This is close to me! Thanks for the info.

Yes! Right across the street. We live close, I pass by their sign every day. I'm really excited to get some different things in the ground that I wouldn't be able to grow on my balcony. :)

I just called and pre-registered! I'm excited about this!

I got a call from them yesterday. Went by tonight and picked a plot. The church is doing an experiment. They say we won't have to water the beds because of the way they were built and filled. They're modeling it after the way some guy in Washington State (I believe he said) gardens. It's worth a shot, but color me doubtful. Unless there is a spring under those beds, I don't see how they will survive August. You know, he couldn't have said Washington State because he said they only get 16 inches of rain per year, on average.

nowyousedum - I imagine that this is what they were referencing.

Back to Eden

The back to Eden video was pretty cool when I watched it years ago. That is the video that got me into no till and compost and mulch. It is not a new idea though. Even after all the years of hearing about these things, I still did not practice them. Until... the movie! I do not know if the church is doing this type of gardening or not, but I can tell you that after using the no till, composting, and mulching method for a few years, that even in Oklahoma heat I have only watered my garden 6 or 7 seven times in 2 years. NOT counting when I plant the plants. I always water them in when I plant them. But I did install drip irrigation this winter.

Side note...I would like to start a community garden at my church. I have not approached them about it because I do not know the ins and outs. As ya'll go along, maybe you could fill (clue) some of us in from time to time.

If they put in really, really, really well-amended soil, then maybe folks can get away with watering less, but only time will tell. Also, much depends on whether the folks who operate the community garden are actual, hands-on gardeners with a lot of experience gardening in Oklahoma's summer weather, or whether they just read a book or watched videos and lack hands-on experience with our heat. There's lots of things that sound good when you read them or see them in a video but that do not work as well in our very hot, very dry and very long gardening season as they do in some other states. It is the combination of extreme heat and extreme drought that hurt gardens here---either one or the other is not nearly as bad, but both conditions together can be hard on a garden and can make watering required.

As my soil has gotten better and better, I do water less and less, but when drought rolls around, we will see what happens. It is easy to be happy this spring after last year's monumental rainfall that refilled all the ponds and creeks and left us with good soil moisture, but I guarantee y'all that if drought were to return this July or August, I'd have to water my garden some to keep it highly productive.

We have not had extreme or exceptional drought the last couple of years, and gardening in that sort of drought in July and August is extremely different from gardening in normal weather (not that Oklahoma's weather ever is really normal, but y'all know what I mean).

I didn't even set up my irrigation system last year and hope that I won't have to use it this year. It has been nice to get by with only a little watering from a hand-held hose, but I seriously doubt that I will be able to get by with not using the irrigation system in 2017. Once La Nina returns, the need for the irrigation system likely will return as well.

I agree it has to be really really well amended soil to work. And mulch, mulch, mulch. That has been my experience anyway. YMMV. Oh just so you know, if you do this in Oklahoma, don't be surprised when yours are not as big and has less yield than those who water consistently.

I agree with Scott. People who dryland farm with no irrigation at all do have to space their plants further away to allow the roots of each plant to spread out more in order to take up more water. That's why I don't dryland garden. And, with dryland methods, you do often get smaller plants and lower yields, except in exceptionally wet years (which for most of us in OK seem few and far between). It helps if the soil is highly enriched, but if the summer of 2011 taught us anything, it taught us that there will be time periods when you absolutely, positively must irrigate no matter how well-amended your soil is.

My dad and his family dryland farmed in the Dust Bowl and Great Depression years and nearly starved to death, but it wasn't like there was even any water available for irrigation anyway, so they did the best they could with what they had. At some points, when some rain fell, they could walk to the Red River and haul water, a bucketful at a time back to the farm to water the fruit trees in what was a futile effort to keep them alive. Enough rain didn't fall, though, and the soil had poor water-holding capacity because of years of drought and wind erosion so they eventually lost the battle to grow fruit. All other things being equal, I just go into each growing season expecting I likely will have to water the plants at some point in time. Even in last year's massively wet year, we still had a long period in July and August when virtually no rain fell for several weeks and the plants still needed water.

Nowyousedum -- we have a couple plots out there, one with beans and cucumbers and another with cantaloupe and a pumpkin.! I have to water all my plants on my balcony with milk jugs anyway. They do have a water spout available on the side of the building -- no water hose though. I'm prepared to spend time filling jugs and watering our plants out there.

This is all one giant science experiment for our family this year. I learn best from trial and error. :)

Good luck to you this summer! If you need me to water some, just let me know!

I had to cancel. I fell and hurt myself. I'll be lucky to care for my beds at home. Darn it. I was interested in seeing how this worked.

Jessica W - nowyousedum - do you need someone to take over the plot? I travel by there every workday so I can pick up the slack if it's a plot that just needs tending.

nowyousedum...so sorry about your spill. I hate it when life happens and we get reminded of our physical limits. Take care of yourself and mend well!!!

I drive by there almost every day twice a day. If I need to look in on something and help out, just let me know. I can see the raised beds as I'm dropping my son off at the Westmoore band room every morning.

nowyousedum, I'm hope you're okay and wish you a speedy recovery. Tim just missed several days of work with what he thought was a broken foot. He didn't even fall....just felt something in his foot snap or pop when he was walking down the stairs inside the house. Turned out his foot wasn't broken, only badly sprained and/or bruised. He went back to work today, but he still is limping and I bet he spends most, if not all, of today at his desk instead of out in the field in a police vehicle. Trying to stay off his foot, soaking it occasionally in Epsom Salts, and taking it easy....not words in his vocabulary so he has been climbing the walls. He still mowed over the weekend thanks to the miracle of riding lawnmowers, but I tried to keep he from walking on it any more than was necessary. He was frustrated that he could hurt himself so badly just walking down the stairs, and I had to remind him that we no longer are spring chickens and that stuff just happens.

Jessica, Hauling water in jugs to water something as large as a pumpkin plant may get pretty old in hot weather.

Are they philosophically opposed to having a water hose in the community garden? I expect they are trying to keep their water bill down by not having easy access to water, but summer weather can be brutally hot and dry and I cannot imagine everyone hauling jugs of water to their plants all summer long. I hope they rethink their idea that watering will not be necessary.

Dawn

I actually fell at the church when I was picking out my plot! So, I never planted anything. Nothing to tend. Prob gave the plot to someone else by now. I got better, then my back went out last week. Not sure if related, but not really 100% yet. I need to pull weeds and lay down mulch in my home beds. That was my plan for last Saturday, but back went out on Thursday.

Dawn, you are so right! We are no longer Spring chickens, lol! I hope Tim heals fast!

I like community gardens!

Let me know if we can help. We can plow, roto-till and plant.

https://www.facebook.com/visionfarms/

Tim seems to be healing okay and isn't limping as much but his foot is all shades of black and blue.

A friend of ours, who was in her mid-50s at the time, broke her ankle when she was trying to step over a low fence and merely tripped. To see her fall, you wouldn't have thought that anything would be injured (except maybe her pride), but it was immediately obvious her ankle was broken....and broken badly. I remember that after she finally got the cast off her ankle, she had to go to physical therapy and work hard to get back the normal range of motion. She told me at the time (she's maybe 10 years older than me) "this is what happens when your bones age".....and I laughed. I probably wouldn't laugh nowadays because I have a better understanding of how much more easily our bones do break as we get older.

Maybe they haven't given away your plot yet, and you'll be able to plant some heat-loving plants in it. I wouldn't be surprised if the back is related to the original fall. Sometimes injuries are not always apparent, or you can hurt your back, for example, for favoring a sore leg or arm.

Community gardens are great, especially for folks who don't have the space at home to grow as much as they want to grow. There have been a couple of attempts at getting a community garden started here, but it has been in bad weather years and I don't think it worked out very well.

Ankles are weird. I broke mine when I was 26. Fell on ice, not a bruise on me any where else, but my foot pointed backwards. DH says we don't bounce any more. I am terrified of falling. You have my sympathies, Nowyousedum. I fell at Bass Pro Shop in BA after Christmas. It seemed to take forever to fall with the sidewalk coming up to my face. Landed on my nose, couldn't get my hands free to block my fall.

Hope Tim's foot is better soon!

I have to think about the fact that we don't bounce any more, LOL. When did that happen? Why? I do know that I seem to trip and fall more nowadays than I did when I was younger, and it hurts more and takes longer to get up.

When we first built the garden we had tiny pathways that were only 12-18" and it was deliberate because I wanted as much space available as possible for growing. I was only 39 years old then, and TIm was 40, so we weren't thinking about our Happy Golden Years back then. During the last few winters, though, we have slowly nudged raised beds this way and that way and have widened paths to 2' to 3' wide. Eventually I'd like for all of them to be 3' wide, but we'll have to eventually remove at least a couple of raised beds and then scoot the others over some to make those wider paths a reality. By the time we get all the paths widened, then we'll need to come back and raise the beds higher because our backs will be getting too old for all the bending and stooping.

I want to garden for as many years as we can, but it is clear to me that we have to prepare in advance for getting older and make the changes to our gardens to make them more user-friendly while we're still young enough to do all that work.

Tim is feeling a lot better, but he seriously could skip wearing a shoe on his injured foot and it is so black it would blend perfectly with his black police boots, so the guys at work wouldn't even realize he had one boot on and one boot off. I've never seen him bruise like this before. I think it would heal faster if he'd stay off of it but he won't, and y'all know how men get when they're all stubborn and trying to prove they can still do everything with an injured foot that they could do before they were injured. I'm not that way. I try to stay off of an injured limb and let it heal, otherwise it seems like you never get well.

Dawn,

A few years ago, I built some raised beds with old pallets. I filled them with composted manure because it was light and easy to work with. The top edge was lined with Douglas fir. That made it comfortable to lean on while pulling weeds.

I grew bush beans and peppers there. Just the right height for easy picking.

Johnny, That sounds like a great idea. I'll have to keep that in mind!

A part of me says to myself "you're not getting that old", but the aches and pains after a long day of physical labor in the garden kinda tell me that I am.

I look at my best gardening friend, Fred, here, who is still gardening, farming and ranching in his 93rd year, and I honestly cannot imagine still working as hard at that age as I do now...or working as hard at that age as he does. He does inspire me though to keep on keeping on.

Dawn