the seeds with the 2 new gardeners.
They chose one of the bigger plots so will need lots of seeds.

So many to chose from!

Another family wanted a plot so I drove the seeds over to them so they could pick out the ones they wanted to grow.

 

The next evening I went down to the garden and was delighted to see that someone had already planted their plot!

Better yet, they used wooden spoons and forks to mark their rows!!

 What a great idea.

The view overlooking the garden is looking better and better as it all takes shape.

New friendships have already been formed and the creative juices are flowing.

It is going to be a wonderful summer.

Now we just have to raise another $150 to pay off all the deer fencing and buy a few rakes and hoes.
(we haven't been able to find any at yard sales, recycle or anywhere else)

How is your garden growing and have you got any good gardening tips you would like to share ?
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Rhubarb & Chives

When the rototiller man came in March he started tilling the garden up quickly once he arrived.

Unfortunately, I was not at home to tell him where the parsnips, tansey, chives, rhubarb or perrenials were.

By the time I arrived home the damage had been done.

I rescued a good number of the mangled parsnips and made them into parsnip cake.

The tansey was gone forever, as I thought the rhubarb was too.

The chives popped up 9 days ago.

Then today after 10 hours of rain, I saw some rhubarb shoots sticking out in various areas of the garden.   Lots of them, all spread out in the garden.

I quickly dug them up and rearranged them in the garden in a proper place.

A few garden club members came and got a few shoots too.

Everyone wants sweet rhubarb for pies and jams, and this rhubarb is the very very sweet type.

Thanks to the rototiller man, lots of folks have the beginings of a future rhubarb patch in their gardens and I have 3 great sprouts that will grow wide and plentiful.

All the rain we got yesterday has made the fields green and the soil soft enough to dig out weeds and replant "lost" rhubarb.

More rain coming tomorrow.

The other surprise is the 200 sunflowers that have come through the soil too.

They self seeded after the birds knocked them out of the giant sunflower heads that I had all over the garden last year.

I love working in the soil and can't wait to start planting all the plants I have started in the house.

Last week there was a frost and there will be another on May 5th, so I am trying hard to use some self control.

But the wonderful smell of sweet spring soil is impossible to ignore. 

Have you been playing in the dirt lately ?

Have any of your 2011 crops re-seeded in your garden?

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