On Saturday, the Board of Trustees for the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden met at Cup O’Joe’s in Bexley to discuss plans for 2014. The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts that April and May will be warmer and drier than usual. With this in mind, the opening day for the 2014 gardening season will be April 12, 2014. The rain/make-up date will be April 26. Refreshments will be served. Our work will focus on spreading wood chips on the garden paths and around the fence lines, repairing the fence, transplanting raspberry bushes and strawberry plants, pruning rose bushes, turning compost, weeding flower beds and picking up litter in the neighborhood. A copy of the 2014 Garden Agreement and Garden Rules will be posted here with a formal invitation to join the SACG in March. (If you can’t wait that long, feel free to print them out now, sign them and mail them to me. By March, it will be time, after all, to begin starting seeds indoors and plots are awarded first-come-first served). The Rules have been updated to address concerns with zombies and dragons and to incorporate more of the City’s community garden rules regarding night-time gardening and alcohol.
We are still searching for a new Garden Manager. The job description is posted on our website. Anyone interested in developing or polishing their leadership, gardening and project management skills should send me an email and possibly a resume. We are also still interested in starting a 4-H club for the neighborhood children, but we will need a properly vetted leader (as in you need to attend the formal 4-H leader orientation and pass a background/fingerprint test and interview by OSU). We have two neighborhood families with children who are eager to join and new families move in every month. Cathy and I are willing to support the program, but neither of us have time to lead it. A new Garden Manager would not necessarily need to agree to also be the 4-H leader and if there is someone out there who would like to be a 4-H club leader, but not necessarily our new Garden Manager, just let me know.
In light of our modest plans for the immediate future, we do not have any pressing financial needs. We have almost $350 in the bank. We might plant a few new fruit trees and may have to replace rose bushes if the polar vortex caused much damage. We also need to repair two places in our fence which were damaged by thieves last year. We discussed having another bake sale to raise funds.
We decided to not till the entire garden this year. We are a little concerned with our worm population (which was once extensive) and wind erosion. If a particular gardener wants to have their plot tilled, we can still make that happen, but we are not planning to till everyone’s plot on opening day as we have in past years. Because we will not be tilling the entire garden, gardeners can begin planting whenever it suits them. Even in February and March. (Of course, early gardeners are not excused from the mandatory opening work day in April).
The Board also discussed how to expand our public relations efforts in order to reach potential gardeners in the neighborhood who do not receive a hand-delivered invitation.
The Board also re-elected Priscilla, Rayna and Charlie to the Board. Election of officers resulted in Priscilla being the new President and the other officers remaining the same. We have a spot open on the Board in case anyone out there is interesting in becoming a SACG Board member. (You need not be a SACG gardener to join our Board).
