Community Gardens – Watering and Weed Control In Your Garden Part 6

As we continue our Community Garden series, we will now discuss the importance of properly watering your garden as well as understanding the best way to weed it. One would think these two topics are quite self-explanatory, but, there are some methods to each one can consider.

When it comes to watering your garden, to get the best saturation in the ground, one should water early morning or late in the evening. Watering during the day could lead to a lot of water that just evaporates and doesn’t go into the ground. If you live in an area where water is costly or you are cautious of how much water you use do to its scarcity, you can also consider using a drip line (a hose or tape with holes in it). Using drip lines will help you minimize water loss and deliver the water exactly to where it is needed, at the roots.

Keeping the water on the ground, rather than spraying your plants, will help keep water off of leaves, fruits and flowers. This is important when it is hot as it will do little to benefit the plant and may lead to scorching.

Other water conservation tactics include:

• Plant only plants that are well-adapted to your area and the average rainfall in your region
• Place mulch over the soil. This will help hold in the ground’s moisture
• Weed regularly, because weeds will pull moisture from your plants
• Install a rain catchments system to make the most of rainfall
• Use drip irrigation to minimize evaporation
• Avoid planting or transplanting during dry spells
• Enhance sandy soils with organic mater, to improve moisture retention

When it comes to watering, each type of plant has its own moisture needs. You can do some research and find out which plants require more or less amounts of water. It would be most efficient for you to give your garden a good soaking once a week, which will penetrate deep into the soil, rather than watering just a little bit each day.

Now for weed control, which will also help you conserve water.

Weeds are problematic for every gardener, not only do they rob the ground of water but also the surrounding plants of nutrients and sunlight. To keep your weeds at bay, try to remove this as soon as they come up, typically they begin in early spring and summer. This will keep them from going to seed and replanting themselves. You may want to make sure to remove the entire weed - including its root - because some plants are able to re-grow from just a small piece of root.

If possible, weed during hot, dry periods, because the weeds will be easy to remove and will wither on the surface. When using a hoe, try to dig as shallowly as possible, to avoid disturbing the roots of your garden plants.

If you are going to use weed killer or chemicals on your weeds, follow some basic rules such as apply weed killer in the spring, when it will kill newly emerging weeds and prevent re-growth of new ones for a few months; do not apply weed killer on a windy day, when chemicals can be carried onto other plants, or cover plants with plastic sheeting during application; if you apply weed killer in the vicinity of edibles, only eat fruits and vegetables once they have been thoroughly cleansed with a produce wash.

Putting chemicals on your weeds should be your last resort as it can be harmful to your vegetables and the groundwater.

Between watering your garden properly and weeding it by the suggestions outlined above, your garden should be quite healthy and resilient whereupon you will produce large yummy vegetables to eat.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a freelance writer, journalist, and writing coach who lives in the desert. In addition to spending her days writing, she also loves to tend to her organic garden where she grows as much of her own food as possible. In this, she counts on her cord reel to keep her hoses from drying out from the desert heat.

Community Gardens – Design Characteristics of Your Garden Part 5

Community Gardens – Design Characteristics of Your Garden
Part 5

In our last four articles we have been discussing what it takes to create a community garden, how to divide up chores, how to maintain your garden, feed your garden and protect it from pests.

In today’s article we will discuss ways to design your garden and what kinds of characteristics you can add to your community garden to make it interesting.

If you have never put together a design for your garden or any garden, there are a few strategies to follow that are helpful. Thinking ahead of time how your garden will look and how you will lay it out will save you a lot of time and work, in having to rework things.

What design elements should you consider when planning your garden? Here are a few things to take into consideration:

• Scale – Scale is evaluating your garden’s plant sizes relative to one another. When deciding where to place elements in your garden, it is important to think about their scale, or relative size difference. While size differences can add emphasis to certain elements of a garden, they may also lead to smaller plants or garden features being overlooked.
• Form - Form is basically the shape of any element that you are putting in your garden. Plant forms can be circular, columnar, pyramidal, spreading, weeping, etc. Plants of similar form can be used to contrast or harmonize each other to add visual interest to the garden.
• Color – We all love color and there is so much you can do in laying out your garden in regards to a plant’s color – not only its flowers but also its leaves. There are many complex theories out there to help you decide which colors to use, use your intuition. Remember colors can impact people's moods, so figure out what kind of feeling you are going for? Something dramatic or soothing.
• Texture - All garden elements have some sort of texture that can be experienced through sight or touch. Texture can add mood or emotion to a garden - smooth, fine textures are visually subdued and formal, while coarse, rough textures are visually dominant and informal.
• Scent – There are many fragrant flowers, herbs and plants one can use in their garden in order to provide just the right scent. Herbs such as dill, basil, oregano, and thyme have strong, recognizable fragrances, and can be experienced best when placed at garden edges or along walkways. The subtler scents of plants such as tomatoes, melons, and raspberries can also add interest to the garden experience.

Now that you have looked at the elements to include in planning your garden or to at least consider, let’s look at design. Design will help impact the look and feel of your garden. These include:

• Line –Artistically line is important. Line is an element that can appear in a garden in any number of ways, and works to help guide the eye through a garden. For example, a horizontal line, like a row of low plants, will draw someone's eye across a garden, while a vertical line, like a tree or tall arbor, will draw their eyes up.
• Repetition -Repetition is important as it brings consistency and emphasis to your garden. You can duplicate certain characteristic in your garden, like color, texture, form or line.
• Variety – With repetition is also variety. Mixing of different colors, forms, and textures helps in a garden to add visual excitement. When thinking about variety, it is important to consider how the garden will look in all seasons. Variety can also be overdone, however, and too many design elements may lead to a chaotic outcome. Balancing repetition and variety is an artistic challenge, but one with rewarding results.
• Focus –Creating a focal point is not only an artistic element you can add to your garden but also helps the viewer find a place to rest the eye. A focal point can be something as simple as a unique plant or a water feature. In a larger garden, you can use several focal points to guide a visitor through the space.
• Transition - When using several design elements in a garden, it is useful to create a transition, or gradual change, from on element to another. Grouping plants that move gradually from very low plants to progressively higher ones can create this effect.
• Unity – Unity ties the look of your garden together. This can be a challenge when working with groups of gardeners but when you put some thought into it, creating unity can be quite simple.

And the last piece of advice in planning and designing your Community Garden – have fun and enjoy. Garden’s are meant to be a work of art as well as a place of community and grounding, so let your spirit and your eye for beauty lead the way.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a freelance writer, journalist, and writing coach who lives in the desert. In addition to spending her days writing, she also loves to tend to her organic garden where she grows as much of her own food as possible. In this, she counts on her cord reel to keep her hoses from drying out from the desert heat.

Community Gardens: Fertilizing and Pest Control Part 4

If you have been following this series on Community Gardens, you have thus far read about what community garden is, how to organize one in your community garden, what types of rules and concepts need to be decided upon before putting your organization together and how to choose your gardening site. You also have read about the amount of chores required to prepare a garden site and maintain it.

This article will focus on how to keep your garden site fertilized correctly as well as protect it from pests.

To start, one must understand some basics of gardening. If you are creating a community garden, it is most likely you already understand this. For those who are reading this article and are interested in participating in a community garden, who have never gardened before –this information is for you.

When it comes to growing healthy plants and food, you must have healthy soil. Soil requires a certain blend of nutrients to feed your plants. One way to maintain healthy nutrients in the soil is to not plant the same plants over and over in the same place. Why? Certain plants require a lot of one type of nutrient from the soil and can deplete the soil before long, if not rotated out. For example, corn requires a lot of nitrogen. Planting corn over and over again, without feeding the soil, could deplete it of the nitrogen it could need the next growing season.

Your garden soil must maintain the three major nutrients, which are nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). Adding fertilizer can help sustain these nutrients and replenish them year after year. There are four basic types of fertilizers used for this, they include composts, animal manures, natural or organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers.

How do you know what your garden soil needs? You can take a soil test and the results will show you what you may be lacking. These tests can be very effective when conducted in the Fall. If you add your fertilizer or needed nutrients before winter, they will have plenty of time to be absorbed before the spring planting. Manure, in particular, which has not been composted, should never be applied when vegetable or fruit plants are mature, because it can infect plants with bacteria that could make you sick if you consume them.

Chemical or artificial fertilizers should be avoided if at all possible, because the regular use of them can actually impede the soil's ability to hold nutrients. Overuse of chemical fertilizers in conventional agricultural practices and turf grass management has also been proven to have negative effects on soil and water resources. For healthy plants and people, ditch the chemicals!

Now for pest control. While there are many beneficial insects that your plants rely on to keep them healthy and productive, there are also some insects and animals that will harm your garden by attacking the leaves, fruits, or roots of your plants. Each state and region is different in regards to the pest problems they might face, so check with your local gardening associations, or agricultural agencies to find out what garden pests are most common.

Once you discover what you are facing, there are only a few methods you will use to protect your plants. These include physical control, cultural control, biological control and chemical control.

Physical control means that you have to physically keep pests out of your garden with barriers and traps. You can also remove pests by hand on a one-by-one basis.

For large pests such as deer and rabbits, you can install fencing or mesh and wire barriers. The mesh and wire will also help protect your seedlings from birds.

Companion planting is another natural way to practice pest control. This is one of the oldest and most well known types of control. For example, you can plant marigolds to ward off flying pests and nematodes, but many other plants can do the job as well. Chives, coriander, and nasturtium can help ward off aphids; rosemary and sage keep carrot flies at bay; hyssop, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme keep cabbage moths out of your garden.

Last is chemical. Chemical controls should only be relied on as a last resort, because they can harm the soil and the beneficial insects that you need in your garden. Chemicals are also expensive, and will be washed off of your garden when it rains where they can pollute groundwater and waterways like streams and rivers. Use chemicals only if you can find no other way to cope with the pests in your garden, and then do so sparingly. Insect-specific chemical treatments, like slug pellets or Japanese beetle traps, will have little or no impact on the beneficial insects in your garden, but these can still have negative environmental consequences. Always make sure to read instructions carefully, and use only the minimum amounts recommended.

Gardening takes time and care, but it can be done easily with a little information and some practice. Keeping a journal of your gardening experiments, noting what works and doesn’t work can also be beneficial as you progress with your community garden.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a freelance writer, journalist, and writing coach who lives in the desert. In addition to spending her days writing, she also loves to tend to her organic garden where she grows as much of her own food as possible. In this, she counts on her cord reel to keep her hoses from drying out from the desert heat.

Community Gardens: General Maintenance and Upkeep Part 3

You are prepared to start your community garden and maybe you have read in my prior articles about how to find the right location, how to evaluate that location, and questions to ask yourself in regards to putting together the garden organization. In this article we will discuss assigning tasks and what your community garden will require.

To start, lets look at the amount of work required when starting your community garden.

One doesn’t realize how much goes into having and tending a garden, so making a list of must-dos helps at the onset. Having a list reminds anyone who wants to be involved with the community garden, what they are really in for.

To start, there are the necessities in gardening that include general maintenance and upkeep, fertilizing, pest control, watering, weed control, winterizing, and harvesting.

Other chores include:

• Collection of any litter or yard debris (branches, twigs, etc)
• Sweeping or raking up stray leaves on walkways/paths
• Trimming/mowing any areas of turf
• Keeping walkway edges clean
• Raking gravel paths
• Upkeep of sheds, fences, sheds, etc. through the occasional coat of fresh paint
• Clearing moss from stone or brick walkways, which could become slippery
• Maintaining any water features

Before you can even tend to your garden, you will have site pre-cleaning to do. Other pre-gardening chores include: deciding on the size of plots and marking them clearly with the gardener's names, including pre-design plans for a storage area for tools and other equipment, and designating a compost area.

Now for the second stage of starting your community garden. Assigning work. This is often the most difficult part for those who start community gardens. Never assume that people will volunteer to take care of the details – these details have to be decided upon before you get your garden started.

Since your garden is about collective work soliciting help from community members and organizations is a rewarding way to get garden work done. You can set up workdays that can include putting up your gardening shed or doing a mass planting. You can try to solicit help from local schools, libraries, clubs or organizations. The more people you can pull together, the less work that will fall on anyone in particular.

You will also want to capitalize on various individuals’ skills. Everyone has something that they are best at - and that their most valuable skills may have nothing to do with gardening. Perhaps an outgoing member of your group loves to talk to new people - she may also be one the best persons to gather new members and donations. Perhaps someone else likes to write and would love to write seasonal newsletters, or another person is good with their hands and will be able to lead in construction projects and repairs. Community gardening is about much more than growing produce, and it is important to find out who in your group will be well suited for the numerous 'non-gardening' tasks that will help keep your garden diverse and thriving.

Remember that a community garden is also an ongoing project with ongoing tasks. To stay on top of these tasks, make sure you stay organized. If you are working with a team of gardeners, it is a good idea to rely on written records and logs that are kept in a common area, either in your garden shed, classroom, community center, or some other accessible location. If the members of your gardening group have access to the Internet, an online blog or website may be a good option to assure that the lines of communication remain clear.

Planning in advance is another key to staying organized. Try creating a weekly or monthly maintenance calendar. Gardeners can sign up for different tasks, and then cross them off once they are completed.

If you are still interested in putting together a community garden, stay tuned for further installations on designing your garden and maintaining it.

About the Author: Pamela Ravenwood is a freelance writer, journalist, and writing coach who lives in the desert. In addition to spending her days writing, she also loves to tend to her organic garden where she grows as much of her own food as possible. In this, she counts on her cord reel to keep her hoses from drying out from the desert heat.