Garden Guidelines

The Buhr Community Garden is a new creation. It was initially thought of as a possibility when the Buhr Park Children's Wet Meadow Project was thinking about the future of the park. Years later, Project Grow proposed the idea and was ready to have a public meeting on the topic. Several of us got wind of the idea and with help from Jeannine and some kids, canvassed the neighborhood to get a sense of what people thought.

The general response was quite positive, but several neighbors pointed out that the proposed garden was in their back yard and that they quite enjoyed the view. They didn't want anything that would disrupt their view and sense of a clean park.

At a public meeting in the winter of 2008, attended by about 20 people, we talked about what we hoped for and about what we feared. The compromise was to develop a small garden and to develop guidelines that would emphasize the neighborhood feel. We also wanted to be sensitive to the being good neighbors. 

Here is the Gardener's Agreement that was hashed out between neighbors, Project Grow and the City Parks staff.

Here

Frost Warning!

Frost is in the forecast tonight. I met some others out covering plants for the coming cold weather. Hopefully this is the last of it.

Fence, Compost, and Water Update

I have a few updates, but the gist of it is this: It is time to start gardening!

The fence is in place. Right now the gate is a little flimsy. It is a loose end of the fence that can be put in front of the south end of the garden. Please enter in and out of that temporary gate. John and I plan to get to building a more formal entrance in the near future. The design will likely be based on one of the pictures in an entry on the blog about gates. We went with a 3 foot fence instead of 4 feet because it looked big enough and was less money. Hope it does the trick. We still plan on putting chicken wire along the base of the fence to keep the little critters and diggers out. For now, it should keep dogs, stray walkers and others out.

Thanks to Jeannine, Janardhan, John, Bob, Emmet, Sophia, Leigh, Joan, Clare and Andy for fence construction.

Payment: Andy put the money down, but will hold off on letting you know the full cost until we get chicken wire and gate installed. So far, we're in for about $24 per full plot for fence materials, which is much less than I thought. We still need to build the gate, but that won't add too terribly much.

Compost has been delivered. We got 4 yards of compost delivered. This which translates to a per full plot allotment of 0.5 yards or 13.5 cubic feet. Ready for more???

• A large wheelbarrow holds 6 cubic feet.
• Smaller wheelbarrows hold 4 cubic feet.

So your share is either a little over 2 large wheelbarrows for a full plot or 3 small wheelbarrows for a full plot. Half plots, divide by 2.

The load was dumped in Jeff and Tione's plots - 8S and 8N. Good news for them - they get a little free top dressing.

Cost of the compost was $123 total. (($17/yard*4) + $55 delivery). $15 for a full plot.

Water:  It is raining. And we have enough hose, will obtain a nozzle soon, and await a "water key" to turn on the water from the school.    Two lengths of hose from the school reach the corner of our gardens.  When you want to water, drag the school hose up to the garden, attach the project grow hose to the school hoses, and use the water.  We will decide upon a good spot to hide the "key" with the understanding that the key stays in its hiding place except when in use.  Also, please return the school hose to the outside of the building, close to the water spout when  done.

Garden Gate Pictures

I went for a bike ride this morning and took a few pictures of gates over at County Farm Park.

The sturdier looking ones have wood across the top and bottom with a diagonal cross piece.

A few more design observations:

• 4x4 posts
• chicken wire on the back
• about 3 feet wide

Take a look:

I like the threshold on this one.

First Meeting

An enthusiastic group of gardeners met this evening at the site of our new garden. A nice crowd and a lot of excitement. Excitement about dirt, friends old and new and possibilities.

We discussed the gardening guidelines which stress the idea of a neighborhood garden and keeping things looking good for the neighbors who will look upon the garden out their back windows.

One fence will encircle the garden with one gate at each end. John and Andy will gather more specifics about prices for the fence and ideas about the gates. Feng Shui principles (as understood by John) indicate the formal entrance should be at the south end. More soon. John dug a post hole and declared that "it won't be bad".

We talked about a work day on the weekend of the 10th of May to construct the fence and get started with gardening.

Andy will follow up on getting a load or two of compost dumped in the garden for us to spread, preferably before the fence goes up.

Water for the garden will come from a hose tugged around the southwest corner of Allen School. The school will be donating the water. We'll need a few more lengths of hose to cover the whole garden.