Our cherry trees are blooming on time and look almost as spectacular as last year. One thing, however, is missing: The bees that pollinate them. Last year I took lots of pictures of bees in our cherry blossoms. However, there is nary a bee in sight this year. Boo hoo. The reason? Someone dug out and stole our bee hive (which had been in the Block Watch lot across the street under a former garage). So, even if our blossoms survive two cold nights in a row, it will be for naught without bees. Sigh.
It’s been a busy week at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden. Phil and Marcel wasted no time in preparing and planting their plots. Sabrina covered most of her plot of purple nettles with lawn fabric and planted about half of it in with potatoes, beans, greens, lettuce, etc. Amy, Alyssa, Taylor and Carly have all prepared their plots and partially planted them as well. Me? Well, I’ve been busy with capital improvements and visitors. All I managed to get planted this week were a few leeks, garlic, cold crops, and beets and some collard greens in the neighbor plot. I was not able to do very much weeding or get any start on the food pantry plots or to start my annual herbs. On Sunday, I stopped by for about an hour or so to start draining the big tank so that Ken could fix the spicket. I visited Cathy while I waited, but barely made a dent in the tank. I’m using a cheap hose from home and it apparently is bent in a few places, which restricts the water flow. I tried again for a couple of hours on Wednesday, but managed to only get half another 100 gallons or so drained. Gee whiz. Even six hours yesterday only got it down to about 200 gallons. At least we are not creating any more ponds at Kimball Farms.
We had a large crew around on Wednesday. Amy arrived first to weed and plant in her plot before she returned home for dinner. Then Sabrina came byt o put lawn fabric on her plot. The fabric is supposed to deprive the weeds of sunlight, thereby killing them. I think it would have been cheaper and faster to simply cover it with a cheap black plastic tarp, but that’s me. Alyssa and Taylor came by to prep and plant some brussells sprouts. I formally measured and marked off the northern plots with stakes. I couldn’t, however, find twine to tie from the stakes to the fence.
We had a couple of visitors. Daniel from Four Seasons City Farm finally stopped by for a tour. He drives by and waves periodically, but he’s never stopped before. He was dropping $75 of beautiful strawberry plants off at Kimball Farms (as a fundraisers for FSCF). He was intrigued by our reluctance to till. Taylor and Sabrina talked to him about when and why we till and why we generally do not. (I planted some collards while they discussed this). He admired the quality of our soil, made some suggestions, observed that our raspberries were planted too close together (which made me laugh), and teased me about our disgruntled neighbor. He was fascinated that I like to keep weeds in the plots (with some exceptions) until I plant. (I like to feed the microorganisms in the soil with live roots, etc., particularly chickweed). He was admiring our flowers and suggested that I divide them (and give some to him). Someone keeps stealing all of FSCF perennial flowers and then stole a whole stack of t-posts that they need for their fence. I offered to dig up and give him some of our extra early daisies right there on the spot, but he demurred. He had already started Shasta daisies, but I explained that they have different blooming time.
I also explained that nearly all of our perennial flowers come from my backyard and I could probably divide some more for FSCF. In fact, that is how I spent my Thursday evening, potting quite a few coneflowers, as well as some purple bee balm and some white garden phlox, etc. But then I was too tired to email him. I also explained that we were planning a fence straightening project on Saturday. If it went well, I might have some t-posts for them. (Most of ours were previously donated by Lowe’s, grants, Trudeaus’s, etc.)
Daniel relayed to me that Growing Power had closed six months ago because of its mounting debts, and my hero Will Allen’s operation had failed financially. His famous book, the Good Food Revolution, was required reading for all OSU freshman just a few years ago. This did not surprise me (considering all of its operations, staff size and ambitious plans), although it was very disappointing. When he was here in 2011, Allen had been pretty candid that it was virtually impossible to turn a profit in agriculture. He had only succeeded because he turned his farm into a non-profit (i.e., tax free), and could accept donations and grants, particularly educational grants to teach young people. The Growing Power website is still there but no longer has any content. I grew up in farm country and I don’t know any farmer who doesn’t have a full-time (or almost full-time) job on the side that pays a salary and subsidizes the farm. My grandfather worked for Columbus Southern power, for instance. One of my best friends from high school actually commutes to Grove City to work full-time every day to subsidize his farm. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that even big commercial farms rent their large trucks out during after the harvest season. While farming can provide a nice supplemental income, hardly anyone gets rich, let alone breaks even. It’s very labor intensive and/or expensive to get land, water and equipment. Only the Amish seemed to be breaking even and they have large families on small plots of land with, obviously no modern equipment. I think President Trump must finally be getting the message because last night he mentioned that he plans to protect and maybe even expand the farmer guest worker program. (Nothing in the past two decades has struck me as more absurd and counter productive than to criminalize the folks who plant, pick and process our incredible cheap food for mere pennies per pound). On Friday, I picked up some lumber and other supplies at Lowe’s. I needed to cut down the boards from 8 feet to 6 feet, but my circular saw wouldn’t work. (It turned out not to be the saw, but the ancient extension cord which was faulty). Luckily, former SACG gardener and long-time neighbor Mike was out in the alley playing with his youngest child and he has a table saw that made quick work of my project.
Saturday, we had a group of 7 Community Service volunteers. I baked them some blueberry muffins and Amy donated boxes of granola bars to keep them energetic. Because the Columbus half-marathon had taken over downtown, hey reported directly to the SACG in their own cars. It was colder than expected and the wind chill didn’t help. Of course, this is pretty typical April weather, so I was dressed in layers. Several of the volunteers were not and a couple of them complained about being cold the entire time. I gave them plenty of sweaty work to generate body heat, but only a couple of them used it to their advantage. (One smart lady even stripped down to just a t-shirt for a while because there was sufficient work to do to keep warm if you made any effort at all). Two of them spent most of their time picking up litter in the neighborhood. They hit a few alleys and Main Street down to Berkeley. They explained that a vacant lot down there can now be mowed due to their efforts. 
When we have a group of volunteers, I usually have them also mow not only our lot, but also the neighboring Block Watch lots because I know our neighbors – like most of us – could make other use of their spare time if they did not have to mow those lots every week. However, this week they beat us to it and apparently had already mowed all of them – including ours -- on Friday. Those slackers. So, that was one less task for our cold volunteers to do.
After about an hour, I grabbed the strongest looking volunteer to help me straighten our southern fence. In particular, he dug three post holes so that we could upgrade our fence posts from wood stakes and t-posts to treated 2x4s that had been painted to match our front picket fence. The first one was not so bad, but the others involved digging out raspberry bushes and a lot more stone debris. It was a messy and time consuming project. I don’t think that we’ll be able to return to it until next Fall because the brambles will begin to grow gangbusters as the temperatures rise and will be less and less able to survive being dug up and replanted. I had hoped to get six posts set, but we only accomplished about half of that. We also could not dig quite as deeply as we needed to, but it will probably be sufficient. Then, we added top boards to keep the wire fence straight (as opposed to sagging between posts). Nonetheless, we then had to saw the tops off of the posts to level them with the fence. 
The northern fence probably sags more, but it does not get as much traffic as the southern fence (which faces Main Street). In a couple of weeks, the entire fence will be covered in raspberry brambles and no one will notice anything until we cut them back again in the Fall. If we get some more lumber, we could have it painted over the summer and then have the project ready to go for our final two or three weeks of the year.
I had told them that we would be turning to weeding and planting a food pantry plot after lunch. However, the fence project took all of my time. (While the posts were being dug, I managed to weed and mulch the southeast flower bed). We also had another visitor who was interested in possibly joining the Garden, so I gave her and her daughter a tour. One of the ladies made sure to keep busy and then reloaded the shed with all of the tools and implements. She also watered in the brambles that we had replanted.
Carly and Sabrina were there to tend their plots. Sabrina planted onions and potatoes, etc. and helped Carly while I was busy with our volunteers. I released our volunteers at 2, but told them that they did not need to leave because I had more work if they wanted to stay. They jumped into their cars and then I turned to my own plot. However, my post-digger hero (who had two blisters from his work, one of which I had to bandage) returned to ask if I needed more help. He didn’t want to leave me “high and dry.” I laughed; I could be here 24-7 and still not catch up on everything. Run while you still can! After he left, I weeded one more row in my plot and planted garlic, beets and leeks. I also watered in my crops, noticed that my lettuce and spinach had germinated and retrieved the hose from the tank before calling it a day. 
I went back to the Garden tonight to make sure that Hillary’s plot was still marked off. (I forgot to check if the volunteers had moved the stakes where I had marked off the plots. They had, but had moved them into the plots without me even having to ask. Good job). Hillary was there with her boyfriend, Jake, who formerly managed a campus garden in Toronto. (Could he finally be the replacement Garden Manager I’ve been waiting a decade for? We shall see). They were busy digging trenches in her plot. He explained that they were just going to double dig, but ended up digging out a couple hundred pounds of construction debris that was still in her plot. They piled it in front of a food pantry plot. I just laughed and laughed. I had dug out much more than that in my time. She was lucky to have Jake there to help her, because I was generally dependent upon the kindness of strangers passing by in the alley. I’m thinking that we might want to use this new debris to plug the gaps in the chain link fence on the west side of Sabrina’s plot to make sure that the groundhog does not return. The smaller pieces could be used as path edging. We had already obtained a grant in 2015 to haul the prior six years’ of construction debris to a dump and it will be a while before we do that again. Jake asked about getting some more compost for her plot because he was not as impressed with our soil as most people. Sigh. I told them I would be getting more in a few weeks to a month, but they could grab a couple of the bagged soil or go down to Ohio Mulch off Fairwood. Next weekend, I hope to have had new wood chips delivered. Our volunteers will be spread new wood chips on our narrower paths, etc. Hopefully, we will get the rest of the flower beds weeded and mulched. If not, we have a crew of United Methodist women coming on May 10. I have announced that they are going to be weeding and planting all of the vacant plots (i.e., our food pantry plots). So, anyone wanting a plot at the SACG had better arrive by this Saturday to put in their work equity, etc., because we will not have any vacant plots after May 10. After May 10, will return to automatic pilot and will be focusing on weeding, watering and harvesting, etc. and I will be able to focus on my own plot.
