HOC Community Garden

Jan 29, 2011 by Chris

Submitted By: Chris Mills

Fortunately this year the Community Garden managed to keep the weeds generally below the point of rankness. I have enjoyed my first season as the Coordinator for the garden, after experiencing some trepidation about taking over from someone like Gerald Rutherford who tended it so effectively since its birth. However I have been constantly surprised at the support and assistance that I have had from gardeners both old and new.

Time and again some hidden fairies came down off the hill when I was absent and weeded the paths and sorted out the compost bins.

We started the season well, with an abundance of new gardeners seeking to fill the holes left by a number of retiring or leaving members. At one point we had several more applicants than we had vacancies. However some fell by the wayside and I believe that only two or three folks were disappointed.

Despite some talk of the need for expanding the garden, I believe that for now we are probably able to meet most if not all the demand. Wife Peggy and I had and interesting evening event at the beginning of the season to welcome new gardeners and I believe that is something worth repeating.

Gardeners, both old and new did a good job of preparing and planting the plots and by the end of June, the garden looked in fine shape.

As always, the Alberta weather had to demonstrate its erratic nature and the growing season was much wetter and quite a lot cooler than normal. This meant good crops of leafy vegetables like spinach and beet but did little for the heat lovers like tomatoes and squash. Despite that I think most gardeners were able to enjoy a successful harvest.

One of the challenges facing a community garden such as ours is that through much of July and August, many gardeners are away on summer holidays or caught up with other summer activities and consequently are not around to harvest crops like peas and beans as they reach their peak. And the cool, damp weather certainly slowed down the maturity of things like tomatoes and zucchinis.

From an operational point of view, we had very few problems. The rain reduced the need for watering but despite that we ran into the on-going problem of twisted hoses and the eventual demise of one of the older hoses. I believe that watering would be easier and cheaper if we had separate standpipes at the east and west end of the garden, thus allowing shorter hoses and much reduced twisting and tangling.

We wound up the season with a Saturday morning gathering at which a number of helpers cleaned up some of the mess behind the hut, did a final weed and had a handy non gardener put up the weather vane for us. Now the garden hopefully sleeps, dreaming along with the gardeners of a season of warmth, moisture and abundance in 2011.