Re: Community Garden

k* &* b*

Hi - Adam and Don have fine advice about rotation, but I've often wondered
how small plot community gardeners manage it.  My town's community gardens
have 20 X 20 ft plots for each individual and rotation is simple.  How do
you rotate, however, when people have much smaller plots, where you your
broccoli isn't very far from where you or a neighbor had planted it the
previous year?  It seems to me that when the individual plot size becomes
too small, gardens are better being more communal (never a bad idea) and
having everybody grow their brassicas, for example, in one section of the
garden, which can be rotated.  This is mostly a point of curiousity, but I'm
interested in the contrasts between community gardens of individual plots
and "communal gardens".  Bruce

 -----Original Message-----
From: Dboek@aol.com <Dboek@aol.com>
To: Rshtn1fn@bellsouth.net <Rshtn1fn@bellsouth.net>;
community_garden-admin@mallorn.com <community_garden-admin@mallorn.com>;
community_garden@mallorn.com <community_garden@mallorn.com>
Cc: drushton@bellsouth.net <drushton@bellsouth.net>
Date: Friday, February 18, 2000 2:32 PM
Subject: Re: [cg] Community Garden

>Hi, Birmingham,
>As always, listen to Adam! I'd add that you might be especially wise to
>rotate where you grow your brassicas (like collards, cabbage, broccoli...).
>Here, we can grow them in the early spring and the fall, but not in the
>summer (like Birmingham, I reckon?). This makes a rotation a little more
>complicated, but still easy to manage. I leave at least two years before
>replanting brassicas in a bed (some recommend 4 years, but my space is
>limited). Try the cooperative extension there for veggie recommendations
>(they are usually listed under county government). I use a very simple
>'quadrant system' personally, which works well enough. Aside from
brassicas,
>I generally don't repeat the same crop in the same place for two years in a
>row, and leave it at that. I'm not superpicky about some things (lettuce
and
>flowers I stick in everywhere as intercrops, I'll grow legumes (peas,
>blackeyes, crowders, beans) right and left). But rotation is a good
practice,
>not just because of plant diseases but because different crops use
different
>nutrients and thus you don't deplete your soil. Last thought, I include a
>soil building crop in my rotation one year in 4 or so, either a cool
weather
>type (annual rye, crimson clover (beautiful)) or warm (buckwheat). This
>builds soil health.
>
>I work with home composting and school gardens both. About kids and
manures,
>just be prudent but not paranoid. Washing hands is very very important, as
>Adam says. If manure has been composted properly using a 'hot' system, it
>should be reasonably safe. I don't think I'd let young kids (less than 11
or
>12, say-that's arbitrary) work closely with raw manures, especially moist
>ones, or with dusty manures (frequently the case with poultry manures)
>regardless of age. Be cautious, though-an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease
>in Australia recently was traced to a batch of poorly processed
_commercial_
>compost, and many of those infected were gardeners. Know your supplier (or
do
>it right by doing the research and doing it yourself).
>
>Don Boekelheide
>Charlotte NC USA
>
>In a message dated 2/18/00 1:16:17 PM, Rshtn1fn@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
>>We have had a community garden for the past several years in a public
>>housing community in Birmingham, AL.   We have recently read that rotating
>>the planting of vegetables is very beneficial.  What are your thoughts on
>>this subject of rotating?  In particular, how many years should you wait
>>before it is necessary to change the location of planting of the
>>vegetables?
>>
>>What are your thoughts on the safety of kids handling manure in working in
>>the garden?
>
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>community_garden maillist  -  community_garden@mallorn.com
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