Work Day at My Community Garden Plots

Hello, hivers! Welcome to da garden, eh!

Today was the first nice day that we've had in about a week, so I was outside for most of the day. I decided to go up to the local community garden and continue the work on my plots to get them ready for planting.

I've been reworking some of the weed blocking mats on one side of my plot to stop the grass on the edge from growing up into the fence. On the south side of the garden, my grass blocking mats are laid out so that the fence posts go through the mats. The mat covers the grass about 4-6 inches out past the fence. That way, I can mow the grass to the edge of the mat and I don't have to deal with the grass in the fence on that side of the garden.

The north side of the garden was not set up the same way. The weed blocking mats were just laid to the edge of the fence. In the past years, the grass just grew up into the fence, making it difficult to cut and manage. So this spring, I've started moving the mats out so the fence is over the mat and not the grass. I started on the project before the bad weather hit at the beginning of the week, so I had to wait until today to continue. I decided to dig the hump of grass and roots out of the edge of the garden before moving the mat out, just to get rid of the roots. I had gotten the first section done before the weather changed. You can see the 2 short fence posts that I put through that section of weed block. The white strips of weed block are recycled treadmill belts. I have lots of rocks holding the mat down to block light from getting under it.The black mat off to the right on the far edge is an old snowmobile track that I got from a local repair shop that was throwing it out.

The next section to work on was where the old snowmobile track was at. I pulled that out of the way so that I could dig the grass hump out of that area. I had brought another section of treadmill belt with me to use in that area. Digging out all the grass roots is a bit of a pain, but it helps to control the grass invasion into the garden.

Here's the second section of treadmill belt laid out on the edge where I had finished digging out the grass. An old board is handy for holding down the edge of the mat.

After the second mat was in place, I cut the slits in the mat for the fence posts, and pounded them in. I still have one more section to do. The snowmobile track is covering that area until I get back up there to finish the job.

The most prolific spring crop in this garden is the rocks...

There's a pile to dump them into outside the main fence.

Sometimes you find other debris in the ground, usually when you're trying to pound in a fence post, or dig a hole. 40 or 50 years ago, the area that is now the community garden was filled in with the demolition debris from an old building that had been torn down in the area, and the old road was realigned. Sometimes you find pieces of cement, or tile, or chunks of old blacktop, along with a plentiful supply of rocks.

Most of this crap has been cleared out of the garden plots over the years that they've been used, but I still find an occasional piece of it, usually along the edge of the garden. I find most of this stuff, and sizable rocks, while trying to pound in a fence post. On the plus side, there's always plenty of fist size or larger rocks to use to hold down your weed block material.

Well, that's it for this post. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!