Community Garden Success

[shabbychick]

I thought I'd share some good news with you this morning (spam-free, by the way). Last week I posted that I was trying to get funding for a community garden and having trouble finding it. The PTSA couldn't help, and I'd been turned down for grants. Well, I consulted a guy who used to work at my school who not only builds, but also gardens. He listened to what we wanted to do and then came back not only with a plan for a planter box, but the funding as well. He used to work for Home Depot and knew the people there, so he was able to secure a $200 discount on lumber for us. He also donated $300 out of pocket toward the garden and, in a meeting with a local mayor who used to be one of his students, got us a significant discount on top-quality soil for the boxes. And on top of all that, he's going to pick up the lumber and build the boxes for us. He already has the nails and the hardware, and he's going to use some kind of special heavy-duty nail gun he owns. His generosity in this is just overwhelming. This project, which I've been trying to get off the ground for more than a year, has gone from impossible to practically finished due to the generosity of the one person. I feel like this is going to give us exactly the start we need to begin a vigorous outdoor education program that will bring our community together and help us accomplish enough to look like a viable program so that we can more easily secure funding next year to expand. In the world of education, we don't get much good news, so this is really outstanding. It's taken a real load off my mind, and it's going to be so good for our kids!

[Heather]

Good for you Shabby! What a fabulous project for the kids - your hard work will pay off!

[vintage girl]

Very good news:)

[ChapterTwo]

Shabby...I'm jumping up and down, inside, for you! I was wanting to ask you if you had found any sponsorship for your garden and WOW, you sure did!
So much of life has to do with the right connections, or right place/right time.

I am very happy for you...and for your school and community! :)

[shabbychick]

Thanks, you guys. I'm really happy about it, too. I got the word today that Home Depot turned down my grant application, so without my friend's intervention on a local scale, we'd still be without materials. So now I *really* owe him!

Spring's popping up all over here, so it won't be long before we can get our plants and seeds in the ground. I think the kids are really going to be proud of their gardens once they see things start to grow.

[ChapterTwo]

I know I got my love of planting and flowers from my mother - I used to help her at an early age. But that was when mothers were more often stay-at-home, and nowadays, whether they want to or not, many have to work outside the home just to help make ends meet. So I think there's not always the time to do things like that as a family.

The community garden will help the children learn that "As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap", in the soil...and possibly as well as a metaphor for life!

[RoseMary]

Great news, Shabby! Sounds like you met the perfect person to get this project off the ground! It's going to be wonderful for the kids.

[Lynzee]

This is great news, Shabbychic! What a wonderful project for the kids! And what a wonderful thing for the community! Congratulations!

[chyna]

that is just wonderful, karma kicked in for you big time. :) I found out the other day that there are 2 such gardens in the city near me. I never knew!! the people behind me have dreams of knocking down the drug house and turning that lot into a community garden. that would be awesome. I'm with you, all kids should get their hands dirty growing something, anything.

[shabbychick]

Okay, I need some advice. We have four 10x5 raised garden beds in our community garden at school. The beds are two hundred feet from the nearest spigot, so I now have two 100-foot hoses on a hose reel that we pull out of a storage shed and hook up when we're going to water.

I'm trying to find the most efficient and thorough way to water the beds and am not having much success. Responsibility for watering falls to the parents who have volunteered to come over and water. I have someone scheduled every other day. Mostly they water by hand with a nozzle on the end of a hose, though I've been trying to find something they can turn on and leave to water the beds while they go to the front of the school with another hose and water the container gardens we have up there. I've tried an oscillating sprinkler and a pulsating sprinkler (and two pulsating sprinklers hooked together) and so far the wettest thing out there is me when the sprinklers swing around and soak me before I can get out of the way. Even with the water on for an hour, the beds never really get soaked. And I must have some kind of sprinkler disability because no matter how long I stand out there fiddling with them, I cannot get the sprinklers adjusted so they water just the beds without also washing the side of the building and sprinkling the grass for several feet beyond the beds.

I tried a soaker hose, too. It took me half a day to water the four beds with the soaker hose. In fifteen or twenty minutes with the soaker hose, water is running out of the bottoms of the boxes and soaking the grass around the beds, but the dirt isn't soaked. The beds dry out almost immediately.

I came home tonight soaked to the skin but the garden is still only barely wet. Do you have any ideas? Keep in mind that we can't leave anything out. Whatever we use has to be taken out of storage, hooked up, then unhooked, rolled back up on the hose reel, and put back in storage. I'm kind of at a loss. There must be a more efficient way to do this, but I'm darned if I know what it is.

I'm starting a week-long class on food and farming next week and am hoping to come back knowing a lot more about how to manage a community garden than I know now.

[vintage girl]

How about a drip system that is set up on a timer and will water the beds for about 5-10 minutes twice a day in the heat and less when not so hot. You would need to put the drip in the middle of the bed and that way it will not run out in the grass before everything has been watered. That is how our garden is set up. You can do the same thing with a soaker hose, but to keep the beds hydrated it needs to be done daily, twice a day. Since you can't leave anything out all the time, the drip system would work the best, as this is out all the time. Not sure if you can do this, but might be worth a try. The other option would be those copper rotating sprinklers that they sell at Lowes. They are decorative on a long copper rod that sticks into the ground and the top spins around and sprays out the water. You could put two of those in each bed and than leave them on for maybe 15-20 minutes each day. If you could leave those out, they are very pretty. I have ones that look like butterflies and flowers. We got them on clearance at Lowes a few summers back. But even the regular price is good. If you can't keep them out, they are easy enough to just pick up and put away. Also no one has to stand their while the watering is being done.:)

[shabbychick]

Thanks for the information! I think a drip system would be a great idea I can work toward for next year. There's no funding for it right now, and I'm not entirely sure about how to hook it to the water without running two hundred feet of hose across the pavement for the whole summer. But I would love to get something like that in place. I'll do some research and see what configurations might work for us.

I have to drive by Lowe's on my way to work today, so I'll stop in and see what those sprinklers look like. I'd love to be able to get the district to pay to put in some actual automatic sprinklers in the beds, but I'm pretty sure that'll never happen.