Thank You For Your Support in 2018 as We Look Foward to 2019's Growing Season

 I am writing to express the appreciation of the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden for the community's support during our last growing season in 2018.   Community gardening is often exhausting, frustrating and relentless because it always involves a lot of work and challenges. We could not accomplish all that we do without your generous support. Gifts to the SACG are tax-deductible because the Garden is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt public charity.  As we shivered during last month’s polar vortex and celebrated that Buckeye Chuck saw his shadow on Saturday, we wanted to share some of our great memories over last summer.

In February, we celebrated when we won a bicycle that Staders Garden Centers had donated to the Greater Columbus Growing Coalition and held a raffle fundraiser for the Garden to fund our activities (and a liability insurance policy) for the year.   The winning ticket was drawn at the conclusion of our Earth Day celebration in April.

April saw us break ground for our 10^th growing season and arriving to find the ground covered with snow and a group of OSU college students from the Pay It Forward program coming to help us despite the weather.  Because we could not see the ground under the snow, we focused on turning the compost in our bins until the snow melted, when we picked up litter, transplanted flowers and raspberry brambles, and started weeding.  As we would each weekend for the rest of the month, we found a number of hibernating garter snakes.   For our Earth Day celebration, we planted more plum and peach trees as well as two elderberry bushes and a black cherry tree donated by Earth Day Columbus (along with mulch).  We also weeded and transplanted and prepared garden beds. 

Earth Day was also the first week that the Franklin County Municipal Court sent us community service volunteers, who helped to pick up neighborhood litter, mow the community lawns around the Garden, consolidate our compost from our four bins and weeded our paths.  Over the rest of the month, we picked up the  cedar wood donated by Trudeau Fence to start our fence straightening project, painted some of the lumber to match our front picket fence,  dug post holes, weeded the fence rows, repainted the rain barrel and spinning compost bin in matching paint, dug up our wood chip paths, narrowed and edged the paths and spread more wood chips,  mowed the three corner lots (i.e., our lot, and the two Block Watch lots at the corner of Stoddart and Main) and replanted our weedy strawberry patch.  These court-ordered volunteers came almost every week until September and also helped us to distribute and relocate 10 cubic yards of com-til compost donated by the City, watered the food pantry plots and flowers, picked up neighborhood litter, mowed the corner lots, created a patio for us around our picnic table with donated pavers, dug post holes to switch our metal fence stakes for 4x4s and attached cedar and pine braces to straighten out our wire fence, prepared for and cleaned up after our water line capital improvement project, planted apple trees, and, of course, weeded.  We also had them help out some of our neighbors, like planting and weeding at next-door Kimball Farms and mowing and weeding at Urban Connections for their neighborhood youth program. 

We had two capital improvement projects this year.  The first project was to straighten our perpetually leaning wire fence (which can be a bit of an eye sore over the winter when the raspberry brambles die and are cut back).  The challenge, of course, is that we have a limited window to complete the project because raspberry bushes grow on both sides of the fence.  We cannot dig and fill post holes after mid-May or we would not have much of a raspberry crop and we cannot really cut them back too early for the same reason.   The City donated most of the supplies for this project.  We were able to complete about half of this project because our volunteers disappeared and the weather turned against us.

Our second project involved an Urban Agriculture Grant which we were awarded in May by the Mid-Ohio Food Bank through the USDA to pay for the installation of water lines and water hydrants to help us survive dry spells or another drought (like the one in 2012) when our rain cisterns run dry.  This will also make it easier for elderly and disabled gardeners to join us so that they will not have to walk hundreds of feet to get water for their plants from our rain cisterns collecting water off of the nearby J. Jireh ministry house.   Of course, ironically, last year was the wettest year in recorded history for Central Ohio so we have not used a drop of our new water.  This project did not go smoothly, but unlike a few other community gardens, we completed it within six weeks of breaking ground (whereas some other gardens have never gotten their water turned on).     I anticipate that we will need our new water source in 2019 because the drought of 2012 followed the second wettest year in our history (2011) and there is a hot El Nino currently predicted for this summer.  

We had an abundance of volunteers assist us this summer.  In addition to the court-ordered volunteers, an international group of United Methodist Women assisted us in May with volunteers from both North and South Korea as well as Florida, California, and Iowa.   They helped us weed and to plant our food pantry tomatoes and sweet corn.   A group of Ohio After-School All Star middle-schoolers returned in June and helped us to water and to plant pole beans (both in rows and near the corn planted a couple weeks earlier) as well as some squash for our three-sisters plot.  OSU students returned in August to help again with our fence straightening project by painting donated lumber, weeding, watering, etc.   Capital University students then helped in September with much of the same.  

In July, we were for the first time part of the annual Old Town East Neighborhood Association Historic Home and Garden Tour, which focused this year on the Franklin Park neighborhood where we are technically located.  Sadly, it was very hot and most tourists opted to stay on the bus when it drove by the Garden.  However, Cathy made some awesome mint iced tea (with mint from our Garden) which made stopping very worthwhile.  One of our neighbors also volunteered and obtained donated plants to install a native plants flower garden at the corner of East Main and Stoddart in time for the Tour.   We held off on breaking ground for the water line installation project until after the Tour so that we could look as pretty as possible.

Although we have had a relatively mild winter until very recently, early November was freakishly cold and, for the first time in our history, we had to postpone our closing day because it was too cold for man and beast.  (That is saying something considering that we worked in the snow on our 2018 Opening Day).   

Our food pantry donations were down a bit this year.  First, we were affected by a late freeze in April and May that hurt our peach, cherry and raspberry harvests.  Second, the water line installation project meant taking a food pantry plot out of cultivation for most of the summer because of the mid-season timing of OTENA tour. Third, having a new group of volunteers every week meant that our kale/collard plot had trouble getting established when the inexperienced volunteers kept killing the new seedlings while weeding.   Another weird aspect this year was that the primary recipient of our fresh produce donations (the LSS Food

pantry) closed without us knowing and we are having to re-think how and where we donate our fresh produce.  Faith Mission became overwhelmed this summer with all of the produce donated by us and a few other sources and most of the other pantries are too far away to be convenient or are not open on Saturday afternoons when I typically deliver the produce (after the court volunteers leave).  We do not have electricity or refrigeration available or weekday volunteers.  Accordingly, this year, we are likely to focus our food pantry crops on those that can safely be stored in a root cellar and be donated on Mondays.   This will mean growing mostly tomatoes, squash and beans instead of kale, collards and lettuce, etc. which must be refrigerated within two hours of harvest.

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.   

P.S.  One of our benches fell apart when a volunteer put our giant (20 gallon) canteen of water on it and we are in need of repair or replacement.   Franklin Park Conservatory donated an old bench to us in 2009, so it is a miracle that it lasted this long when exposed to the elements all year.   If you know anyone looking to upgrade a garden bench, we would be delighted to take their old one off of their hands and put it to good use.  

For that matter, September’s tornado also destroyed our patio umbrella (that we use to shade the picnic table when we have volunteer groups, etc.).  It had been donated to us back in 2012 and, again, if you know anyone upgrading their patio umbrella, we could certainly put their old one to good use.