Pros and cons of the community garden
Athens contains multiple
community gardens. And even though I like building the soil in my own
space, I couldn't resist attending a community-gardener panel
discussion to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the
fence.
"Why did you join the
community gardener?" the moderator asked. The obvious answers were
space, sun, and soil --- some folks simply don't have appropriate
garden areas around their home. If they want to garden, it's going to
have to be somewhere else.
But the community aspect
of the shared garden space was also key to many of the gardeners'
decision to grow there. They enjoyed meeting other gardeners and
observing those folks' choices and crops. Even peer pressure was cited
as a positive --- a way to force yourself to get out there and weed!
How about the negatives?
These were pretty much par for the course for any experienced gardener.
Harlequin bugs were apparently a huge problem in the surrounding plots
when one gardener got serious about the insects' favorite food ---
horseradish. Voles eat sweet potatoes and deer jump fences to nibble
everything. And, of course, there are always all those weeds. Sounds a
lot like my own gardening experiences.
Of course, there were
also a few site-specific challenges. Athens' community gardens are
close to the river and flooding can be a drag. Meanwhile, the plot in
Nelsonville is currently being moved to higher ground, not just because
of flooding but also because Johnsongrass took over so badly that it
wasn't worth growing there any longer.
Like gardeners anywhere,
though, the panelists were eternally optimistic. And they even made me
jealous of one thing --- the huge piles of leaf mulch the city delivers
to each site in the fall. That was nearly enough to sign me up!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Horseradish as a favorite food for Harlequin bugs! I never knew that.
Do you have a post somewhere on the site that lists favorite foods of all common pests?
Thanks again!