How Firm Thy Friendship: SACG Opens For 11th Growing Season

What a difference a year makes.   Last year, the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden’s opening day started with an inch of snow on the ground.  This year, we had sunshine and 70 degrees.   Last year, we turned compost and picked up litter.  This year, we accomplished an amazing amount of work with a group of amazing OSU students from the First Year Leadership Initiative and three new burly male neighbor gardeners.  Whoo hoo! Last year we wore winter coats and this year we wore t-shirts.


I picked up supplies yesterday and baked some brownies to keep up the energy of our hardworking volunteers.   I arrived a bit early to get the supplies organized for the group.  Sadly, we did not have as much painted wood as I recalled (because last year’s volunteers only painted one side of most of the fence boards before we had to pack up for the season).  I had hoped to prune the peach trees, but did not have time. Cathy brought by a wheelbarrow to loan us to spread wood chips (which were again generously donated by Tree King).

Three of our new gardeners put in their work equity today and all of them live in the neighborhood.  One has lived in the neighborhood since 1992, but the other two just moved in within the past year.  They were a god send for the hard work that we had to accomplish today.  Amy came with cookies and helped John pick up litter in and around the Garden.  A lot of it had blown into the fence and brambles over the winter and someone had dumped a bunch of trash in the alley.  


Michael and Ethan took on our most complicated job:  straightening our trellis gate which has not been straight since the year it was installed.  Every year it leans a bit more north (i.e., downhill) and we could no longer latch or lock the gate.  I arrived early to unwind and dig up the clematis vines growing up the sides.  They took off the top of the trellis, dug out the footings, straightened the sides, backfilled and reattached the top.   They did all of this without killing or moving the grape vines that were growing up the sides of the trellis.  After everyone had left, I transplanted the clematis vines again and watered them in.

While they worked on that, I started digging post holes in order to complete the fence straightening   John finished picking up litter and took over for me digging post holes (so that we could replace the wooden and metal shorter fence posts with 2x4s and top each
section with braces.  Ethan and Michael then came over to help finish that project as well.
project on the south side of the Garden.


Meanwhile, we had nine OSU students from the First Year Leadership Initiative arrive from to help us with two giant projects.  (Thank you Bill Dawson!).  As with most opening days, we needed to spread wood chips along the fence lines and along the paths.  That is an exhausting project.  However, we only used about half of the wood chips.  And, because of a miscommunication, the wood chips were dumped on top of the northern fence and western part of the strawberry patch, so we needed to rake the chips off of the strawberry patch and away from the fence line (which we need to straighten this month like we did the southern fence).   

Once the wood chips were mostly distributed, the students then turned to another troublesome project.   Two of our platform raised beds were, like the trellis, leaning north (i.e., downhill).  One of them was so out of plumb that the twelve-inch screws holding it together had started to break.  Two years ago, we tried to straighten them with a group of burly-men OSU students from the August Pay-It-Forward event, but even 10 of them were unable to lift the beds to straighten them out while the beds were full of soil.  So, this time, we emptied the beds first. At that point, they were easy to lift.  I could even lift a corner all by myself.   Like with the trellis, we dug down to the footings and raised the north end about an inch higher than the south side to compensate for the slope of the hill.  Then, we reinforced the bottom brace to keep the beds from sagging in the middle.  Sadly, they had to leave before we could refill the beds.


Our newest member of our Board of Trustees, newly retired Robert Seed, and his bride, Ruthie, stopped by to help, too.  They helped move the gate latches back to their original placement (before we had to move them last year due to the leaning).  Then, Robert inserted new three inch screws into the platform raised beds to hold them in place.   (I still have some of the original screws left over to bring with me next week).  Cathy loaned us her drill to help us work on this project while we completed the fence project.

Another new neighbor, Brian, from the newly opened Fairwood Commons one block from the Garden, also stopped by to help us with moving the wood chips away from the fence and to sweep them up from the alley.  He was quite enthusiastic.

Amy helped to transplant and thin strawberry plants and organize all of the tools back into the shed.  Some of the OSU students helped me hang our sign.

Ethan stayed behind to help me with returning wheelbarrows that we borrowed from Cathy and Kimball Farms and to put the rain barrel back behind the shed.  (It had blown down the street last month during the wind storms and Cathy put in in Phil’s old plot for safekeeping).

Cathy and I observed that the tulips are not doing well this year, except for the bulbs that I planted in December.  This is true at both our homes and at the Garden.  I suspect that the mild winter or wet year we had have something to do with that.   We have lots of leaves, but no flower stalks.  Sigh.  


Next week, we will be having our Earth Day celebration, where new gardeners can complete their work equity.  We need as many volunteers as possible.  This is what we have in store:

1)      Refill the platform raised beds;

2)      Spread wood chips around those raised beds;

3)      Plant a honeycrisp apple tree to round out our fruit orchard;

4)      Top off the soil in our raised beds and plant lettuce, broccoli, kale and collards in the neighbor bed;

5)      Rake the rest of the wood chips away from the southern fence and strawberry patch;

6)      Distribute compost in the plots whose gardeners did not add much to their plots last year;

7)      Clean up the flower beds, pruning the rose bushes and transplant volunteer bachelor buttons and daisies into better places;

8)      Maybe prune some fruit trees;

9)      Paint the rain barrel and some fence wood;

10)   Hopefully, dig some more post holes along the south side and hang a few braces; and

11)   Transplant strawberries and raspberry bushes to fill in bare spots.

Many hands make light work.