What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Grandmas Garden]

Pictures are taking a long time to load

They do on here and the SS site too

 

[ducks4you]

Today, I pulled up all of the corn stalks and dumped used stall bedding there, south side of the garage. I dumped it over the fence for the horses to go through...they ate some of it, including 2 ears that still had corn on them.

 

[Zeedman]

I was driving past the rural garden today, so stopped in to check on the garlic. With the very late freeze, I wondered whether it had sprouted. The good news: no, it hadn't sprouted. The bad news: the last wind storm blew off half of the hay mulch. Fortunately the ground was only slightly wet from flurries earlier, so I was able to replace the hay. I laid some of the rebar I use for trellises in top, to hopefully prevent it from being blown off again.

 

[heirloomgal]

I was driving past the rural garden today, so stopped in to check on the garlic. With the very late freeze, I wondered whether it had sprouted. The good news: no, it hadn't sprouted. The bad news: the last wind storm blew off half of the hay mulch. Fortunately the ground was only slightly wet from flurries earlier, so I was able to replace the hay. I laid some of the rebar I use for trellises in top, to hopefully prevent it from being blown off again.

View attachment 45821

Your soil looks like black gold.

 

[Zeedman]

Your soil looks like black gold.

Well, it's bottom land, so black mud when wet... and it's wet much of the year. The foreground is the lowest point, it slopes upward both toward the back, and toward the right. If you look just beyond the end of the bed, you will notice a slight change in color - that is the original soil. Very fertile, unless water saturated* (which is the big *). In an attempt to raise the soil above the flood water level, I've been gradually adding topsoil to the low end, 3-4 yards each year. Most of that goes into the raised bed; after the garlic harvest, the raised bed will be moved to a different location in that corner, and its soil spread out. The fresh soil helps to produce a great garlic crop, so that strategy is a win-win.

I believe the soil has been improved greatly, but only time will tell. That plot is located on someone else's property, so there is a limit to how much time & money I'm willing to put into it. All of my efforts there may be wasted, unless the extremely wet weather pattern we've had the last few years returns to normal. If not, as much as it would break my heart to leave such a wonderful friendship behind, I'll have to begin looking for a site on higher ground.

 

[digitS']

Over the years, my gardens have been on several different properties (GOOPP, "gardening on other people's property ) I recommend it.

It began when I moved from the rural home to work in a commercial greenhouse. There was open ground near my mobile home. Moving the mobile home to a trailer park several years later, I was within about 400 yards of Dad's suburban home on 1/4 acre. My gardening there continued for over 10 seasons.

I had moved before then to a house on a small lot. The neighbors had closed an alley behind the home but a vacant lot was on the next street over. It remains an empty lot still, 30 years later. The distant owner gave me permission to pull a hose through my back gate and cultivate the ground.

Water has never been much of a problem. Dad's property was in a water district where property owners make annual payments based on property owned. However, a secondary garden was on a part of 4 lots with one residence. I took on responsibility for one of the water meters there.

There was also 6 seasons in a community garden during part of that time (Park Department water). Then, I moved gardening into the exurbs . Once again, a water district and people who didn't want to maintain a corner of their property. That's right, I had a triangular garden for several years. The elderly woman moved into a nursing home and her husband decided to sell - I moved across the road! Easy. Once again, older people with children who have moved away and acres (this time) with little/no use. Fortunately for me, the owner likes gardening but there was no way he had use for so much land.

digitS' in many pies
he sat in the corner, eating his Christmas pie; he put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, "what a good boy am i!"

 

[Zeedman]

Over the years, my gardens have been on several different properties (GOOPP, "gardening on other people's property ) I recommend it.

GOOPP! I love it! That has been my garden philosophy for a long time, I just never thought of such a catchy name. @digitS' , you really should start a garden thread with that title, I'll bet it would run for years.

From the late 70's to the late 90's, DW & I moved a lot, always to rented properties. We had some small gardens at home, but never could grow enough in those to feed the family... just a few peppers & tomatoes. We had one community garden in 1979, but it was 25 miles away, and the small size (10 X 20') wasn't worth the drive. But when we lived in San Jose in the 80's, there was an opportunity to garden on a utility easement (under transmission lines) in exchange for cleaning up after the BMX track which also used the property. The plots were large (20 X 40'), water was provided on site, and the location was only 5 miles from where I worked at the time - so we gardened there until we moved. This was bottom land, very fertile (a retaining wall prevented the neighboring Stevens Creek from flooding the site). At one point, we were using 4 plots, which was the reason we purchased our first tiller (a Mainline, which we still have).

When we moved to San Diego, we had a brief but disastrous flirtation with a community garden there. It was in a blighted area; theft was a constant issue, and after our young children had the traumatic experience of witnessing a gang beat down just outside the fence, we never went back.

I was working at the Miramar Naval Station, and much of the base was vacant property. So I asked to use part of one location, in exchange for mowing & picking up trash on the whole area - and permission was granted. There was a coin laundry across the street, and we were allowed to run hoses across for water. This was semi-desert land that had been vacant a long time (there was evidence of a previous construction long ago), VERY hard ground - if we didn't already own a large tiller, we probably couldn't have worked it. Our adult children still laughingly recall following behind me with buckets as I tilled, picking up rocks... their version of "when I was your age, walking 10 miles uphill, against the wind, in freezing cold". There was a horse stable on the base, which composted all of the manure & bedding. We had all of the free manure we could haul, so the soil improved rapidly, and we had a great garden.

When we moved back to Wisconsin, a previous employer had a large vacant lot behind the plant, and allowed me to garden there - again, with water within a hose's reach. The plant owner was a trusting & generous person, even giving me a key so that DW & I could use the rest room. We gardened there until I left the company.

It was only a couple years later, still looking for another site, that we met the person who owns the property where we garden now. When we mentioned that we were looking for a place to garden, their response was something to the effect of "you can garden here, it's that much less for us to mow" . There was even a remote hydrant already installed, just outside an outbuilding, for water. We've gardened there since 2005, shared vegetables freely, and become great friends.

IMO there are always vacant areas that offer opportunities for gardening, provided that a gardener can be creative & offer a win-win proposition. That could be easements, absentee property owners, people with large lots to maintain, or just elderly who appreciate the company & enjoy sharing the fresh veggies.

 

[digitS']

One or Two pieces of advice about this:

Don't enter into any "contract" to share garden produce. One can never guarantee their harvest. If you have to drive a distance, you are already paying real money for what you are growing. Sharing is one thing and you should be willing to especially, if there is an opportunity to check if they might really want the produce. However, finding people picking veggies in your garden is a bit disturbing ... unless it's a little old person who snatched a couple of cherry tomatoes while trying to get some exercise . (Yes, there were problems with theft in our community garden but never, obvious, in ours. I did have a guy stand there as tho ready to step over the fence telling me how God grew the garden. Seems like that there is some kind of joke about how it looked when God was doing it by himself ... but, I just looked at the guy and he didn't step over.)

Parenthetically, don't enter into a "contract" to do yard work for the property owner -- unless you are a vigorous @Zeedman . Clearing the ground of weeds and keeping a garden nice and tidy should be enough. If the property owner has a garden, sneak over once or twice and see what standards are set . Exceed them! Realize that it is what will allow you to come back year after year. I had one garden right at 20 seasons ... I finally couldn't tolerate the "new" owner after both of the old folks had died and left it to their son.

Steve
@Grandmas Garden now has some idea how steve talks about his neighbors. yikes !

 

[ducks4you]

Wish I could find the link, BUT, I saw an interview with the director of a New York City backyard gardening association. She said that there were thousands of acres of privately owned yards in NYC. Her organization utilizes many of them to grow/sell vegetables. The deal is that the homeowner finances the construction in their own yard, which varies from prepping gardening beds to having to construct raised beds with soil trucked in. Her group does ALL of the labor from the construction and maintenance of the gardens. The owners may help themselves to produce at any time, but allow the workers open access to their yards to do their work.
Some FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

 

[ducks4you]

Laid down some more cardboard under the west fencing of the south pasture. I cleaned out my firepit, 2 small wheelbarrows worth, and covered the cardboard. I will be doing more of this during the winter under fence lines, except it will be soiled bedding. Kills a LOT of weeds when you are generous with the cardboard and the bedding.
I also removed the wooden borders of my funny 3' x 6' bed east of the inner sanctum, tilled in a wheelbarrow's worth of fresh manure and some straw, then laid down another wheelbarrow's worth. I was a sloppy stall cleaner yesterday and only took the poo.