Hi Garden Community!! (long email-please read till end)
We will have plenty of volunteer work parties and opportunities to get working on major garden projects over the next 6 weeks. Get your garden time started with a bang this year and get ahead of your volunteer time before the summer season starts and people have a tendency to get busier.
As many of you know we are in the middle of a major project to expand accessibility to the garden. We are resurfacing the Enabled Garden area, the main east/west path to the patio and a new welcome area in the southeast corner of the garden with water permeable gravel hardscape. This will make those areas American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessible for our garden community and for the broader community. We need everyone volunteering to complete these projects on schedule. Here is the schedule for work parties and events for March/early April in our garden.
We will not have our regular monthly garden meeting in March since we have our Spring Kick-Off meeting on March 17.
Proposed schedule:
1) Between now and March 10 we need to move a lot of dirt to prepare the Enabled Beds area, main path to patio, and welcome area for gravel delivery (see below).
2) Saturday, March 10, move stock tanks from Enabled Bed area. This would be a small work party to assist a volunteer excavator from the community who is bringing equipment to move the tanks temporarily. Gordon, Shawn and Roy are willing to help. Others??
3) Sunday, March 11 at 10am. Regularly scheduled monthly work party.
4) Between now and March 23 will will need to do final prep in the areas including cedar boards picked up from a lumber yard and installed as edging in these areas.
5) All Garden Spring Kick-Off meeting March 17, 3-5pm at Our Redeemers Lutheran Church. We will discuss this and other projects as well as socialize and welcome new gardeners.
6) Friday, March 23 a dump truck of large gravel delivered to the P-Patch.
7) Saturday, March 24 at 10am. Big work party. Gravel spread and tamped down. Need people to bring garden rakes (ie bow rakes) to augment the rakes at the garden and buckets to move gravel.
Sunday, March 25 at 10am. Big Work Party. Gravel spread and tamped down. Need people to bring garden rakes (ie bow rakes) to augment the rakes at the garden and buckets to move gravel.
9) Friday. March 30. A dump truck of small gravel delivered.
10) Saturday, March 31 at 10am Big work party. Gravel spread and tamped down. Need people to bring garden rakes (ie bow rakes) to augment the rakes at the garden and buckets to move gravel.
11) Sunday, April 1 at 10am. Big work party. Gravel spread and tamped down. Need people to bring garden rakes (ie bow rakes) to augment the rakes at the garden and buckets to move gravel.
12) Small work party to restore tanks (to be scheduled, maybe 4/7).
We are hoping that if there are people who don’t want to or cannot do gravel moving and tamping work, perhaps they would consider working on a “lunch detail” to handle snacks and lunch breaks for the work parties. We’d get more bang for our buck, if we make snacks/lunches/drinks instead of ordering something to either be picked up or delivered.
Project Overview:
For those who have not been at the monthly garden meetings over the winter or have not heard about this project let me give you an overview. We are making the garden more ADA accessible and enhancing access in our Enabled Beds area, the main path to the patio and a new welcome area in the garden. In order to complete this we are removing 6-8 inches of soil in these areas and replacing it with 3-4 inches of tamped 3/8 inch+ gravel and topping that with 2-3 inches of tamped 3/8 inch- gravel. This will create a water permeable hardscape that will be fully accessible and permanent.
If you go up to the garden you will see that this soil removal has begun. We have removed all wood chips from these areas and staged them in the southwest corner. We have also begun moving the soil out of the area to a depth of 6-8 inches. You will see that we are staging this soil in an area just east of the patio and north of the enabled beds area where the shed and chip pile used to be.
This is good composted soil from years of broken down chips and soil. Please take it and put in on your gardens. Many of you have expressed interest in this already.
Please come to one of the work parties his month and if you have other times available swing by and pitch in on this project. There is a task list on the inside of the shed.
Thanks for sticking in on this long email. If you have further questions contact Cathy, Roy or I. I would also like to send out a special thank you to Diane Zebert, who took a lead on this project and has facilitated setting up the process as well as procuring a $1,000 city grant to help fund it.
peace and health
Shawn, Roy and Cathy