Almost Ready to Plant

Tomorrow is May 1 and we're getting ready to plant. Twenty one families will be represented in our High Vista Community Garden, including newly registered Dick and Pam Moody, Gary and Joan Neeman, and Natacha and Christopher Jones (just moved in next door to Lexie and John Kiefer). Welcome one and all. More than half the individual beds are accounted for with some folks sharing individual units and some requesting more than one. Thanks to everyone for getting their checks in on a timely basis. Mike Willen set up a bank account at Asheville Savings and will keep track of expenditures.

Jim and Nancy Dhom staked out and flagged the field rows and supervised the first tilling. Because of the amount of rain last week, the field and gardens still need to be disked and tilled again, so they won't be ready for planting until the second week in May. Team leaders will contact you when your help is needed to get the corn and subsequent plantings in the ground. Mary Alice and others are already buying seeds and seedlings and nurturing them indoors until the time is right. I'll be sending a spread sheet with everyone's contact info, team affiliations, allotments, and "away dates"to everyone with the link to this update.

I hope you're all as eager as Mike and I are. We bought plants at Valley Ag (on Rte. 280 in Mills River) last week and others at the Herb Festival at the Mills River Farmer's Market this weekend. Here's a peek: some already in containers and others still in flats and pots.

We've Got Plans

A solid group of "would be gardeners" met today to discuss our organizational first year plans. A draft garden plan, drawn up by Knox Crowell, a friend and fellow Transition Hendersonville volunteer with Sharon, served as a jumping off point.

After discussion generating lots of ideas and enthusiasm, we went to the garden site, met with Mike Pace who owns the property with his wife, Patricia, and reached consensus on a garden design.

Consensus items, plans and next steps:

Consensus Items:

• Start "small", take some risks, learn, have fun
• Everyone will chip in some funds for tilling, mulch, supplies and plant stock/seeds for row beds
• We have enough families involved to split the work on maintaining the row beds and will share the crops
• Additional "individual allotments" will be available as requested/as available
• A "standard plot" will be approximately 4' x 20' 
• People may share or request portions (half) or more than one plot
• We encourage newbies and experienced gardeners to team up
• We will look out for the gardens of people on vacation/traveling as a community, as needed/requested
• Our row crops will be "staples" including: corn, tomatoes, beans (yellow, string), squash (summer, zucchini, yellow, spaghetti, acorn), potatoes (various types)
• We will attempt to trellis peas and cucumbers
• The individual beds will be used for "other plants" mentioned such as peppers, eggplants, root veggies, possibly asparagus, broccoli.
• We will learn about timing of plantings, fertilizing and soil amendments, pruning, fighting pests, when to harvest, how to preserve food for winter and beyond
• Some plants are best grown "closer to home" including greens and herbs
• We will do our best to garden organically and only turn to synthetic pesticides after exhausting all other options
• The top soil is excellent, we will garden near the creek on the same side of the drive as Mike's garden

We will not garden on Sundays, to respect Mike Pace's wishes.

Plans:

• We will have a row garden 75' x 100' tilled and pitch in $20 per family to cover the cost
• Next to the row garden will be the deep bed allotment area: a 4' grassy path and then three 100' x 4' deep bed tilled rows separated by 3' grassy paths (allowing for a maximum of 15 4' x 20' individual garden beds)
• Paul Knott will provide us with drafts of letters of agreement between community gardens and homeowners, which we'll use to draw up something to present to Mike Pace. 

Next Steps:

• Jim and Nancy Dhom will meet with Al Cutter and Joyce Davis to draft the garden design for the plow man" and let us know how much of each of our "staple" plants we can expect to grow in the row garden.
• Jim will contact Mike Angel and guide him in not over-tilling the soil in our garden areas.
• We will decide later how to address and reassign abandoned plots, if that occurs
• We will take an inventory of garden tools, etc. that we possess and which can be stored in Zeke's buildings on site
• Mike Pace says it's cooler in the ground in that spot than some other places and his experience says don't put seeds in till June 1. That gives us some breathing room.
• Melanie Timberlake and Laurel Schmidt have volunteered their homes for any upcoming meetings
• Bob and Laurel Schmidt, Sharon Bonnville, Catherine Jordan and Sharon Willen are planning to visit the Black Mountain Community Garden next Friday, April 8. (If you want to join them, let Sharon know by email and meet in the upper parking lot at High Vista at 2 pm)
• Sharon will develop a way for us to stay in touch moving forward via the blog/Google, etc. If you plan to continue as a gardener, please subscribe to this blog to make it easier for Sharon to keep you up to date.

If there are any key items missing from this summary, please include in your comments below.