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Preparing the Ground for the Garden

In the winter of 2010, volunteers from the church began the preparation of the Acers Community Garden.

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Gardens need water so we dug a trench and ran a 2-1/2" water line from our irrigation system to the garden area.

 

To provide a bit of traffic control into the garden, we built a chain-link fence along the northern boundary of the garden.

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We had so much wet weather during this phase, it took a couple of extra weeks to get the fence installed.   We covered the entire area of the first phase of the garden with damp newspapers. These will help kill the grass growing in the garden to make the ground ready for a garden. 
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The newspaper will also decompose.

 

This was a lot newspaper because the area was so large.

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Next, wood chips were placed on top of the damp newspaper. The wood chips kept the newspaper in place,

 

This work had to be done by hand. In all, we spread about 40 cubic yards of wood chips that were recycled from trees that were pruned in the community.

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About four-inches of wood chips were placed on the top of the newspaper that covered the entire area of the garden. Later we will reuse the wood chips to make pathways and walkways in the garden.

 

Even a volunteer army travel on its stomach too and the troops had to be fed! The What-a-Burger down the street made for an informal picnic. Yes, everybody was thinking about the future lunches in the garden from the fresh food we grow.

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This is what the garden looked like at the end of this phase of the work. Next, we waited. In the middle of March, we began the preparation of the garden plots.