Armageddon in the garden

This summer I began writing a short series of posts about our local community garden and my plot in it.  This past week disaster struck.

South-central Wisconsin normally gets about 4" of rain in the entire month of July.  Last weekend, according to the admins, "...we received slightly over 4 inches of rain on one day, and then followed by another 3 inches the following day... One of the gardeners who went into the garden towards sunset of the first day reported that water was knee deep in places."  This community garden is located in an area that doesn't drain well, so most of the garden plots had standing water for 4-5 days.  The result was brutal for many of the vegetable crops.

The top photo shows someone's row of cabbages.  The leaves are dead and surrounded by not-yet-dry mud.   Here is someone's tomato patch:

The marsh hay covers the mud, but it's evident that all of the tomato plants are dying.  That surprised me a little, given how fleshy the fruits and the stems of tomatoes are, and how avidly they take up water in the summer.  But I think the standing water "drowns" the plant by cutting off oxygen to the root system and by facilitating the growth of fungi.

Someone else lost his/her tomatoes and the climbing legumes.

In my plot the tomatoes are dead, and these three rows of carrots are on death's doorstep.   The dill still stands, but is yellow.  The corn and squash look like survivors.

The least-affected plots in the community garden are (not surprisingly) the straw-bale gardens, like this one:

I can respond to this with some equanimity, since the garden was mostly designed for butterflies, and the tomatoes can be replaced with ones from our home garden (or the local farmers' market).

But as I surveyed the damage, I was forcefully reminded of an incident my mother related to me on several occasions.  She grew up in the 1930s on a Norwegian family farm in southern Minnesota, and remembers an incident where severe weather (I think a hailstorm) devastated one of the farm fields.  She remembers her mother nearly in tears saying to her "we really needed that crop."  Theirs was a life lived much closer to the edge than I will likely ever experience.  In an era before farm subsidies and crop insurance a single weather event (early or late freeze, wind lodging of the corn or grain, epidemic illness in the animals) went directly to the bottom line, especially in a cash-poor system where finished goods like clothing were sometimes obtained by barter.

What I lost amounted to several dozens of hours of labor.  Only two generations earlier a similar event would have been life-altering.  A sobering thought.

Badger Prairie Community Garden in midsummer

For a view of the gardens in spring, see my previous post in May.  Here's how some of the plots look now.  There are as many ways to garden as there are gardeners:

My own plot has met with what might charitably be called "mixed success."  On the back row the "Flint corn" ("Indian corn") has tasseled.  Underneath the corn I interplanted squash in the style of Native Americans.  It is growing vigorously, so I'm going to have to do something to keep it out of my neighbor's plot.

On the next row in, the dill is up nicely, but the other half of the row was fennel, and it never germinated; I've just replanted some, rather late in the season.  The carrots in the next row are doing well, but in the row proximal to that the parsley is having trouble competing with native weeds.  The tomatoes (outside the image) have been cropped on top by passing deer who probably laughed at the feeble fence (and they nipped some of the carrot tops for dessert).

No sign yet of Black Swallowtail eggs or caterpillars on the dill, carrots, or parsley.

A tour of Badger Prairie Community Garden

Some readers of this blog may be unfamiliar with community gardening.  So I thought today I'd walk everyone around the Badger Prairie Community Garden where I'm working a plot.

The top image is the best I can do for now as an "overview" (there's no high ground from which to take a photograph).  The garden covers about 1.5 acres, carved out of what was apparently a fallow farm field, and divided into about ninety 20'x20' plots, arranged in groups of six surrounded by communal pathways, with water standpipes spaced at nine locations.

Anyone can apply for one of the plots, which are allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.  The fee is based on household income and runs from a nominal $20 up to $75 for higher-income families.  Users can plant whatever they like, but it must be for personal use, not for commercial resale.  Only organic methods can be used (no herbicides/pesticides).   Participants contribute volunteer hours towards the maintenance of the common areas.  Here's the mission statement:

The mission of the Badger Prairie Community Garden is to cultivate the spirit of community and enhance quality of life by creating and sustaining organic gardens of vegetables, flowers, plants, and herbs. The gardens will foster environmental sustainability and stewardship, advance horticultural and nutritional education, provide a beautiful and natural retreat, and produce a healthy supplemental food source for its gardeners and the hungry. Local groups, schools, families, and individuals will be able to reserve plots for a sliding scale fee at the garden allowing people of all ages and abilities a part in the farm to table movement. Whether involvement is educational, economical, or just for the enjoyment of getting your hands dirty and growing your own food, this offers a great venue for bringing the Verona area community together.

Now let's walk around. 

First, a fairly conventional plot - rows of presumably veggies, straw on the walking paths, and in this case a rather high plastic fence aiming to deter local deer.

This gardener must love tomatoes:

This lattice I presume will be covered with climbing beans or other legumes:

These wide wood-chip paths and rectangular plots remind me of colonial American herb gardening.  Not sure what he/she has is growing.

It wasn't until after I'd already drawn up my own garden plan that I saw this person's maximally-efficient use of space in terms of the growing/walking areas ratio:

 

There are quite a few garden plots set up with raised beds of varying size and complexity.  Some of them seem to require a substantial amount of time and effort to construct.

Straw-bale gardening is becoming increasingly popular.  

One of my neighbors has set up structures for climbing veggies...

Another neighbor is apparently channeling Oscar Madison:

And here I am.  This week's photo was taken a couple weeks after my previous report when I tilled in the six wheelbarrowloads of compost worked into the plot.  Since then I've added walking paths (woodchips rather than straw) and put up a rabbit-deterring fence.  The flagging tape is not to warn the rabbits but for the children who play around the gardens while their parents work; I wouldn't want the little angels to run into the fence and hurt... the fence. 

The far row follows the native American tradition of having corn interplanted with squash.  The next row is half dill and half Florence fennel.  Then a row of carrots.  Proximal to that is half parsley and half cosmos.  Along the back left are some potatoes, basil, and blue wild indigo.  The most proximal row is still unplanted - still haven't figured out what to put there.

One of advantages of having a community garden is the availability of community resources.  Here is the shed wherein one can find equipment for garden maintenance, including mowers for the grass but also rakes, spades, pitchforks and other useful tools.  Everyone who has a plot knows the combination to the lock - so just take stuff out, use it, clean it, put it back.  (The crime scene tape is just to protect a reseeding).

On the other side of the parking lot is one of several composting sites.  My volunteer hours involve helping to get this material layered and turned.  Last week it was already cooking.  Behind it you can see the finished compost...

Here.  The autoexposure washed out the sign reading "compost ready to use."  This is one of five truckloads of finished material generated not from our own garden's waste, but from the local government's leaf-recycling.  Any gardener can help himself/herself to up to eight wheelbarrowloads.  Behind the finished compost pile you can see a now-almost-depleted pile of woodchips for pathways and walkways.  And to the left of these is...

... the pile of composted manure (ready to use)

And finally, a nice touch.  Installed at the entrance to the garden is a wash-up station with non-potable water for washing veggies.  Also a rudimentary first aid kit.

Not shown in this photoessay is the other strength of a community garden: the participants.  You start with a baseline of nice Midwesterners, and then select the subset of People Who Like To Garden, and you have very nice companions.  All that's necessary to start a conversation is to walk past someone's plot and ask "Whatcha growin?"  Friendships are easy and uncomplicated and you don't even have to wear your good going-shopping-at-Target blue jeans; you can wear your dirty-but-not-washed-because-you're-going-to-sit-in-the-dirt-again-to-weed jeans.

I'll post some followup photos as the season progresses.

This "area 51" will be a butterfly garden

For as long as I can remember I've been an enthusiastic fan of community gardens, but this year for the first time I applied for, and was granted, a plot here in a Madison suburb.  I have plot #51 in the Badger Prairie Community Garden.

Those unfamiliar with community gardening can read typical guidelines here.  All participants at our garden are expected to perform six hours of community service; I'll be working with the compost group on Tuesday evenings.

We are well past the last frost date, so it's time to get to work.  First, there are some weeds from last year to remove...

My neighbors clearly had a head start preparing their gardens, and I didn't want my plot to become a seed bank for unwanted vegetation for them, so this afternoon I hand-tilled and hand-dug about two wheelbarrowsful of weeds, which cleared about two-thirds of the 20' x 20' plot (photo taken earlier in the process); hope to finish tomorrow.

Next I'll need to determine the planting areas and walking access, and start seeding.  This past Christmas my stocking was stuffed with seed packets for dill, fennel, parsley, and carrot - all favored by the Black Swallowtail.  This garden is located near a lot of undeveloped prairie and fields, so I'm hoping that swallowtails will find this cornucopia of food plants and oviposit, and that I can find the eggs or early instars before the birds and wasps do.

I'll post some followups as the summer progresses.

Addendum:

Weeding finished (I left a few of what I think are nonagressive daisy-like wildflowers), and about six wheelbarrowloads of compost hand-tilled into the area.  Now I need to put a layer of woodchips down where I want to have my walking areas, then I'll be ready to plant the seeds.  Lots of work so far, but this is the hard part; the rest will be less labor-intensive and more enjoyable.