Collaborative Community Garden
Photography by Sarah Dyer.
Water was down in the first half of the week, but was restored by Friday afternoon. Thankfully we had several cool, rainy days to offset our lack of regular irrigation. The peas and beans are in need of trellising, so we tried-out a few methods. Caleb cut bamboo poles, and we set to building two different styles of trellis. For the peas, we drove down bamboo poles in line with the peas perpendicularly to the ground about 1.5 feet apart.
We then wove nylon twine around and between the poles to create a sort of trellis fence. As the peas grow, we will add lines of twine to support their growth. The beans were trellised in a tee-pee style, which is perfect for our plot of scarlet runner beans and white clover. As the beans mature and start to climb, we’ve insure that they have plenty of space.
Our potatoes are growing so fast that they need to be covered every day. The lettuce mix is getting stronger and thicker, so we should have our first harvest soon. This week se spent some time discussing plant disease, focused on some of the problems facing both TESC’s community garden and farm. Garlic blight, tulip fire blight, and club root are all issues in our garden space, and Caleb took some time to show us the signs of club root in a neighboring plot.
“It may be too easy to underestimate the power of a garden. A garden is a solution that leads to other solutions. It is part of the limitless pattern of good health and good sense.”
Wendell Berry
After months in front of a computer, the physicality of the work was hard at first. After five weeks of physical activity, both in the garden and on the farm, my body has finally adjusted. I’ve also started to drop the weight I gained during quarantine, a major victory for me. I’m excited to watch myself change along with the garden.
Club root caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae is a major disease of brassica crops worldwide and occurs on broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, turnip, rutabaga, and radish. It can also infect cruciferous weeds (mustard family) as well as some genera of grasses. 
Club root can attack plants sporadically; these two plants are in the same bed, and the difference is tremendously apparent.
Do’patsa Makihi’kě: Four-Vegetables-Mixed
More double digging! Ashley and I continued using the broadfork and spade shovel to turn the soil, removing buttercup, comfrey, and a fair number of potatoes. So much comfrey! Some of the comfrey roots were as thick as my wrist, and every time we pulled out one, three more seemed to appear from nowhere.
Image from aconcordcarpenter.com
We continued squaring the bed as we went, cutting out several inches of extra bed space. I’m always struck by how the lessons I learn in Practice of Organic Farming help me in the community garden and visa versa. We squared a large field, which we call a management unit, just this week using some basic geometry, the 3:4:5 triangle. The 3:4:5 triangle is the best way to determine with absolute certainty that an angle is 90 degrees. This rule says that if one side of a triangle measures 3 and the adjacent side measures 4, then the diagonal between those two points must measure 5 in order for it to be a right triangle. In applying this math to our field, we ran lengths of cord from one corner of the field down each side. After measuring 3 feet down one line and 4 feet down the other line, we were able to determine when the lines represented a 90 degree angle by measuring 5 feet between the two marks. By squaring our field we ensured that we could achieve straight beds using the power harrow and that all of the beds we had planned would fit in the space. I am always in awe of the things math can do for us, but this simple geometry blew my mind. It was as if something shifted into focus concerning the true practicality of math that I hadn’t considered before. I wish that I had known this technique before we started working the soil; as it is, our plot is being carved-out by eye.
Every time that I visit our plot I am overwhelmed by the overgrowth and neglect of our small corner in the community garden space. I think it is fair to say that the green house isn’t usable at the moment. The benches are covered in detritus and a lack of organization abounds. The area behind our plot is littered with trash and random bits of garden infrastructure. The compost bins are full of non-compostable trash and growing plants; the bin lids are pinned by overgrown raspberries that are threatening to overtake the bins themselves. As the quarter continues, I want to develop a rehabilitation plan for the area that can open-up resources to fellow gardeners this year and hopefully many years to come.