I'm wondering whether other people who garden in community gardens have ever had experiences similar to mine.
The garden I joined is on a vacant city lot but is fenced in and gated. It was overgrown and weedy when I got there, but I've seen pictures proving that at one time in the 6 or so years of its existence it was a thriving garden.
When I joined there was only 1 member who actually gardened, and since he lives sort of far away he doesn't come to the garden very often. The person who manages the garden lives nearby but doesn't seem to like to garden, although she calls herself a gardener.
I got excited about the possibilities and right away started working. I helped clean up large weedy areas and dug several small plots. The soil was full of broken glass and trash, so it was time-consuming to work.
I bought 2 fig trees, 4 blueberry bushes, and 2 thornless blackberry bushes, and prepared nice large holes for them. Watered them all summer and mulched them heavily with mulch I purchased or collected myself from city mulch piles.
Unfortunately during the summer one of the blueberry bushes somehow was pulled up out of the soil, and I didn't discover it until days had gone by. I believe it happened when the garden manager had neighborhood children visiting the garden and left them unattended for a while, and I'm sure they didn't mean to knock the bush out of the ground. When I found it days later, it looked dead, but I soaked it well and put it back in the ground, mulched it heavily and kept it well watered and mulched all winter. Miraculously, it put out some green leaves just a few weeks ago. Most of its branches are dead at the outer lengths, but closer to the trunk it is still alive. Of course it will take time to recover, and unfortunately it was originally the largest and healthiest of the 4 blueberry bushes, so that accident set the overall blueberry production for the garden way back. But I'm glad it didn't die.
Also unfortunately, a bed of carrots I fall planted was mowed down by a criminal community service worker who was left unattended to cut the grass in the garden this winter. The carrots were not ready to be harvested, but had to be harvested that day. The carrots were well weeded, with large feathery carrot leaves, impossible not to notice.
That same day, the same community service worker also mowed down another of the blueberry bushes. It had been surrounded by a 3-foot diameter, quite conspicuous pile of wood chips, and was in blazing red leaf glory. Impossible not to see.
That same day, the other gardener lost an entire trellis of English peas. I don't mean just the peas. I mean that the entire 8-foot by 8-foot wooden trellis of peas, which were in full glorious bloom and lush green growth, were cut to the ground. As I was the person who discovered this loss, I demanded an explanation and was told that the community service worker couldn't be blamed for the peas being cut down, that the garden manager had done it, she couldn't say why. Since then she has said she did it because they were brown and dead, which is not anything like true. In any event, they were growing in another person's private garden plot, so shouldn't they have been left alone?
In the fall I asked for a spot for my own garden plot and was given the worst spot on the land, a spot which had never before been broken, with hardpan clay as stiff as rock, and which appeared to have been used as the garden's trash pile during the years. As there were still only 2 gardeners, it was unclear to me why this was necessary but I bit my tongue. I decided I could amend the hardpan clay soil which you couldn't even put a shovel into, and had all winter in which to do it. I began work immediately.
I knew of a horse stable nearby where I could get free manure and bedding. I don't own a truck but save all my soil bags and don't mind getting my car dirty. So I began visiting the stable and filling plastic bags with manure and bedding, then hauling them to the garden. I had to trek through wet manure to fill the bags, shovel them full myself, load them into my car, then climb the steps up into the garden with them and carry them across the entire length of the garden (about 200 feet) as my plot is at the back and uphill all the way. I estimate I did this no less than 20 times, each time bringing about 20 bags of manure, each weighing probably 35 or 40 pounds minimum. I am a 48 year old woman, by the way, and have arthritis in my hips, hands and back. It wasn't easy, but I figured it was worth it.
The other gardener helped out by bringing me many large rubbermaid containers of coffee grounds from Starbucks.
By turns I let the manure and coffee grounds stand on top of the ground, let the ground freeze and break, let the earthworms come up and carry things down, and mixed it all up as the clay began to break down. Then I'd add another layer on top and start all over again. Each time I'd climb into the plot and pick through it all, taking out any glass and trash I found, as well as pulling out crabgrass, nutgrass, wiregrass, and other perennial weeds. I did this all winter long.
About 3 weeks ago I declared my work finished. I raked the plot, which is about 8 or 10 feet wide and maybe 15 feet long, and decided to let it sit through a few rains and settle before making rows or raised beds. As I'm planning to grow climbing lima beans, melons and tomatoes, all things that like a warm soil, I had time to spare before the soil would be warm enough to plant. I felt the soil, which by then was a fine black stuff, clean and wonderful to run through your hands, needed to rest before then.
This weekend I visited the garden because I had been told new plots were being marked and dug for new garden members. I had not been there since last weekend. When I walked over to admire my own plot I immediately noticed the sun glinting off hundreds of pieces of broken glass all over the surface of the ground. Then I noticed lumps of red clay, and deep impressions everywhere that looked like shovel holes. I walked around and around my plot, not understanding what I was seeing, and frankly not believing my eyes.
Then I walked over to the area where new plots had been broken. I noticed one rectangular area where the soil had barely been broken, and next to it another similar rectangular area where the soil had been finely worked. Very finely worked. So finely worked that it had the appearance of potting soil. Not a shard of glass in sight, not a clod of clay in sight.
I then looked at a series of raised beds, plastic forms where the garden manager raises vegetables as a youth project. During the summer and fall and all winter long these plastic raised bed forms had been full of clay soil, loaded with glass and weeds, which I knew because I had tried to help weed them from time to time. On this day I reached down into one of them and my hand sunk into soil fine and black and clean. My soil, in fact. I recognized it as soon as I touched it.
I walked back over to my own plot and could see what had happened. My soil had been removed from my plot. The soil from the new bed and the raised forms had been removed from those places and carried over to my bed. The soils were switched.
As gardeners reading this, I know you will understand how this all makes me feel. When I confronted the garden manager she denied any knowledge of the switch and blamed it on the community service worker.
I don't know whether, as a practical matter, it is really possible to switch things back the way they were. Or whether it is better for me to give up on this community garden now, in light of all the events leading up to this event as well as this incredible event and what I can probably expect in the future as well.
Should I fight for my dirt? Or should I walk away? I've already decided that if I walk away, I'll consider the fruit trees a donation to the garden, even though I know they probably won't survive the kind of mistreatment they'll be getting.
I do wish I could stay long enough to harvest my thriving garlic bed, but that won't be ready until June. And I have a feeling the chances of me actually getting any of it are slim to none, anyway. The garden manager already expressed her desire for it. And she lives closer to the garden than I do, and doesn't have a day job. So I guess that's already a losing battle.
So I'm interested in hearing what other gardeners think. I've noticed there isn't much posting going on in this forum. Is that because everyone has bad experiences in community gardens? Or is my experience unique, and everyone is just too busy to write?
If you were me, would you walk? Or stick it out?
crumbo
margarete
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