The Community Garden
Our friends Heidi and Noah petitioned to their HOA to build a community garden. It passed and they/we built one. Not many people were interested in it so we were granted a generous amount of space. The sides of the raised beds and the door are made of old fencing that their HOA replaced, the soil and rebar came from Heidi and her connections with the Broadway construction project (she had a buddy dump the dirt over the fence, and some of the fencing was donated too. Noah and another guy along with Jim’s help did most of the work. Then, between Noah and Heidi and Jim and I, we got a bunch of bags of top soil and compost and Noah got some llama manure. Before adding all those goodies to the dirt, we sifted all the large rock out of the dirt with a giant sift Noah made. The soil is awesome!
The Boulder Community Gardens had a plant sale a few weekends in a row and Noah, Heidi, Jim and I went wild and purchased a ton of plants and seeds. It was way too cold for a couple weeks after getting the plants so they had to stay inside. (It has snowed 6 times since we got back at the end of April!) When it got warm enough we planted. Most of our plants and seeds went to the community garden, but the herbs and edible flowers were planted in pots at our place. We’ve also planted some more seeds at out place. I see the whole thing as being a massive science experiment on growing and sustainability. I planted a tea garden at the preschool I used to work at, have had potted flowers, tended to the preschool’s garden, and planted lilies last year at our old house (which have grown back this year!) but other than that I haven’t had a proper garden since I was a kid (and that was really my mom’s garden). I’ve been so impressed by the generosity and hard work of our friends. It’s fun to be apart of something you do as a group, each of us checking on the garden to see if things need to be watered, pruning, weeding, and replanting when critters have dug things up. It really turned out to be an awesome garden.
These first photos were taken a few days after planting. Jim and I love riding our bikes there when it’s warm.
Two weeks after planting we stopped by the same time our friends Noah and Heidi did. They had planted a week earlier but our seeds had started to sprout too!
Three and a half weeks after planting we were delighted to find that our tomato plants were bearing fruit and our cucumber and yellow squash seeds were sprouting (which we had only planted a week before)! The rest of the plants really burst with life.
Jim and I went again today to check on them and even with cold temperatures and 3 days of rain everything looks great. I’ve been educating myself on how to care for plants, esp. pruning and harvesting. It’s quite fun. One of our spinach plants is ready for it’s first harvest!
