RE: sharing the harvest

H* A*

Jen, 

Small is relative. The garden that I volunteer in is 100' x150' in size.
Only half of the space, roughly, is dedicated to 108  individual raised beds
that are 6'x4' in size. It's amazing how much food you can get out of a good
Jeavons/bioenergetic/Alan Chadwick style raised bed of that size!  

A large communal garden and harvest can be problematic because of the human
element ( e.g., "I'm workin' and weedin' in here every day, this guy comes
in and sunbathes once a week...he wants an equal share?" or "What are you
doing, picking and eating!" etc. ) There are undoubtedly many gardens that
work well on the "share" programme, but I personally don't recommend it.
I've found that individual plot gardeners will work as volunteers on
communal beds as long as they have their own thing going as well. Well
delineated individual raised beds work best and help keep neighbors
friendly.

If you're going to do something much smaller ( like a traffic triangle or a
viewing garden) you may decide to get out of the food business and work on
creating some "eye candy" for the neighborhood on a communal basis.   

Here's the site for the garden that I garden and volunteer in.

http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org

Once you're established as a garden,  please consider joining the American
Community Gardening Association.  For 25 bucks a year you instantly become
part of an international organization (we have Canadians, Japanese and a
coupla European members) of community gardeners. Check out this link for all
the goodies you can get as a member:
http://www.communitygarden.org/about/membership.html 
There are karmic benefits to joining the ACGA as well.
Happy gardening, please let us know how it works out for you,
Adam Honigman

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jen Anonia [SMTP:youthfarm@foodforlanecounty.org]
> Sent:	Thursday, March 15, 2001 12:25 PM
> To:	community_garden@mallorn.com
> Subject:	[cg] sharing the harvest
> 
> I'm helping a neighborhood establish a small community garden.  They don't
> want to have individual plots (because it's so small).  Instead, everyone
> will share in the work and share in the harvest.  Are there good models
> out
> there for doing such a collaborative garden?, especially with a
> neighborhood
> that doesn't have a hisotry in collaborating on projects? -- almost no on
> knows each other.  Any advice on guidelines?
> Thanks,
> Jen
> 
> 
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