We've got a lot of things planned for this 2012 season. We're hoping to get lots of new gardeners this year. Please start or renew your memberships soon. Use of a 4x8 garden plot for the growing season (you must build and fill your own planter, unless we have an abandoned bed that's available) = $15.00
Use of a 4x18 garden plot = $30.00
Use of a decorative used-tire planter at the site = $1.50 per planter
If anyone has access to free lumber/building materials, the Garden would be interested in pre-building a number of beds, that would only need to be filled with dirt by the member. We have leaf mulch available now, from our compost bins of the last two years. Help yourselves. " Koop and others from the neighborhood, like Marianne Rouse, started discussion about building a community garden in the vacant lot about a year ago. Koop purchased the land after a long-vacant and damaged industrial building was finally demolished in 2003. With help from Northeast businesses and other organizations outside of the area – like Missouri Organic Recycling which provided loads of soil mixed 60/40 with compost and sand, perfect for rain gardens – the garden is shaping up. Last week, Lexington Plumbing hooked together the nine 55-gallon rain barrels and installed tap pipes and other equipment to divert water from the Back Door Pottery roof where it can be collected and used for the plants. Rain is free and, according to the city’s Wet Weather Solutions Program that is trying to match Kansas City’s water system to federal regulations, overflows the sewers on a regular basis. Average rainfall of one inch within a 24-hour period, for example, can produce more than 700 gallons of water that runs off a typical house’s roof. Another solution to wasting water and sending it either to expensive treatment plants via the sewer system or to rivers and streams when the system is overloaded, often mixed with sanitary waste water, is to build a rain garden. John Community Gardens now has two baby rain gardens in the middle of the lot where water tends to collect, running off the hillside and alley behind Windsor Avenue, as well as a larger collector garden near the street, which will prevent soil from washing away like it used to when the vacant lot was bare.
