2011 Gardening Season Begins

2011 began with our family growing.  Our second granddaughter, Ashlyn Mary was born January 1st.  As we are sorting our our plans to go and visit, we are starting our garden activities.

We have completed our grant proposal for Fiskars.  There was a lot of hard work devoted to the proposal, but we did manage to resolve two nagging issues during the process.

1. We received a positive response from First Utility and will have water at the site this year.  They will re-establish the connection when the ground warms up.  One of our projects early on will be to make sure we can securely lock the connection and obtain hose, nozzles, soaker hose for the watering chores.  We will be looking for donations from the Seniors and put the Clothes Closet on alert for items that may come to them.  
2. The Second issue was a solution to the land use question.  After talking to Mayor Deal and the City Recorder, the garden was described as a Civic Asset located on property owned by the City of Church Hill.  As such, the length of tenancy, like the City Charter, is perpetual.  

For the Grant and also our continuing relationship with the Master Gardeners, these were important steps.  Organizations want to make sure that a project has a reasonable prospect for success and longevity before funding takes place.  If we are selected by Fiskars, the garden will receive $3500.00 in cash and $1500.00 of Fiskars tools.  The announcement date is February 11.

At our December evaluation session, in addition to adopting our 2011 goals and objectives, we listed a series of projects that we wanted to consider.  The list went out to our Garden Directors and others for their comments.  This week we will prioritize the list and complete things as funds become available. 

Project Description

Information Center  Posting info at the garden.  Make with recycled materials. Old window on box frame.  Attach to existing sign and make roof to keep rain out of the box.  

Manufactured Sand for Rows Needed for weed control in between the rows.  About 4” depth would be enough for adequate control

Additional Compost Bin We have good manure supply and want to expand the amount of compost available for the garden and eventual Community Garden

Additional Raised Beds For eventual community garden and expanded production at existing site.  We would expand flowers grown and herb beds. Fit some for season extension with row covers.

Soaker hose, Hose for watering  Water connection has been approved by 1^st Utilities.  Will make transplanting and watering in dry times easier

Produce scale Needed to record production on a consistent basis.  A dietary scale is fine if it can handle 20+ pounds.  Don’t need Legal for Trade and calibration

One or Two Bluebird Houses Way to encourage birdlife at the garden and provide insect control.

Bat House  Way to provide shelter for bats and to provide insect control

 We have cost estimates for each of the projects.  After the meeting the prioritized list will be posted.

Also at the meeting we are beginning our outreach to the area schools.  The educational component of our objectives needs to be addressed soon so teachers can incorporate the garden into their lesson plans and we can think about times and projects that are age appropriate.  There is some presentation material available, and we want to develop a list of teachers and administrators to contact. 

The Blurb book has also had nearly daily attention.  While the grant proposal took front stage for the last 10 days of last year, there are over 15000 words written for the book.  We are using Google Docs to collaborate on the writing and editing--the program is not very user friendly at this time.  Selecting artwork and photos is much more difficult and time consuming than word processing software.  We can all see the various versions and make suggestions and changes in real time.   Once we have settled on the text, it will be exported to MS Word and the final tuning and image placement can take place.   Our goal is to publish before the end of April.  At this point, we seem to be ahead of schedule.

Our December weather was some of the coldest on record in the Tri-Cities.  The end of the year has given way to better weather and temperatures in the 50s.  The snow has disappeared and the effects of the weather on the remaining garden plants will be assessed early in the week.  The kale pictured above is usually tough enough to easily brush it off and continue growing.  It will also be a good time to see how the compost piles are progressing.  The bacteria and fungus are like people, they slow down in cold weather.  There was some rain at at least two different times in December.  Warming weather should stimulate the pile to heat up considerably.  We should be able to soon put down the seed catalogs, stop dreaming and get growing.
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