AmFam Community garden opens!

There are many things I like about our community garden. One of my favorite things is workdays, when we rally together and get a lot done in a short time. One of the most impressive times was when 30 people moved 30 cubic yards of wood mulch in about an hour. While we didn't open the 2014 garden with that big a bang, on Saturday I had a great time with my fellow gardeners getting the garden ready for a successful summer.

Our primary purpose was to get our weedy community garden patch under control. While I don't advocate for repeat rototilling, it seemed like the only way to manage this weed bed was to beat them into submission and then smother them. We had a number of people to pull back last year's hay mulch, and then we rototilled the three rows a couple of times. Gardeners then applied a new fresh batch of hay mulch to the newly tilled beds.

Next week a different group of volunteers is going to plant asparagus and raspberries. I'm still wondering about the wisdom of us releasing that many raspberries on to our garden, but it's what people wanted to do and this area has always been an experiment. I'm game. And I'm particularly excited about the asparagus!

At the same time volunteers were hooking our hoses up to the water spigots. It feels like the garden really comes alive when this kind of equipment gets put into place.

We also had a load of 100 hay bales for gardeners to use to mulch their gardens. A couple of strong people stacked them up (strings not on the ground) so they'll last until people want to use them.

But what I'm most excited about is our little free library. Last year one of our gardeners built this library, and we installed it this weekend. I was happy to add some books my friend Tara had given me, and some of my own gently read copies of Organic Gardening and Urban Farming magazines.

Finally, it seems to us that one of the perennial challenges is figuring out who actually is using their gardens even after they signed up for a plot. It seems like every year a couple of people sign up and pay for a plot, but the never get into the garden. We don't discover this until June 15 when it's weedy and pretty much past time that another gardener could use the plot, or we could dedicated to food pantry production.

This year we put numbered flags in each plot, and are asking the gardeners to remove the flag and put it into this box to both help them find their plot and indicate that they are actively using it. I understand that for some people things come up and they simply can't garden. But maybe this way we'll find earlier those people who never even tried.

CUNA Mutual employee community garden opens

I had the honor and privilege of attending the grand opening ceremony for the CUNA Mutual Group employee community garden on Earth Day, 2014. A couple of years ago, a few very enthusiastic employees from CUNA Mutual visited our employee community garden at American Family Insurance. They wanted to know what we did to get ours started, and we were able to lend them technical support such as our guidelines, protocols and other resources.

So when the CUNA community gardens were scheduled to have a grand opening on the 2014 Earth Day, I immediately responded to the invitation with an enthusiastic "yes."

CUNA Mutual has a large campus with many buildings, but is largely land locked in an urban setting on Madison's west side. That didn't stop this group of enthusiastic employees. The proposed putting a community garden on top of the parking deck, which already had a large lawn. In fact, while I was up there, I remarked myself that you would never know we were standing on top of a parking ramp.

In order to overcome the thin layer of soil that was originally only meant to support grass, they are installing raised beds to add some more depth for eager vegetable plant roots. My understanding is they are going to have 40 10 x 10' garden beds. They will also build a couple of accessible garden beds, which are raised higher and have ample access to all sides for someone in a wheelchair.

I was greeted at the front door by Candace and a few other employees I have met along the way. We walked out to the garden area where many of the employee garden participants were waiting in the bright April sunshine.

Jesse Lerner from executive director of Sustain Dane, spoke about the importance of community gardens for employee health and well-being, and as an employee benefit. She also mentioned that as far she knew, this was the first rooftop employee community garden. 

In honor of Earth Day, the CUNA Mutual employees were able to purchase a sticker that allowed them to wear blue jeans on a normally business casual workday. One of the employee representatives announced that $1,700 raised from the sticker sales would be donated to the Lussier Community Education Center. Additionally, there will be two garden plots dedicated to producing food for the community center, and all employees are being asked to donate 10% of their own plot produced to the community center.

After taking a photo of the enthusiastic gardeners, I was asked to participate in a photo of people who supported the community garden project. It was great to be among my gardening peeps.

The garden is slated to be finished and ready for planting by mid to late May.