Good Golly Miss Molly

Mayweather was not the only one to achieve a technical knock out yesterday.  The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden was freakishly busy knocking out projects ourselves. We were again the lucky beneficiaries of The Ohio State University’s Pay-It-Forward Program which sent us 30 hardworking and dedicated college students who helped us move the needle forward on our 2017 capital improvement project, clean up our weedy alley, water our food pantry plots and a few flower beds, tidy the Block Watch lot across the street and find a new bee hive, weed the tomato bed next door at Kimball Farms and pick up almost 20 bags of litter in a four block area around the Garden.  This all went relatively smoothly because I had  LOTS of help from Sabrina, Ken and Amy to each supervise a team of students.

Poison Ivy Part I.  Earlier this month, while I was cursing and pulling bind weed off of the raspberry brambles in the raised bed area of the SACG, I forgot to pay attention to whether the poison ivy had returned.  Mistake.  It had.  I wasn’t just pulling bind weed; I was also pulling bind weed and poison ivy willy nilly.  Considering how careless I was, I got off lucky.   On Sunday night, my right arm started to itch and form a rash.  By Monday, I had many blisters the size of dimes.  On Tuesday, more blisters kept appearing, so a doctor who casually noticed my unsightly arm prescribed me some steroids (which was a first for me and was almost an out-of-body experience).   I now have some slight scarring, but my arm looks better and I think the scar will fade away eventually.

Before the volunteers (in July)

I was so annoyed with this that I declared war on the poison ivy in that corner even if it meant killing every living thing within 10 square feet around that area.  Napalm in the morning sounded like the right approach.  I went over with a large sprayer of Round Up that I purchased last year, but the nozzle was clogged.  Curses!  Foiled again.  Sabrina took pity on me, declared that she was not allergic to poison ivy and chopped away at the brambles and weeds on the Garden side and identified for me various poison ivy vines.  I returned with the special Round up for Poison Ivy and napalmed the entire area.  If all of the brambles died, too, so be it.  We can plant more next year.    Grrr.    I’ve been sharing this tale with anyone silly enough to ask me about the Garden or to stop by this month.

 This did not stop me from attacking the far more pernicious poison ivy in the Block Watch lot yesterday, though.  More on that later.

Capital Improvement Project.  OSU contacted me a few weeks ago to confirm Saturday’s work day

After the OSU volunteers

and the times.  They would arrive between 10:30 and 11 and leave between 1 and 1:30.  I was able to dig all 8 post poles, but Ken and Taylor had to finish some of them off for me.  Then, Taylor helped me two Wednesdays in a row (even though he had brought his visiting-from-Florida mother with him last week) to place the fence posts so that we would have them up in time for the OSU students.    Ken and I had not resolved our dispute over how to build the fence.  I wanted to build it in sections (which he thought was a terrible idea because of how difficult it would be to keep the stringers and picket tops in a straight line), and he wanted to put up the stringers and then attach the pickets (which I know is a terrible idea because it would destroy the front flower bed with more than two months left in our growing season and be almost impossible for the areas behind the rose bushes).  Besides, I pointed out, the fence needs to be painted before it goes up because you will not be able to paint the back side of the stringers or pickets once they are attached (since we are keeping the wire fence in place to use as a growing trellis and to keep out bunnies and other four legged critters that like to crawl under gaps in our prettier fence).    He saw the wisdom of this and worked on adjusting his plan.

When the OSU students arrived around 11 a.m., I told them about the SACG, offered them overly-dry chocolate no-bake cookies that I had made the prior evening and bananas that Sabrina picked up, etc. and split them up into teams.  (Usually, the OSU kids have had a huge kick-off breakfast and don’t eat until the end of the day, but this group wanted to start eating immediately – making me suspect that they had not had enough to eat for breakfast).  One team of 8 helped Ken.  He cut down the stringers to size (and leveled the posts).   They hauled up pickets and stringers from our storage location at UrbanConnections, and painted them on all sides.  (The lumber and paint were donated by the City of Columbus and subsidized by Lowe’s Home Improvement Store).   I had only brought one painting tarp from home and so they could only paint so much lumber in the time available.   We had abundant sunshine to dry the paint quickly, but the wood absorbed much more paint than we had budgeted for and I think that I will have to buy more paint since we are only 1/3 finished and only have a half can remaining.

(Before the OSU volunteers . . . in July)

Sadly, the OSU bus came early (well before 1 p.m.) because the other OSU volunteer group sharing the bus finished early and wanted to return to campus.  So, we did not get many pickets attached.   Ken worked for a few minutes after they left and may return on Wednesday to attach a few more.  We do not have another student group scheduled (that could finish the project) until Capital University students come on September 23 for the annual Crusader Day of Service.  (It's becoming a pattern that my OSU and Capital University student groups tag team to complete our major capital improvement projects).     However, I think that the new fence looks fantastic and compliments our trellis entrance (that was donated and installed last year). 

After the OSU volunteers

The Alley Campaign.  It’s always a challenge to keep our alley side looking tidy when we do not have volunteers.  I tend to focus my time on growing vegetables and then the flowers.    It’s been looking extremely weedy for more than a month and the strawberry patch has been very neglected (even though it is an assigned chore) and this is surprising because there are actually strawberries growing in it.    Amy took charge of a crew of 4-6 students who weeded the strawberry patch, cleaned the weeds out between the alley and the Garden (including around and in the compost bins) and straightened up our stone curb. Amy was understandably proud of their achievement and then she spent some time weeding the front flower bed.

When they finished this, I had one of them restock and tidy our Free Little Library with a box of books that had been donated by Half Price Books.  She emptied the entire box and filled the library.  (Hint, Hint:  I'm out of books for our Free Little Library and would welcome donated books if you have any). 

I assigned two of volunteers to weed the paths and around our raised beds.  Two of them (now low on blood sugar and moving slowly) weeded and straightened up a bench.

The rest were sent next door to weed the tomato raised bed at Kimball Farms (which has spent the week building a high tunnel for winter produce production.  (The Mid-Ohio  Food Bank received a federal grant to subsidize the construction of high tunnels at area community gardens.  It’s a great project, but I need my winters off.). 

The Watering Crew.  Sabrina took three young men and helped them to water most of the Garden, including the food pantry plots and some of the flower beds and fruit trees.  They then weeded the neglected raised bed outside the Garden and harvested three giant carrots for our food pantry donation.  She then went around and grabbed lots of produce to reward Ken for all of his hard work, planted several rows of lettuce in our food pantry plots,  and helped me with finishing the food pantry weekly harvest.

The Litter Crusaders.  Some years lots of volunteers want to pick up litter; some years none do.  Robert Seed is back to work at Keep Columbus Beautiful.  He had to suffer through my retelling of my poison ivy woes and volunteered to help me with my clogged Round Up sprayer.  He also stopped by the Garden in case there was something that he could do.   It then belatedly occurred to me that I had not made arrangements with him to get litter grabbers, etc. for our OSU volunteers.  Fortunately, he was able to accommodate us.  Good thing, because this was the most gung-ho litter pickers the SACG has ever had.  Many times, our litter picker volunteers come back with just three half-bags of litter and I just look at them incredulously.  No way.  What were you doing for the last hour if that is all you came back with?    I purposely did not pick up the plastic bags that blew onto our lot this last week because I wanted to leave something for our OSU volunteers to do. 

After one hour, this crew came back with about 10 bags of litter.  I asked them to then hit our alleys, but they already had.  They had already covered Morrison and Fairwood and Stoddart and the alleys in between.  They grabbed a cookie and headed south of Main on Lilley.   They came back with more full bags and a pair of crutches.

The volunteer potatoes grew into a dough boy

Free Little Pantry.  I diverted two of them to distribute a newsletter in the neighborhood about our proposed Free Little Pantry. Ken was excited about it, but a bit discouraged about the Board’s general lack of passion for the project.  I explained that it was more about how the pantry would be stocked because building it was just a first step.  The Dispatch has run a number of stories about the Free Little Pantry a few blocks away on Livingston.  Life Vineyard Church also put up a not-so-little one near the intersection of Main and Alum Creek and it is perpetually understocked.  The lady who constructed the one on Livingston reported that she refills it every day and spends approximately $50/week in doing so.  Our annual budget is a just little more than $100, so $2500 (i.e., $50 x 50 weeks) would overwhelm the SACG.  I like the idea, but I’m not willing to take responsibility for this by myself.   After a little research at littlefreepantry.org, I told him that I would survey the neighborhood to see if there were any strong objections or support for it.  I don’t want to foist a project on the neighborhood to which they will object, and we will obviously need a lot of help to keep it stocked.  I told the neighborhood that we would need between 15-20 groups, families or individuals to agree to stock it one day each month to proceed with the project.  Mari (from our Board) volunteered to take a day.  Otherwise, it’s been 24 hours and I have received neither objections nor volunteers.

I also invited the neighbors to help with our fence project by helping to attach pickets or paint.  (The kids often like to help paint, even though they usually get as much paint on themselves and as on the project).

Weeds, Bees and Poison Ivy Part II (Oh My).  The rest of the group got to help me pull bind weed off brambles and to cut down the scrub bushes across the street.  We found that the poison ivy had really taken off over there (which I hear about and have observed from time to time).  The poison ivy was so mature that it had formed berries.  I explained in excrutiating detail   how dangerous the ivy was and how important it was to not touch it.  We hacked away at the weed trees and bushes and ivy.  One of the ladies then found an underground bee hive.  This was the most excitement we’ve had for a while. (I heard no squeals indicating the discovery of a snake this year).    I had explained during orientation that they should not fear the bees because they were too busy collecting pollen to care about any of us.    This proved a great opportunity to prove my point because lots of bees were coming and going from the tunnel and they could not have cared less about the crowd that gathered to observe this.

One of the ladies got the joy of mowing a bit of the Block Watch lawns.  When I arrived shortly after 9 a.m. on Saturday, I found neighbor Greg finishing up the mowing.  What are you doing, I asked.  Don’t you know that I have 30 volunteers coming this morning and we always mow the lawn on such days!  No one had told him.  I told him to stop and we would finish.  And so we did.

When we finished around noon, I assigned two of them the joy of helping with our weekly food pantry harvest.  Emma started with the beans (which take the longest to pick) and Jimmy was assigned the tomatoes and kale.   I had hoped that they would harvest more, but the bus arrived early.  (I guess for them it is better than a couple of years ago when it was extremely hot and the bus was an hour late).

When the bus arrived, I corralled the students over to our sign and badgered them to bring the litter bags with them to put up front as trophies.  We took a few group pictures, put the litter bags in dumpsters, and then they were on their way back to campus.   Everyone came to waive goodbye and we spent another 30 minutes putting everything away.  Then, Sabrina and I finished the food pantry harvest.    Because I didn’t get out until after 2 p.m., it was too late to make it to the food pantry (which closes at 3).  Instead, the 56 pounds of produce went to Faith Mission's Homeless Shelter and then I returned to the SACG to harvest from my own plot and to plant some cilantro.  I finally arrived home around 4:30.  I still ache all over, but I am excited to finally have the fence project underway and to push the Free Little Pantry project a little forward as well.

This week, I get to return all of the tools (to the Rebuilding Together Tool Library which loaned us
hedge clippers to attack the weeds and to Keep Columbus Beautiful -- which also has some yard waste bags for us - which loaned us the litter grabbers).    

Labor Day weekend will be more relaxed than this because our Fall planting has been completed and we’ll be winding down from this point forward (except for completing the fence project).

Want to help?  Anyone who wants to help us complete the fence project only needs to email me at GardenMgr445@gmail.comor show up on this or next Wednesday evening or this Saturday morning.    There’s still lots of painting to do (which I am qualified to coordinate).  We will have to schedule in advance with Ken, though, to actually attach the remaining stringers and pickets. 

Thanks to Tom

The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden owes a debt of gratitude to Sabrina's spouse, Tom, who has taken on a number of projects this year, including the rebuilding and painting of our picnic table.  This fixture on our corner lot has been a gathering place for neighborhood kids, crews of volunteers and board meetings.  It's now no longer a collapsing eyesore, but a refreshing (and sturdy!) green.

Tom's also been known to water our pantry and neighborhood plots and, most importantly, do the heavy lifting in the parenting department when Sabrina is occupied at the SACG.  So shout out to him.

Last week, we donated a total of 20 pounds of fresh produce to the Broad Street Presbyterian food pantry on East Broad Street, including 6 pounds dropped off by our friend, Sean who gardens in his Berwick backyard. (The donation included this butternut squash.)

Pesky Groundhog

Our Garden Manager, Sabrina, is on a mission to restrain our resident groundhog(s).  It -- or they -- have been eating everything tender and green and destroying cabbage right and left.  Several food pantry cabbages had developed beautifully and were ready to be harvested when they were struck down in their prime by the Pesky Groundhog.  There have been multiple sightings over the summer ... the groundhog scurrying under Norman's deck, diving into the berry bushes bordering Sabrina's plot to the southwest, etc.

COVID19 put on hold this year's planned project to dig deep and bury several feet of fencing around the garden.  We have also considered trying to trap the groundhog and seeking help from a wildlife rescue organization. 

In other recent news, 42 pounds of SACG and friends' produce made its way into the grocery bags of clients at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church food pantry this week.

High Summer

 The Garden is in overdrive!  The squash is spreading like crazy and the corn growing about 6 inches a week.  A few gardeners have planted some cool-weather fall crops -- like kale and beets.  Ethan has started seedlings at home that he expects to transplant at the end of the month. Last night, Christie harvested food pantry peppers, cabbage, cantaloupe and tomatoes, while Ethan added a contribution of beets, Swiss chard, and some greens.  

Amy picked up some produce donated by Sean, a prolific gardener who lives in Berwick, to add to the SACG haul.  The combined donation to the Broad Street Presbyterian pantry on Monday, August 10 came in at about 75 pounds.  So far, our city water access remains intact, while Norman's cisterns yield plenty of water as well.  Hats off to Tom, Sabrina's spouse, who tended plots in her absence and has taken the lead on some hardscape project, such as dismantling the tumbled-down picnic table.  We also appreciate board member and neighbor Frank for managing the mowing of the SACG and neighbor lots.

30 Pounds Donated

The SACG has a rich tradition of growing and donating produce throughout the season, with 2019's total clocking in at over 600 pounds.  

Last week, Christie harvested about 30 pounds of beets, onions, carrots and peaches for the food pantry at Broad Street Presbyterian Church.   COVID-19 protocols at in place at the pantry and the delivery person, Amy, was not allowed in the kitchen, but a masked and gloved worker assisted in unloading.  The SACG plans to make a drop off each Monday morning during August.  As the pandemic curtails livelihoods and opportunities, the need for fresh food will only increase.

"Everything looked beautiful – especially the peaches! Almost all of it went home with the families who shopped today – we just have a few beets left!  Thanks to you and all the gardeners."

                  BSPC's Kathy-Kelly Long

2020 Growing Season

Hey, we may be in the middle of a global pandemic, but the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden is still growing food and building community.

Welcome to our 12th growing season. The year had a somewhat slow start, mainly because our intrepid founder and Garden Manager, Priscilla Hapner retired after last season and we had to organize ourselves in such a way that we could maintain the institution that she had built. The COVID 19 pandemic and a rainy spring also contributed to delays. 

But as the reader can see, we are fully operational now. Sabrina Reynolds-Wing, a longtime gardener, board member and supporter, agreed to step in and serve as Garden Manager. We adopted some policies for social distancing and disinfecting tools. The board scaled back some of the SACG operations and reduced the need for outside volunteers. Board members, neighbors and friends committed to taking on several regular chores to lessen Sabrina's load. The board also recruited a team to manage the food pantry plots, harvesting and donations, headed by Ohio State University grad student, Christie Hammons. We are now in business and about ready to donate a round to the area pantries that Christie has enlisted. You can see early stages of food pantry planting below.  

Joining Sabrina and Christie in 2020 are returning gardeners Charlie, Ethan, Michael and Whitney and Amy.

Our summer has already proven that challenges lie ahead: the strawberry patch suffered from last summer's heat and failed to produce as much fruit as in previous years; our pesky groundhog has shown himself and begun to nibble; June was unseasonably hot and dry; and the city water turn-on got a bit complicated.

But our sisters' plot corn is as "high as an elephant's eye" and the SACG is feeding all of us now.  Happy summer!

New Year and New Leadership

With a new decade comes new leadership at the Stoddart Avenue  Community Garden.  Your recently retired Garden Manager is making one last post to thank you for assisting and contributing to the success of Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  Community gardening is often exhausting, frustrating and relentless because it always involves a lot of work and challenges. We could not have accomplished all that we did without your generous support. As we start to prepare for the 2020 season, we wanted to share some of our great memories over last summer.

April saw us break ground for our 11^th growing season on an unseasonably warm day with amazing assistance from OSU’s First Year Leadership Initiative.  We spread your wood chips on our paths and around the fence lines, straightened the front gate trellis, straightened our platform raised beds, picked up neighborhood litter, and made more progress on the south side of the Garden with our fence straightening project.     Ken Turner, a former Board member, completely refurbished one of our old and rotting benches.  (Hint hint:  we still have one other bench which needs similar TLC so that we can sit on it again). 

For our annual Earth Day celebration the following week, we planted a honeycrisp apple tree (to go with our McIntosh, Jonathon and Granny Smith trees planted last Fall). Our Stoddart/East Main corner looked cheery with bulbs planted in December which had been donated by Strader’s Garden Centers and distributed at the December GCGC holiday party meeting at the Conservatory.   We also weeded, transplanted, replenished potting soil in the platform raised beds, spread mulch donated by Ohio Mulch and Keep Columbus Beautiful, painted our rain barrel, tidied the strawberry patch, made progress on the northern side of the Garden for our fence straightening project, spread compost, planted grass, and prepared garden beds. 

In June, the Franklin County Municipal Court began again sending us community service volunteers, who helped pick up neighborhood litter, mow the lawns around the Garden, pick cherries, berries, and tomatoes for our weekly food pantry donations, edge flower beds, weed and water food pantry plots and tidy up our alley.  These court-ordered volunteers came almost every week for the rest of the season, and even helped a little at the nearby north Bexley Community Garden.  (Money can buy beautiful landscaping, but skilled hands are still needed).    

In June, we also had help from neighborhood children and visiting volunteers at Urban Connections’ annual summer day camp who came twice that week to help us pick cherries and berries to donate to the Salvation Army on East Main Street.  This year, Urban Connections received a Neighborhood Partnership grant from the Columbus Foundation and the United Way of Central Ohio to work with the SACG on their camp theme of Growing Together in Christ, which included lessons on planting, harvesting and water at the SACG, despite the rainy weather.  We had a bumper crop this year of tart pie cherries, so we needed all of the help we could get.

As you may recall, it pretty much stopped raining at the end of July.  Lucky for us, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank paid for two water hydrants to be installed at the Garden last summer.   The City generously fills our rain cisterns once a year and did so again this year at the beginning of August, but that water was gone in a flash. Sadly, the abnormally dry summer was not our only challenge.  Groundhogs returned to the Garden to eat our heirloom tomatoes, kale and particularly sweet potato vines.  Last year, we harvested around 40  pounds of sweet potatoes, but this year only 5 pounds.  Sigh.  And, because our next door neighbor did not garden this year, the local thieves climbed our fence, broke our front gate and stole our produce instead, including most of our cabbage and vandalized most of the kale that the groundhogs had not eaten.  I cannot blame the four-legged or two-legged varmits, though, for the complete failure of our winter squash crop.  I remain mystified.  But, we had a bumper melon and grape crop to compensate.

OSU and Capital students came in August and September, respectively, to help us plant our Fall crops of beets, turnips, lettuce and radishes.  Although the Capital students were mostly rained out, the OSU students helped us to water, weed, harvest, mow, picked up litter and reorganized our shed.  

OSU students returned at the end of October (after our first frost) to help tear down the Garden, cut back and bag the dead corn and bean stalks and tomato vines, stack the tomato cages and trellises, prune raspberry brambles, harvest our pathetic sweet potato crop, clean out the neighbor and melon beds, mow, etc.

It was again freakishly cold for our closing day in November, but we had a great turnout and got everything cleaned up and put away for the winter.

As you know, I am retiring from the Garden after 11 years, but am being succeeded by long-time Board member and multiple-year Volunteer of the Year, Sabrina Reynolds-Wing.   So, like many things, the Garden leadership is passing from Gen X to Millenials.  I appreciate everyone’s support over the years and expect you to continue supporting Sabrina as she leads us into another decade.  We could have not gotten to this point without her.

 We are only able to overcome our various challenges because of the generosity, well wishes and material support from generous folks like you.   Thanks again and feel free to stop by and mock us while we work.   

New Year and New Leadership

With a new decade comes new leadership at the Stoddart Avenue  Community Garden.  Your recently retired Garden Manager is making one last post to thank you for assisting and contributing to the success of Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.  Community gardening is often exhausting, frustrating and relentless because it always involves a lot of work and challenges. We could not have accomplished all that we did without your generous support. As we start to prepare for the 2020 season, we wanted to share some of our great memories over last summer.

April saw us break ground for our 11^th growing season on an unseasonably warm day with amazing assistance from OSU’s First Year Leadership Initiative.  We spread your wood chips on our paths and around the fence lines, straightened the front gate trellis, straightened our platform raised beds, picked up neighborhood litter, and made more progress on the south side of the Garden with our fence straightening project.     Ken Turner, a former Board member, completely refurbished one of our old and rotting benches.  (Hint hint:  we still have one other bench which needs similar TLC so that we can sit on it again). 

For our annual Earth Day celebration the following week, we planted a honeycrisp apple tree (to go with our McIntosh, Jonathon and Granny Smith trees planted last Fall). Our Stoddart/East Main corner looked cheery with bulbs planted in December which had been donated by Strader’s Garden Centers and distributed at the December GCGC holiday party meeting at the Conservatory.   We also weeded, transplanted, replenished potting soil in the platform raised beds, spread mulch donated by Ohio Mulch and Keep Columbus Beautiful, painted our rain barrel, tidied the strawberry patch, made progress on the northern side of the Garden for our fence straightening project, spread compost, planted grass, and prepared garden beds. 

In June, the Franklin County Municipal Court began again sending us community service volunteers, who helped pick up neighborhood litter, mow the lawns around the Garden, pick cherries, berries, and tomatoes for our weekly food pantry donations, edge flower beds, weed and water food pantry plots and tidy up our alley.  These court-ordered volunteers came almost every week for the rest of the season, and even helped a little at the nearby north Bexley Community Garden.  (Money can buy beautiful landscaping, but skilled hands are still needed).    

In June, we also had help from neighborhood children and visiting volunteers at Urban Connections’ annual summer day camp who came twice that week to help us pick cherries and berries to donate to the Salvation Army on East Main Street.  This year, Urban Connections received a Neighborhood Partnership grant from the Columbus Foundation and the United Way of Central Ohio to work with the SACG on their camp theme of Growing Together in Christ, which included lessons on planting, harvesting and water at the SACG, despite the rainy weather.  We had a bumper crop this year of tart pie cherries, so we needed all of the help we could get.

As you may recall, it pretty much stopped raining at the end of July.  Lucky for us, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank paid for two water hydrants to be installed at the Garden last summer.   The City generously fills our rain cisterns once a year and did so again this year at the beginning of August, but that water was gone in a flash. Sadly, the abnormally dry summer was not our only challenge.  Groundhogs returned to the Garden to eat our heirloom tomatoes, kale and particularly sweet potato vines.  Last year, we harvested around 40  pounds of sweet potatoes, but this year only 5 pounds.  Sigh.  And, because our next door neighbor did not garden this year, the local thieves climbed our fence, broke our front gate and stole our produce instead, including most of our cabbage and vandalized most of the kale that the groundhogs had not eaten.  I cannot blame the four-legged or two-legged varmits, though, for the complete failure of our winter squash crop.  I remain mystified.  But, we had a bumper melon and grape crop to compensate.

OSU and Capital students came in August and September, respectively, to help us plant our Fall crops of beets, turnips, lettuce and radishes.  Although the Capital students were mostly rained out, the OSU students helped us to water, weed, harvest, mow, picked up litter and reorganized our shed.  

OSU students returned at the end of October (after our first frost) to help tear down the Garden, cut back and bag the dead corn and bean stalks and tomato vines, stack the tomato cages and trellises, prune raspberry brambles, harvest our pathetic sweet potato crop, clean out the neighbor and melon beds, mow, etc.

It was again freakishly cold for our closing day in November, but we had a great turnout and got everything cleaned up and put away for the winter.

As you know, I am retiring from the Garden after 11 years, but am being succeeded by long-time Board member and multiple-year Volunteer of the Year, Sabrina Reynolds-Wing.   So, like many things, the Garden leadership is passing from Gen X to Millenials.  I appreciate everyone’s support over the years and expect you to continue supporting Sabrina as she leads us into another decade.  We could have not gotten to this point without her.

 We are only able to overcome our various challenges because of the generosity, well wishes and material support from generous folks like you.   Thanks again and feel free to stop by and mock us while we work.   

Closing With Another Cold November

Last week, the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden closed for the season and perhaps permanently.   It was, again, very cold, but it’s always heartwarming when we have a number of true volunteers come to put everything away for the season.

At the beginning of the month, Amy came and we had four community service volunteers from the County Environmental Court who helped us to prune back our raspberry bushes, pick up litter in the neighborhood, empty the rain cisterns, clean out annual flowers from the flower bed, harvest radishes, turnips and swiss chard for our weekly donation (which went to the Good Samaritan produce giveaway at Fairwood Elementary School just a couple blocks away), clean out the rest of the cherry tomatoes and vines, clean out abandoned garden plots (thanks Paul and MacKenzie), clean up the corner native flower bed, and mow our lot, the orchard lot and the Block Watch lot across the street, etc.

After that, I painted the metal flower garden art to tidy it up and Charlie emptied and stored the rain barrel, cleaned out even more garden beds, and helped me to fix the front gate.





On our closing day, we had a small army.  In addition to two court community service volunteers, Amy, Whitney, John and Ethan came to help to take down and store the signs (and other supplies that I had been storing at home), wrap up and store the hose, tidy up and organize the shed, stack the tomato cages and stakes, stack, roll and store the trellises, paint the front gate, rake out garden beds, clean out the neighbor bed, harvest radishes, turnips, rosemary, sage, kale, swiss chard, lettuce and beets to take to Faith Mission, clean up and straighten the alley curb, empty our trash can, transport our extra fence pickets from the UC shed to our shed, etc.

I brought hot spiced apple cider (i.e., apple pie in a mug) and no-bake chocolate-peanut butter cookies and Amy brought chocolate-pumpkin bread to keep up our blood sugar.  The other environmental court volunteers were picking up abandoned tires.

Not surprisingly, John was our Volunteer of the Year for 2019 because he came so many weekends to do extra work until it became oppressively hot and humid.  Amy remains our tidiest gardener.  While John kept an extremely tidy plot, he also did not grow as much as she did.

This was the third really cold closing day in a row.  If I were sticking around another season, we would definitely be closing by Halloween next year because it is too cold to be gardening when the high temperature is 35 degrees.  

I have attached our year-end charts showing our food pantry donation results, as well as two charts showing how the donations were made over the past decade. 

The Board is speaking with a couple of OSU college students that are interested in taking over our food pantry donation program and Whitney has a friend that may be interested in taking over, too.   So, we are still trying to figure out whether there will be another planting season.  The OSU students did not show up for our closing day because it was too cold for them . . . . I hope that they do better when it gets really hot and humid.


Meanwhile, I was able to get my cold frame re-  assembled at home and it is protecting my kale, cabbage, lettuce and spinach from the polar plunge. Kale is always sweeter after a good freeze and frost.  

The SACG is not the only long-time community garden in this situation.  The Columbus Dispatch reported last week that the City had purchased the New Harvest Cafe in Linden, which means that the Alma Vera Community Garden has closed.  St. Vincent dePaul's long-time award winning garden that is even older than the SACG is also closing while the Center is demolished and enlargened on the Garden's site.  While Marge is hoping that part of the garden will be resurrected some day, she is not certain and is searching how to distribute their assets (like the greenhouse).  Franklinton Farms is also searching for a new Executive Director because, like me, Nick is departing at the end of this year.   Change is the only constant in life.