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.

Must Have Luxury Garden Gadgets

Gardening and lawn care is so much more fun when you have all the latest gadgets and tools. You know you are truly prepared when you step outside in your lawn aerator shoes and wearable garden stool, rolling your pecan picker upper, with your trusty power drill auger at your hip! If you are the type of person who loves gadgets and gizmos as much as you love gardening, then you are in the right place. Make sure you are not missing out on any new gardening equipment that you did not know you could not live without!

For your hanging plants or container gardens, you should definitely have self watering planters. Some are stackable and help you easily create a self watering vertical garden. Imagine the neighbor’s envy! If you do not have self watering gardens, there is still a way to get excited about patio plants and container gardens.

I am talking about an electronic watering can that, in tests, helped plants produce anywhere from twenty percent to fifty-eight percent more vegetables. Flowers will grow much larger and produce more blooms with up to seventy-six percent more weight. How does it work? Oxygen. The oxygenating watering can uses an electrolysis element to increase the oxygen content of your water by up to one hundred fifty percent. It works, because the more oxygen that gets to the roots of your plants, the more nutrients they can take in.

Another must have is the electronic soil tester. It electronically measures moisture in the soil, soil pH, sunlight and the combined nitrogen, phosphorus and potash (NPK) fertilizer levels. If you are unsure about what all that means, never fear. It comes with a list of preferred conditions for different types of plants, so if you hide the list in your waterproof write in the rain garden notebook, no one will realize that you may not know what the levels mean. The electronic soil tester will help you decide what locations in your yard are ideal for certain plants, if the soil needs adjustment or if it is time to water.

Enough with the small stuff, we are moving on to the lawn. There are a lot of little individual gadgets that can help you with lawn care, but the automatic hose reel is definitely the hottest new gadget on the market. Not just any hose reel, this one has a computer. Program it to water, leave the house and it puts itself away when it is done. It has forward assist so you do not even have to pull it out. It rotates in all directions, retrieves the hose on its own and has the coolest gadgets inside. It has clamp on attachments, like a fireman’s spray nozzle, and it even clamps to the faucet, so you never have to twist or struggle with it. You won’t even break a sweat. It has a double o-ring design which makes it leak proof and a kink free hose. This one is far superior to any other hose reel on the market. Plus, it kind of looks like a robot and you can order it in a variety of cool patterns, like giant golf ball or Texas flag. This is not your ordinary hose reel. It will create envy in all that encounter it.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is an award winning author and writer of web content for many different web sites. She is well versed in many different areas, including gardening, hose reel, lawn care and landscaping.

Winterize Your Garden and Garden Tools

Yard work is probably among the furthest thing from most people’s minds in the winter; with the hustle and bustle of many holidays, plus the cold weather, yard work in the winter is something few people likely want to do. But there are several things that can be done around the yard in the wintertime to get everything squared away for the cold weather.

The first is to take care of all your garden tools. Clean all hand tools, such as pruning shears, and lightly oil any metal parts. The handles, if they are made of wood, can be sanded down and also lightly oiled before they are stored for the winter.

Preparing power tools for storage is more labor-intensive than is preparing hand tools and the process can vary by tool. For details and advice, you can ask a mechanic or a customer service representative at the manufacturer of the tool to find out the proper maintenance procedures for cleaning power tools before storing them away.

Garden hoses should be detached from their hose bibs and removed from their hose reels, if applicable. Each hose bib should be opened so that, if any water remains inside, pressure will not build up if it freezes—that can cause the pipe to burst.

If you have a koi pond—or any other decorative water element in your landscaping, such as a waterfall—that will need to be prepared for winter as well. They should be kept free of leaves and any other debris; if you do not want to make clearing debris off a daily task, you can install a piece of netting on the surface to act as a cover. Fish can and will hibernate, provided the pond is deep enough for them to do so; a pond with depths of two feet should, as a general rule, be sufficient. In order to help the fish along with their hibernation, stop feeding them when temperatures start to cool—45 degrees Fahrenheit is a good benchmark. Be sure to check with a professional if you are not experienced with winterizing your pond and ensuring the health and safety of your fish.

While taking care of each of your tools may seem tedious, in the long run, the time and effort spent will pay off. The better care you take of your tools, the better and longer they will be able to serve you well.

About the author: Jon Bassfarm is an Internet content writer who enjoys researching and writing about many subjects including garden hose reel and landscaping.