Beginning of year 3

March 17, 2010

March 17, 2012

The picture on the left is from of the earliest tangible evidence of a garden for the Church Hill Community.  On St Patrick's day, 2010, The City plowed our garden plot.  As you can see, the weather was frosty there were only faint hints of Spring.  

The picture below is after our March 17, 2012 work day.  We were assisted by 5 Master Gardeners and a full complement of helpers from First Baptist Church in Church Hill.  There was a huge amount of work achieved by the group.  The 20 yards of manufactured stone was wheeled between the new beds constructed last fall.  To prepare them for the growing season, 10 cubic yards of topsoil was used to help fill the new beds.  We had prepared the beds by covering the bottoms with cardboard to retard weed growth and adding leaves.  The beds will be carefully monitored over the next couple of weeks to see the amount and type of weed seeds that germinate from the new soil.  There did not appear to be large amounts of Bermuda grass rhizomes in the soil.  I checked this evening, but no germination was apparent.  The only new additions were some small deer hoofprints throughout the plot.  Evidently they must be observing our progress.  

This is most of our work crew from the day.  The youth group is planning to adopt 3 or 4 beds as a group project for the coming gardening season.  Another group work session is planned for April 7 when we will be joined by Boy Scouts and members of this youth group. 

We did harvest 15 pounds of cabbages and various greens last Wednesday.  This has been the year without a winter.  The weekly work session this week will be devoted to adding compost to beds, and planting.  The season seems so advanced, but the first official day of Spring is not until Wednesday.  Hopefully winter will not come to visit after the arrival of Spring.