Hello Dundee Community Gardeners and Friends,
HARVEST NIGHTS NOW MONDAYS AT 6:30: It's getting dark earlier so our harvest nights are moved up to 6:30. Please join us if you can help pick produce for Together's food pantry, and we always have a need for help with other gardening tasks. As always, bring gloves, scissors, and other gardening tools to help with harvesting and weeding.
VOLUNTEER HOURS CHART: Check out the chart posted on the large white water container. If you've volunteered some hours that have not been recorded, please update the chart to reflect your hours. If you want to volunteer at a time other than a work night, the beds can always use weeding and dead-heading. Each garden member is expected to contribute eight hours working in the community plots over the course of the gardening season.
EXTRA PRODUCE ALWAYS ACCEPTED FOR THE FOOD PANTRY! Let us know if we can pick from your plot if you're not coming to the harvest night! And if you have produce that is neglected and very ripe, we'll go ahead and add it to our food pantry box!
SAVE THESE DATES:
Sunday Sept. 26, 3-5 p.m. Fall Harvest Party and Pot-Luck
Sunday Oct. 17, 1-4 p.m. Fall Clean-Up
LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO GARDEN?? SEE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW!
ATTENTION: DUNDEE RESIDENTS
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do folks who are on the waiting list get first dibs on next year's garden plots?
ReplyDeleteso, let's say if you have a plot this year, then does your name move to the bottom of the waiting list next year? and whoever is on this year's waiting list would receive a plot next year.
this way everybody in the community would have access to the garden, instead of just the people who signed up for garden when it first started up.
now that would be a REAL community garden...
im just sayin'
Well that's an idea!
ReplyDeleteFYI, we have 44 plots available to individuals and being used by our members. (Four plots are used for growing food for a food pantry.) This spring (2010) we had 16 plots open up and be made available to people on our waiting list. And, because quite a few people on our waiting list no longer wanted a plot once they were contacted, we were able to offer a plot to the first 29 people on the waiting list.
We have 28 people currently on our waiting list, and who knows- we may find we are able to offer a plot to most if not all of those people in spring 2011.
A few problems I see with the idea of a complete turn-over of members every year:
1. You would be less inclined to clean out your plot, getting rid off plant waste, and prepare it for winter, adding fall compost etc., if you knew you would not be coming back to that plot the following year. And you would be much less inclined to make bigger improvements, such as raised beds, if you knew it was for a one-year commitment only.
2. Part of the "community" part of the garden is for the garden members to develop "community" with each other, and part of what makes that happen is seeing familiar faces when you come to work at the garden, over the growing season and from year to year.
3. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, the volunteer leadership that makes the garden work would not be there if there was a complete turn-over in plots. The work the board members put in the first year was tremendous. 2010 (our second year) was easier but still a large time investment for board members. To have that continuity, those people need to have plots and be actively involved in the daily/weekly garden maintenance.