Rhodes Community Garden

Thanks to all of the folks who helped out at the semester’s first work day yesterday!  We weeded almost the entire EV garden in just a couple of hours.  Some of the plants are still looking a little sad from the drought, but there’s supposed to be a bit more rain this week, so hopefully they’ll perk up in time for our first market day.

No better way to spend a Sunday than soaking up the afternoon sun with new friends!

Today was, unfortunately, the last day of our garden fellowship.  Although it is sad to see our summer project coming to a close, we will still be involved in the garden and the farmers market throughout the fall.  We also still have to present our project at the REACH symposium and tie up a few odds and ends before we’re finally finished.

It has been an amazing summer working with the McMerton gardens and Professor Kasper, restoring our relationship with Physical Plant, and seeing all of our hard work literally come to life.  There is nothing more rewarding than a healthy garden.

“Gardening is what unites us and what sustains us.” ~ Roger Swain

Today we actually successfully finished a task.  Unfortunately, it has taken us the entire summer to complete, but our blackberry trellis is finally done! It only took two months, the lives of five tools, and far more money than it should have, but none of that matters because it is finally finished.

Now if anyone tries to break or harm that blackberry trellis  in any way…let’s just say it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve sacrificed lives for the good of that trellis.  R.I.P. spade, shovel, hoe, hammer, and fourth post.

Today was an exact repetition of yesterday. Watering, poster, brochure, vendors, repeat.

If we have to look at a computer screen one more time….

Today we started out watering and skyping with Professor Kasper as usual. 

After that, unfortunately we were forced to spend several hours staring at a computer screen working on the poster for our fellowship, a brochure for our farmers market, and a spreadsheet of all of the potential vendors we’ve contacted.

In the afternoon, we met with our Fall gardener to show her the ropes.  She will be taking over the garden for the first few weeks before schools starts so we can have a vacation.  When we come back in August, we will all be working together to keep up with the garden.

Getting nervous about setting the babysitter loose on our precious garden.

After a long weekend, we hit the ground running by berating all of the vendors at the Cooper-Young and Downtown farmers markets trying to find vendors.  Unfortunately, we still haven’t found anyone.  If you know any local vendors, please let us know asap.

The rest of the day went as usual with our watering and weeding ritual and our Monday trip to McMerton.  Today, we helped weed and mulch the bean patch.  It was actually pleasantly shady for once.

Here’s to hoping we’re not the only vendors at our farmers market….

Does anyone really ever work on Sundays?

One of the few Saturdays we haven’t worked…and it feels good.

We took today off.  Looking forward to the long weekend!

Today we once again worked on our blackberry trellis.  However, after a visit from a lovely member of physical plant, we actually accomplished more than usual.  We the ground anchors secured and the wires cut.  Now all that’s left is assembling.  Woot.  Woot.

After that, we worked on our poster and then called it a day with plans for a long weekend of R&R.

Here’s too sunny skies and temperatures below 100!

Today we watered and weeded as usual. We were growing a nice crop of grass and mushrooms in our EV garden. We also decided to replant some of the areas in our new garden were nothing came up as well as add a few more sunflowers to our plot. We also finally planted our potatoes and sweet potatoes that we have been letting sprout in our rooms. Hopefully they will come up after all the watching and waiting. The peppers we had sprouted indoors, we too took out to the new garden and planted. We have been preparing them to be moved outside, by gradually exposing them to life outside, hopefully the hot temperatures won’t shock them too much.

Everything in our new garden is looking good and growing well and we hope it continues! In the afternoon we worked on our poster a little bit more, hopefully it is almost finished. We also met with one of our other fellows who works on the Crossroads Data Support Team. He is going to make us a map of the farmers markets in Memphis using GIS for our poster and for future use. We are excited about the final results of the map and of our poster. At the end of our fellowship, all of the students working here this summer will come together to present their projects. Sadly, we are the only gardeners.

Things are looking up, and our fellowship’s almost over.

Time flies.

This morning we had our usual skype session with Professor Kasper, and after that made some edits to our poster. We were actually looking through the community garden facebook page for some pictures to put on our poster, when we came across a photo of some Rhodes kids working in a greenhouse. The inquisitive gardeners that we are, we shot Professor Kasper an e-mail asking her if she knew anything about it. Apparently, Rhodes used to have its very own greenhouse. What happened to it? We don’t know. Who would ever want to get rid of a greenhouse? We hear some folks from FJ are trying to get one back, but haven’t been able to due to lack of funds. Well let us tell you, the community gardeners are on board! Let’s get back the greenhouse!

In the afternoon, we transferred our blackberry plants from the rock pile EV garden to their home behind the baseball field, with their new posts in tact. We made sure we put some compost mixed with some of the soil from the EV garden in their holes so we did not shock the plants. Hopefully they will grow much better in this new location and we will have a great supply of blackberries in years to come.

Now accepting donations for a new greenhouse.

In the morning we watered and resurrected the broken sledgehammer to try and get the blackberry posts in the ground once and for all. Shockingly enough, we were somewhat successful, thanks to the showers we had at the end of last week which softened the ground.

After getting the posts in the ground, we met with some people from VECA and visited another community garden on Hunter Street. The garden has great potential, but really needs some tender love and care. Hopefully it will continue to grow and become another great asset to the community.

After a siesta in the afternoon, we volunteered at McMerton for a couple hours, once again tying eggplants to posts for support and bunching asparagus plants together so we could weed underneath.

#thatawkwardmomentwhenyou’retrappedinthemiddleofanasparagusplant.