Mr. Noodle

Mr. Noodle
Mr. Noodle

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

My Cannon Greens community garden plot

Eep. It has been a month since I have posted.

Lots has happened in the garden, not the least of which is that I have acquired a second garden plot, right next to my first one. See, there are deadlines for these plots and if gardeners don't have their plots weeded/planted out by X date then they are forfeit and become MINE. I had weeded my neighboring plot and around it in hopes that it might become mine and then it did, on Thursday, so that night I dug it up and amended the soil with manure, planted everything out on Saturday, and on Sunday we built a structure to hold up the peas and tomatoes. Below are photos of this evolution.

 April 24. I wanted that plot on the left.
 While weeding that plot on the left I discovered some volunteer lettuces and onions, which I transplanted to my bed since they were unclaimed.
 Mulched around my entire bed.
The garden ran out of wood chips soon after this, and since we get them for free from the City, we have to wait until their next pass through our way.

Oh look I have weeded that plot. It's like it wants to be mine.

May 8. Things are growing. The weather turned very cold after this, near freezing and everyone was worried.

 May 13. This is a pet project of mine, to clear the weeds along the fence line, hoard cardboard and put it down, get some composted manure and topsoil on here and then plant sunflowers. I started a week ago and had some help from gardening friends who also want to see the garden become beautiful.
 On Thursday May 15 at 12:32pm, I received the email that said I was the proud new owner of plot 33! I wasted no time and got it all amended that night.
 On Saturday morning (May 17) I had planned to spend about five hours at the garden getting stuff done. My new gardening buddy Jasmine took this photo of me before I started planning out all my starts. The weather had finally warmed up and everyone was planting out their tomatoes and peppers, so I filled my new bed with 34 tomato plants - some that I had grown from seed, some that were donated to our garden after Wasatch Community Garden's annual plant sale the weekend before.
 The irrigation line on my new bed was twisted, but it was later corrected. The white bits are just chunks of ice that I emptied from my cooler just as I was leaving the garden.
 There is a string of pea starts along the left side, then a string of peppers and other sundry plants, tomatoes mostly in the middle, then salad greens on the right side.
 The Sunflower Strip is coming along. Emily and Alfred helped cart the manure!
 Ever since getting interested in permaculture, I have wanted to create an herb spiral. I laid down a bunch of logs in a spot where I think the spiral should go, to get a sense of a good location.

Meanwhile,
 I had drawn up a schematic of the kind of trellis I wanted for my garden, since I have peas and tomatoes that will need to climb. Dan helped me with the design, we took some measurements, bought supplies, and set to work making a modular portable trellis that could double as a hoop house in the winter, and that we can take with us one day when we move to a place where I can have my own land.

 Dan took a stop-motion video of us constructing it, but this is the bones of the structure. It still needs a cross bar along the top but as the plants grow, I'll be stringing up jute twine and it will be a green tunnel. I'm pretty excited.


The view of the garden from where I park my truck. I can't wait to see it in full green! 

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