Spring is here --- time to start thinkin' about our 2011 season! + IMPORTANT DATES!

A warm welcome to those who are joining us this year for the first time! And welcome back to veteran community gardeners who have already been working together with us over the past few years. Thanks for keeping us on our toes with all of your questions, interest, and anticipation of this upcoming season.
 
For your info., here are a few of the basic introductory points to know about how the Main Street Community Garden (MSCG) works:

• We work collectively on the entire garden as a group, we do not have individual plots.
• Cameron Place CSA maintains the four northernmost rows of the garden (near the alley) for their CSA members, MSCG members are not permitted to take food from these rows. 
• MSCG is entirely organic. The seeds, the transplants, the maintenance practices, the compost, the soil amendments, the pest control, and so on and so forth are all done organically. When in doubt, please ask us to clarify!
• Responsibilities, such as weeding, planting, watering, cleaning/tidying up, and harvesting are shared among the members.
• In addition to the 10 hour required minimum work commitment for the season, those who are harvesting food for themselves during any given week should plan to put in at least one hour of work that week on weeding, turning the compost, maintaining our xeriscape perennial right-of-way planting area, cleaning out beds, etc. The time spent harvesting food should not count towards this hour of task-oriented work.
• Each week we donate a portion of our harvest to local community emergency food agencies through the Grow Another Row volunteer leaders. We have found that one of the most effective ways to distribute the harvest is for everyone to work together during the community work session to harvest the food that is ready to be harvested. Each household then takes home a reasonable amount (this varies throughout the season depending on the quantities that are available/ready for harvest, we will be making those determinations on a weekly basis and letting you know, via email or on a notice posted at the garden, what is ready and how much can be taken home) and we set aside our charitable donation from this bulk harvest as well.
• Members are encouraged to work in the garden and harvest from the garden at any time during the week that is convenient for them. We would love to see members out there sprinkled in at different times throughout the week as it can add an extra level of watchfulness over our crops.
• We encourage members to take on leadership of at least one weekly work session over the season. If you are not an experienced gardener, do not fear. We will be able to offer you support and guidelines. The main responsibilities of the weekly work session leader consists mainly of unlocking the shed at 5pm, collecting and accounting for all of the tools at the end of the session at 7pm, and organizing the charitable harvest to hand off to the Grow Another Row volunteer. This is not a requirement for members, but we do encourage it to help spread the responsibilities and time commitment amongst the entire membership. If you would like to be put on the calendar to lead a weekly work session this season, please send us an email reply specifying this and also let us know of any dates that you already know that you will be unavailable. We will put together a calendar for everyone's reference.
• We are looking for volunteers to commit to turning and watering the compost each week. If you are interested in doing this, please let us know and we will add your name to the calendar. This is a very important aspect of our organic gardening methods and we need to focus on actively working our compost pile to create a cycle where our plants break down and we have rich soil to use the following season. Beginners are welcome at this task! All it takes is a little elbow grease and some patience. (ahhhhhhh, the organic gardening mantra...!)
• The 2011 season weekly community work sessions will be held on Tuesday evenings, typically between 5 & 7pm.
   

We are feeling quite on top of things for our dawning 2011 season. As many of you will recall, garlic was planted (first time for garlic at MSCG! --- thanks to a generous donation of all of the saved garlic seed from Cameron Place) in late October. It sprouted in the fall and is pushing about 8" tall now. It should be ready to harvest and then hang to dry in June. Our fresh little emerald green cover crop (rye & vetch, if I recall correctly) that we planted last November has made its debut. We will till it into the rows in April for added "green manure" nutrients for our soil which is being enriched each season by our amendments and attention. A couple of dedicated members hand-tilled a row under and planted spinach this week. We may be lucky enough to be eating that in about a month. We are also looking forward to planting some lettuces and kale in the next week or so.
  
Please send us an email if you have particular things that you would like to see planted in the garden this year. Further, please let us know if you have starts that you would like to donate to transplant into the garden so that we can include them in our master planning. We are once again receiving generous sponsorship from Cameron Place who will be providing us with seeds and starts, possibly mature lavender transplants as well for our beneficial plant perennial border. We are so fortunate to have their guidance, expertise, resources, and generosity. Our seasonal membership dues go toward reimbursing them for starts, seeds, irrigation infrastructure, compost, and our water bill.
 
FOR A BIT OF SPRING CLEANING:  Please send us an email reply if you wish to remain on this list as an active garden member for 2011. If we do not hear back from you by April 1st, we will remove you from the list. If you wish to follow along with us this season, but do not plan to become an active member, please subscribe to our website for updates (www.gjmainstreetcommunitygarden.com.) The emails this season are meant for members only. Our website will be updated frequently for you to observe our current activities and learn from us as we go if you are not an active member.
   
Please give some thought to the shared responsibilities and community work sessions that we held last season. If you were not able to fully participate last season in the group effort (don't forget that you are always more than welcome to put in the required work at times that are convenient for you, you do not necessarily need to be at the work sessions) but you think that this season might be different, please join us again.

We ask you to give serious consideration to the variety of required community work sessions offered (such as cleaning up the garden at the end of the season, etc.) We typically offer about two or three sessions at the beginning of the season, two or three during the middle, and two or three at the end which are ALL-HANDS-ON-DECK type of sessions. As a rule of thumb, we would expect for you to be in attendance at at least one out of three of each of these sessions at each point in the season. If this does not work with your schedule, we ask that you let us know when you have put in the work at an alternative time. This will help us to keep track of how the workload is getting shared amongst all of our members. Please understand that we NEED the HELP so that there are not +/-4 dedicated folks left to do all of the work alone.

We are absolutely delighted with our community involvement and we hope to keep the infectious enthusiasm going with a proactive and hard working group of community members to build upon what we have already done in our first three seasons. Please just ask us if you have any questions about commitments, expectations, etc. THANKS! 

Here are the early season dates that we are planning on coming together to work. Please mark them down in your calendar and please do spread the word to friends, family, or neighbors who might be interested in becoming members this year. 

• Tues., April 12th, 5pm: Sign-ups/Registration for the 2011 season + Tilling Work Session/Spreading compost (tilling our cover crop into the rows)
• Tues., April 19th, 5pm: Irrigation Tape + Plastic Row Covering work session
• Tues., April 26th, 5pm: Inclement Weather Date if necessary (in case we are not able to work on the 12th or the 19th) 
• Sat., May 7th, 10am-1pm: PLANTING DAY! (Transplant starts and direct seed plants. We will aim to plant out the entire garden on this day.) 
• Sat., May 14th, 10am-1pm: Inclement Weather Date for Planting Day if necessary

Please let us know if you have any questions.  We are looking forward to a great season ----  if you can believe it, it will be our garden's fourth season!