Changes at the Community Garden

During my recent blogging hiatus a lot of exciting things have been going on (other than babies) - so much that I'll probably never get around to writing about all of it.  As a start, though, about a week after A was born I attended a meeting at our community garden with the park ranger in charge of our location.  We discussed the recent addition of a 10-ft deer fence around the garden (it actually happened!), as well as several other issues:

1) K (the ranger) is amenable to letting individuals have a 2-week pre-registration period to reclaim their plots for the next year.  Yay!  Keeping the same plot means that all this year's work and investment in soil amendments and even - dare I say it - infrastructure! - is not lost at the beginning of next year if someone else beats you to the phone Feb 1.

2) K would prefer not to till the gardens every year; individuals would be responsible for doing their own tilling if and where they like.  Yay!  This means that perennial crops like strawberries and rhubarb could be grown out there, as well as crops that are planted in the fall for harvest the next year, like garlic.  I sort of got the impression this wasn't a done deal - he wants to meet with a larger group of gardeners sometime in the fall and I think get a better idea how people feel about it.  I think my only concern is for newbies taking on a plot that was neglected the previous year and is chock full of long weed skeletons, eager to tangle a rental tiller's tines.

3) Whether they plow or not, K's willing to push back the end of the official gardening season from Oct 1st to Nov 15th.  Yay!  That means I'll be able to grow some fall crops, and I won't have to cut my winter squash vines just as they're getting started (assuming they do...)

4) It's unlikely we'll be able to get water access for at least a year or two.  There are absolutely no pipes near our park, not even fire hydrants for the apartment complex across the street, and having one installed is not in the budget right now.

Funny how so many of these are the exact issues that made me hesitate to get a plot in the first place (see Talk About Ambitious...), and here most of them are just resolving themselves before my very eyes!