Community Garden: Lots of happenings at the Community Garden

The next thirty to sixty days will see some changes coming to the Guthrie Community Garden.  Not a lot I can say about it more than that but there are a lot of legal type things that have to be done.  And you just thought that there were a few people down there throwing dirt around and putting seeds in the ground.  Shame on you! 

It takes a lot to make a community garden work.  Lots of backing, volunteers, support, funds, insurance and all kinds of other things are a day-to-day requirement to make anything work efficiently. 

So for the next couple of months there may not be a lot of gardening issues to talk about.  I am still trying to dilute that weed-killing chemical out of the compost in the production garden.  Lots of tilling and lots of wood shavings and sawdust and about fifteen bags of mulched up leaves are still being put into the rows to get rid of that chemical.  It doesn’t hurt the vegetables because the plants won’t even grow.  By spring I hope to have almost that entire chemical out of the garden.  I will keep you informed. 

The tomatoes are done and I need to pull them up and stack the tomato cages so they are out of the way.  The tomato plants are so woody that they need to be chopped up before they go into the compost pile.  It just takes too long to break them down if you don’t chop them up. 

If you drive by the west end of the garden you will notice how well the ADA garden beds are doing.  They did better than anything else this year.  You can than Arlene and her granddaughter for that. 

The bird and butterfly gardens have really bloomed this year.  Bonnie has taken great care of them and they are packed with plants of all varieties and the butterflies and birds keep hanging around.  So just remember that the activity that you see the rest of this year is to clean up the beds and reduce the weed-killing chemical that was in the compost that was provided to us to use. 

Just remember that if you are using manure to ask the owner if they are spraying anything on their fields to kill weeds.  If they are go someplace else or better yet don’t use any manure at all.  You can still get really good compost without the manure.  Just read up on it and make your own.  So as things progress I will keep you informed about the Guthrie Community Garden and what is happening.