hi all y'all!
i am new to DG and loving it! will have to intro myself here and to the michigan group and sooo many places here...this is wonderful!
ok. i am female, 55, living in southwest michigan. i am disabled. when i landed here 5 years ago i moved heaven and earth and idjits LOL to get a community garden site designed, funded, and installed for me and my 10 neighbor-units. t'wasn't easy but we did it. *GRIN*
we have two semi-accessible raised beds (management wouldn't stretch to fully-accessible, still working on em). two railroad ties up, spiked for stability, about 25 feet by 4 feet ID, each. a rubbermaid shed for tools (ergonomic hand & long) , 5 gal buckets instead of wheelbarrow, plenty of hose, stakes, etc. i bought a fine mist drip hose this year which i run down the middle (looped twice) which is much easier for gang-watering--$6 at the hdwe store.
tenants grow an assortment of veg, herbs, flowers, whatever they want and like...with the exception of invasives. we have a meeting for everyone in february to speak for a plot and divide the beds up according to how many will be gardening. i have 2 plots this year, about 12 feet by 4 feet total.
i'm growing 8 early girl tomatoes (suckered and staked to 8 feet), 8 feet of mixed lettuces (already harvested out), 6 bell peppers (also staked, for the lakeshore wind), 40 bok choi (already harvested), 8 feet of bluelake bush beans, 400 white onions (from sets, take the small green onions and harvest along until fall then all the rest go to the freezer for winter soups), 3 big basils, 2 big italian parsleys, and an outside row (12 feet) of lilliput zinnas, just for fun and pretty. i'll replant a row of mixed lettuces down the middle of my tomatoes where the old lettuce was over this weekend and hope it gets enough sun for another crop. come late august or early september i'll slide in as many bok choi starts as i can for a cool season run before snow flies.
i have experience with intensive raised bed gardening and am educating my neighbors to it as i can...i probably get more out of my beds than anyone else here but they will learn and do better *GRIN*. i provide somewhere around 50% of my own food annually, eating fresh and freezing everything i can.
in spring, as soon as the ground can be worked, i bring in 10 forty pound bags of composted manure (a buck apiece) and deep dig my beds. our growing season is maybe 90 days +/-...i am always looking for free/cheap ways to push my plants and/or push the growing season. we can have snow in june here and last frost date is generally accepted as mother's day. ugh. a real challenge! LOL.
i also have put in two beds behind my unit, next to my deck--they are about 12 feet by 4 feet each, too. i have 8 more bell peppers, 12 feet more of beans, a dozen strawberry plants (new this year and doing ok, yeild-wise but want more), 4 cukes that i swirl around onto themselves to conserve space, a stand of rhubarb (that i give away, just grow it for the red stalk color), more clumps of white onions from sets, sage, shasta daisies, purple emperor morning glories, 9 big clumps of garlic chives, 3 big clumps of orange daylilly, 2 new clumps of stargazer lilly, native ferns, 3 hosta, fill-in with pink impatiens. (pant pant, whew!) mint, rosemary, oregano, and annuals in pots on the front porch.
then...i have been working on the pondbank since i moved here. have opened it up and taken out some trees, killed off the blackberry and poison oak, limbed-up the remaining trees which leaves a canopy (shade) and enough roots to hold the slope. got free woodchip from the township (delivered!) for the past three years and have about 6 inches down over the whole project. this year was able to 'liberate' a lot of native ferns from upstream, also got 24 hosta from a church fundraiser for $1 each. we cleaned out the 'bridge' part of our road and got lots of horsetail reed and some kind of tidy spurge/cress thing for groundcover. also dug and started big plugs of wild vinca on the slopey parts. am looking for more hostas, rhododendrons, cattail, anything that will naturalize and be beautiful...it's a large project and will keep me and my neighbor busy for years LOL. did i mention that we have to all this for free or waaaaaay cheap? the pondbank is woodland-zen garden. i am 5 years new to northern gardening and know squat about perinnials. help?
ok. i am MAD for gardening. LOLOLOL.
we work when we can, on good days. we typically work for about 10 minutes and take a half hour break. everything takes longer than when i was well but s l o w l y it's all getting done and it's wonderful--a real transformation, an eden, a pleasure to see and be in. and it's all wildly theraputic, too.
gawd, i DO blather-on......sorry, folks.
anyway, i am here, would be pleased to help anywhere i can and am eager to learn from everyone. i expect i'll be around more come winter, when we are more housebound.
if anyone needs it i have links to disabled and low income gardening funding info. can do research prn during winter, just let me know what you need.
gotta go shift the water, will check back this evening. thank you all for being here, i am sooo happy to have found you!
wabi
hello everyone, new here from michigan
Hi, Wabi. Welcome to the Accessible Gardening forum of Dave's Garden. It sure sounds like you haven't allowed your physical challenges to stop your gardening. That's wonderful. Wish I was as energetic, but besided a few physical problems, I also have a large streak of laziness. Please check out the Dirt Cheap forum. It sounds like you have a lot of information that will help gardening and living as inexpensively as possible. Once again, welcome. Dotti
Whew! I need a "rest-break" just reading about all that work! What you are doing is wonderful, sharing your skills and great fun with your neighbors. I'm so glad you've joined us and I hope you will be able to show us some pictures of your projects.
thank you dottik and yuska,
before you get all impressed--remember that i've been working on all this for 5 years now. i just keep poking along at it, a little at a time, on the 'good days' when i can work, and slowly it's getting there.
the raised-bed community garden is the way to go--the work is all up front, as it were. we had about 100 people (from agencies in 2 counties) here to install and fill it back in 2001. potluck BBQ after. i think i still have the pics from that, will look for em.
anyhoo...then, every spring it's just adding organic material and giving it an easy forking and smoothing with a bowback rake--ready to plant! we all go out there every few days just to look and chat but there's almost no weeding, no work at all once it's planted. the new finemist hose is great--we leave it hooked up to the spigot and one of us walks out there, checks to see if it needs water, turns it on, goes back in 3 hours and turns it off. *GRIN* the beds are 25' X 4' and about 4' apart, parallel. the mist hose runs down the middle, doubled (it's 50' hose). best six bucks i ever spent!
come fall, we tend to cleanup as we harvest and then make an afternoon of it before snow flies, getting it all tidy and put away for the winter. we just tie up all the stakes with old strips of t-shirt, make sure all the tools are clean and dry, toss out broken pots and etc, stuff it all into the shed and lock er up. we've been talking about getting someone to bring us some fresh/hot manure and piling it on the beds to winter over but we'll have to see if we can arrange it. if we do then there'll be nothing to do in the spring but a quick forking and we can plant away.
those who can, fork. those who can't, we get the local high school kids to come do it--it covers their community service requirement and gets us help for free. they like working outside and one of us supervises them. everybody's happy.
i funded the garden with a USDA community garden grant. it was $20,000 for the year and for the whole county. i went and begged and made phone calls for everything too. lions club, a composter operation, target store, many local growers and nurseries, a law firm got us the railroad ties, etc. you just have to get out there and ask ask ask. if they say no, keep trying others and asking until someone says yes. LOL.
the whole thing probably cost somewhere around $1,000.00. all the labor was volunteer, including about 100 hours of my time (spread over a year). i had community garden management experience in california and did all the planning/prospectus/organizing/pushing. when i started, everyone told me i'd never get it approved for a HUD housing site. HA! we can do what we need to do. just never give up and find a way to make it work.
i did make sure that our management company got all the credit and wrote publicity releases for all the agencies involved newsletters--making THEM look good and like it was all their idea. i cited the americans with disabilities act, the proven mental and physical theraputic value of gardening, and stressed the objectives of self-suffuciency, supplementing food stamps, community-building, children learning, blah blah blah. it worked *GRIN*.
all that said, i do deeply believe in community gardening. it changes people forever when they grow their own food and share it with others. it's even MORE reveloutionary when applied to low-income people--empowerment, means-of-production, nurturance, wealth in the form of being able to give produce away, improved nutrition, improved self esteem from mastery, learning to improvise and solve problems, teamwork with their neighbors, tolerance for differing opinions about gardening, and on and on...
i make sure we all contribute to a big basket of fresh vegetables and herbs that gets delivered to our village librarians, police, emt crew, and fireguys. my neighbors squabble over who gets to deliver them...it's GREAT!!
i talk too much, sorry sorry sorry. i just get excited.
if any of you want to do something similar, i'd LOVE to coach you through the process. any help i can give is a pleasure for me.
thank gawd we don't have to pay our membership fees based on a per-word basis.............
laffin at meself, wabi
Welcome, your garden sounds so wonderful. I am glad there are people like you out there!
Melissa
I like your "can-do" spirit! A video of your group at work would also be a wonderful way to share the information, too. Maybe a project for the local PBS station?
Kudos to you! I had a contract as homeownership case manager and conducted some surveys among the HUD assisted PH residents here in Sierra County, NM. One of the top 'wishes' written in was a garden. I tried to let the powers that be know. :-( at the response. I think a community garden should be a part of every PH community.
Welcome to Dave's! Your projects sound wonderful, as do you!
Barb
Hi, and welcome!!! Sounds like you are a go-getter!!! I say go for it!!! I designed a garden for my daughter when she was small, cause she is in a wheelchair for life. She loved it and it was not hard to do, but for adults it may be a tad harder, costs more too,but not alot I am sure. Raised beds would be idea, we built ours out of cinder blocks as the base and built a wood encased bed 2X4 for her to grow assorted veggies and flowers. It was amazing and small of course at that time. My daughter is now 20, and goes to college in Philadelphia, Pa. So she is a go getter for sure!!! Anyway, back to you, I agree you should do a video and you would be suprised at how you may gets funds to do what you really want to do for an accessible garden!!! Best of luck!!!! Let us all know what happens!!!!
aw. you guys are all so great!
more thanks for all the warm welcomming.
angele--i think we should talk...maybe share what we learned, maybe we can do a project together? let me know if you're at all interested.
i really need to figure some way to post pics here, it would be so much better than my babbling-on about it. maybe i'll get to know someone in the michigan group who can help me out, we'll see.
sorry i haven't been in so much--harvested onions, then had wind/rain storm, had to prop/tie everything out there up and hope it survives it's lashing, did get my first mater of the year yesterday! mmmmmmmm.
have put up into the freezer so far;
4 gallons onions
2 gallons green beans (just getting started)
chives
basil
parsley
mint
oregano
sage
2 gallons stolen blueberries LOL
1 gallon mixed wild raspberries-blackberries
what are YOU working on?
I haven't been to this forum for some time. Welcome, Wabi. I love your attitude! If more folks were like you and the ones in your community there would be less sickness from lack of exercise and mental stagnation, probably less back stabbing and gossiping in housing developments, etc. and more old time friendliness.
Wabi, I imagine you and your unit neighbors have been planning and preparing the raised beds for this season's production. What is scheduled for planting? You mentioned semi-accessible....any wheelchair gardeners in the group? And how do you manage those 40 pound bags? I have a terrible struggle with 25 pounders. Yuska
I just discovered this forum and just want to congratulate you, wabi, on all your hard work and your willingness to share with others.
I work like you do, with short bursts of work and then a break. I used to walk back into the house for my breaks, but by the time I got there, it was time to go back out, so now I just go sit in the shade and listen to the birds for a few minutes.
Don't stop what you are doing. You have a lot to offer.