Community Garden Health and Safety
It seems like community gardening should be a fairly safe and healthy undertaking. Certainly, we can see health benefits come out of the things we grow there.

Are there safety and health hazards related to community gardens? Like most activities we do, there are potential hazards. Some are obvious, like the improper use of safety equipment when using power tools, including tillers, mowers, and trimmers. Others may not be so obvious. They range from stinging insect nests to personal safety threats posed by garden areas screened from public view.

Hazards can be broadly grouped into:

- Physical - items like trip and slip hazards
- Chemical - use of pesticides and fertilizers, even organic ones!
- Biological - snakes, insects, feral animals
- Equipment - using broken tools, power equipment, mishandling of fuel for equipment
- Personal Safety - assault and harassment incidents in the neighborhood or the garden

A reasonable community garden management strategy should include health and safety awareness. Here are some simple steps to raising H and S awareness:

1) At meetings include safety and health items on the agenda.
2) As gardeners sign up for the season, review H and S issues with them.
3) Post H and S signs around the garden
4) Do a thorough inventory of potential hazards at the start of the season and correct them
5) Do periodic H and S inspections, say at the first of the month
6) Ask gardeners to look for, report and correct(if possible) H and S concerns
7) For larger gardens, perhaps a safety volunteer can be recruited to lead efforts

Health and safety professionals typically ask the question - Who is responsible for your safety? The answer is me. I have to ask myself "Am I about to do something
stupid or risky?" Beyond that, the garden and gardeners can help each other out by being health and safety conscious. Watch, report, and fix, as you are able, safety and health hazards.

Good garden safety grows from this seed. Watch for your own safety and help keep the garden a fun, healthy and safe place.  ¶ 7:49 PM 0 comments

  Mulch







Mulch is a layer of organic or inorganic material laid on the soil around plants.

Mulch provides several benefits:

- helps keep weeds down
- lessens evaporation from the soil surface
- organic mulches add organic material and nutrients to the soil as they decompose
- provide temperature control
- helps keep produce cleaner
- some inorganic mulches can reflect heat, helping produce ripen
- limit soil erosion of cultivated garden areas

Organic Mulches

Here are some common organic mulches with application recommendations from Virginia
Cooperative Extension:

Hay or straw

Use a 6 to 8 inch layer. Both materials decompose readily adding organic matter and helping soil structure. They decay easily so hay and straw need to be be replenished to keep weeds down.

Compost

Great for amending to soil and building structure. Use a 2 inch layer. Weeds will
grow in the compost,so its not a good long term weed supressant.

Grass Clippings

Readily available. Preferably dry in a 2 inch layer, building up this layer gradually. Avoid adding clipping that had herbicides applied. Depending on the grass source, clippings may contain weed heads and seeds.

Sawdust and Shredded Bark

The American Horticultural Society suggests that sawdust and bark products should not be used unless it it is at least two years old. Its decomposition uses soil nitrogen. Other sources indicate that sawdust can be used, however, nitrogen should be added at the rate of 0.5 pounds per 10 cubic feet of sawdust (2 to 3 contractor wheelbarrows full). Apply 2 inches of sawdust mulch.

Other Organic Mulch Possibilities

Local conditions determine the availablity of other mulches. They include composted
animal manure, spent mushroom compost, peat moss, seaweed, pine needles.

Inorganic Mulches

Landscape Fabric

Make sure the fabric is not a water barrier. Spread it out across the plot and staple in place. Cut X's and plant in the exposed area. I have used this technique very successfully with tomatoes. No weeding at all expect for an occasional stray growing up through the cut hole. Makes you almost long for a weed to pull! End pieces of fabric are sometimes available from commercial landscapers.

Plastic Sheets

A wide variety of products, including black, white, red, and transparent. A single sheet will do. Use wire staples or stakes to affix the edges. Also, it helps to bury the edges. White or and reflective plastics are used to reflect light to help produce ripen. Reflective surfaces reportedly "annoy" pests. Red plastic reportedly increases the yield of tomatoes by 20 percent and enhance the flavor of strawberries.

Newspaper

A few layers of newspaper held in place by a light cover of organic mulch can last the season and degrade into the soil. These days, concerns about chemcials in ink are mostly related to some colored inks. Black ink is generally lead free.

Dos and Don'ts

- Do place mulch after the soil warms and dries out slightly;avoid placing on wet, cool soil
- Don't pile mulch up against the stem of plants
- If using plastic, do make sure that water can reach plants
- Do watch for critters like field mice that may be using mulch for cover
- Do add organic mulches when plants are between 4 and 6 inches tall

drawing source: Virginia Cooperative Extension  ¶ 8:02 PM 0 comments

  As a Community Gardener, I Should Be Feeding the Soil?
"Feed the soil, not the plants."

Vegetable gardening success really is a combination of soil, sun, and moisture. Totem Town gets plenty of sun. We also get plenty of great Midwestern rain, supplemented by our watering system. But what about the soil?

Each year, we till, rake, and "fuss" with the upper few inches of soil to accept our plants and seeds. But what are we doing to prepare the soil itself? Growing plants need and remove nutrients from the soil. As community gardeners we have the responsibility to replenish these nutrients.

Some gardeners do this organically and others use synthetically.

If you are spending money on fertilizers and plant food, consider using compost.
Since we share our space with the Ramsey County compost site, there is usually an
abundance of it available in the spring during planting season.

There are several ways gardeners do this:

1) after spreading around plot the compost is tilled into the soil
2) add compost to their planned rows or single plant spots before turning soil
3) side dress plants with compost (this also acts as a mulch to retain moisture and
keep weeds down)
4) blend it into their raised bed soil building

Is anyone making compost tea?

Compost advantages:

- free
- helps build structure to the soil
- helps hold water
- adds organic matter
- supplies slow release nutrients and micronutrients
- helps immobilize pesticides from readily moving through soil and in water

Some gardeners are concerned about the debris found in the compost. The County does chemical analyses on the compost. Check with the garden manager for details.

The Totem Town garden is making compost in the bins at the southeast corner of the garden.

Check them out!

For more information on healthy soil, see Secrets to Great Soil, Elizabeth Stell, 1998. It is available at the Saint Paul Public Library.

(soil profile from USDA website)  ¶ 12:57 PM 0 comments

  Winter Thought Gardens

As the new year begins, the Totem Town Community Garden remains covered with a thick layer of coarse, granular snow. No matter. With seed catalogues beginning to arrive, gardeners everywhere are already daydreaming, planning, and seeding gardens in their imaginations.

Winter thought, or imagination, gardens are wonderful admixtures. They graft together the experience of past successes and failures, the promise of newly discovered seeds and techniques, the reminisces of warm, growing weather, refreshing rains, and no weeding.

Later this year, imagination gardens will give way to physical work. We'll prepare the soil, pinch seed, and plant, tend, and water the soil. Green will sprout tentatively from the small hard nuggets. Then comes the attention of a summer's gardening chores.

For now though, we'll just stroll through the best gardens we have ever planted.  ¶ 2:54 PM 0 comments