Jan Lesley

When you have just negotiated to plant a dwarf red dacca banana within your community garden by offering free suckers of it to members. Which said banana you pounced on with glad cries in the local nursery and were ready to do battle with all comers over, until you got it to the till and into the car.
And you also promised your labour and know-how to construct large compost bins... and did it all gladly... for the sake of not having to eat a shop bought banana.

Hi Heather!

Wanting to check in on the allotment saga! Any news?

I'm in negotiations with the community gardens committee here for a place to put in a Dwarf Red Dacca banana! So that's exciting for me. I have it in a pot and it's unfurling leaves like mad, so I need to get it in the ground, lol.

A large part of the negotiations was offering the suckers of the said banana to paid up members for free, that seemed to sway things in my favour!

I hope you'll be able to rent again, and improve that plot further if it's what you want to do.

Good luck with it all!

Heather Staas wrote:
Jan, your place sounds amazing!

This garden area is still doing things the same way they did 20 years ago when they first opened it.    Repeated tilling and renting the same plots, over and over.   No cover crops aside from "weeds" that get tilled in.    Something I guess.   It's sandy to begin with, but who knows what others have done or added over time.   Loads of plastic and bits of metal and glass come out of the ground.   Stewarding the plot over time should help restore/improve.  

Technically we are only allowed one per family unit, but my son in law rented the plot behind mine late in the season to let me start cleaning and improving.   That one I only had time to scrape up some quick rows and plant some cool weather veg,  but it did pretty well.   Mulched, cleaned, amended the same...  coffee grounds,  rabbit manure,  grass clippings, and some chop and drop!  

Just started pulling over the rows, but still have 3 going of kale, collards, and bok choy.  

I counted about 8-10 plots unrented this year.    I'm contemplating asking a friend to rent the one on my north side, but I'm conflicted between cleaning, restoring, and improving the soil and keeping my one plot protected, with "fair share" and grabbing up more plots than I technically need or should.  

Oh dear, its such a fine line!

All the collards look yummy, I feel as if I could go along and happily graze right off the plants.

Boo to all the rubbish in the soil, but yes, it can improve each season, picking out bits. As my mother says "That time passes anyway". If we do these things now, at least there's something to show at the end, no matter how long it takes. Better than twiddling our thumbs and nothing acheived at the end of the years.

However, if your relatives and friends receive the produce from the plots, then I don't see that who tends it matters a lot? Especially when your 'payment' for said tending, is some of the produce? It's like paying someone to mow your lawn, I would say. Would this amount of rule skirting be accepted? I'd say likely yes, as I'm sure the committee will like the rent money more than empty plots. If they are against you to the fullest extent, I'd suggest not rocking the boat by trying to fence the plots together as they do. Keep them seperate (annoying.... but faultless), and then you can claim that all rules have been obeyed to the letter.

In this scenario, the soil and wildlife are the true winners, and to be honest, I think if you keep going you'll get more questions about what you do, as they see you pulling heaps of produce, for less effort and watering over the ensuing years. Especially as your soil turns darker, richer, and more productive with each passing season.

I've already had questions about my additions of scoria, kelp, alfalfa pellets, epsom salts etc. We have very poor soils in Australia, particularly deficient in some minerals. But our lot are very mixed - some with lots of knowledge, some with none, but everybody wanting to learn from everyone else.

Do they actually till in the waste that comes out? Dry plant husks and green waste? Or do they require bare soil?
If you were to leave alfalfa straw all over the plot, will they till it in for you to benefit from next season? How far down do they till? If you did a quick green manure crop before hand, are they happy to turn that in? At least the tilling could be forced to have a silver lining, perhaps.

If anyone has been a victim of the common sense phrase in a shaming way, then I'd suggest that they are definitely moving in the wrong circles. Where I live its used as an encouragement to look for the logic. Use common sense, would be said to us as children as an instructional phrase - meaning that we were asked to stop and think things all the way through - look for consequences as well as results.

Saying that someone has no common sense, is an indicator to others that someone might need help in certain areas, or that their judgement may not be able to be trusted in some things. My hubby's boss has absolutely no skill in character judgement - he leaves the hiring and firing to my husband. Boss says, "I have no common sense when it comes to people, I can't tell a con man from a saint". He's not shaming himself, he's stating a fact. Many people have blind spots, and lack what is generally otherwise common sense in some areas.

It's not meant to be shaming, it's meant to be a warning, or an encouragement/admonishment to look further than you are.

Any phrase at all can be used in a shaming way, if the intent is there... are we to stop speaking altogether?

There seems to be a wave of extreme sensitivity overcoming the world these days. People will take anything out of context and attack it, when they are feeling vulnerable and wish to lash out.

Let's not always assume that people mean the worst when they use 'common' sayings and expressions. After all, if someone is being nasty to you, it's generally easy enough to pick up on, and they needn't use special phrases to do it. "Hello", "Good Morning" and such daily phrases can be nasty enough, if said with the attending mannerism or tone.

Isn't it common sense to build something from a non flammable material if you don't wish it to burn in a high fire risk area? Many people would agree... and yet there is the constant parade of (in the minority) people who build from highly flammable materials, and want to cry when the shed burns down.

Because the non flammable material didn't , and a direct quote from a real person here "look as pretty". I would suggest this person didn't have common sense... not because of what they built with - that's a choice - but when they wanted to be histrionic about it afterwards, having been repeatedly warned. And not having said building insured. I hope that most people, would commonly have enough sense to not make this mistake of confusing the unusual with the impossible. Hopefully they would have enough sense to ameliorate the risk they're taking, insofar as its possible to do so. And in this case, the scenario wasn't all that unusual.

Not everything is said with intent to harm, sometimes its from sheer exasperation, and we're all prone to that.

Shaming culture does exist, but because some use it that way, it doesn't necessarily follow that all do. Don't blame the phrase, blame the nasty little so-and-so that used it that way.

Hi Heather,
Well, you can say it's a resounding success! If you fostered all that microbial and animal life back into that little patch, it's a win, even if you never had a bite to eat from it, but you had! So that's marvellous.

If the other people don't take wisdom from your example, then its their loss - "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", as it were...



Our community garden is starting up, and I've just had my raised bed filled in the 'private' area. Our cost is $20 AUD membership per year, and $80 AUD for the raised bed, however that includes water, soil, compost and mulch, use of the sheds and other amenities. We've had so much unseasonal rain (completely opposite to your part of the world), that I've just put in my soil amendments, kelp, alfalfa, manures and the like, to just let it all wash in and mellow down. We're just in the middle of spring and I'll miss a bit of the season, but not to worry, as we can grow all year round. A neighbour on my street has the raised bed next to me, and we're planning a tall lattice tunnel between our beds to grow melons and whatnot.

The communal market garden areas are taking shape with hugel mounds and lots of fruit trees going in. We seem to have some oddly opposite groups! Your lot are stuck in mid last century to a degree, it seems - a lot of our people are coming from a permaculture point of view and are horrified if anyone suggested 'tilling'.

I do so hope that you continue - if nothing else than to be a bastion of common sense on the battlfield of earth, with waste and complacency as the enemy.
I really do appreciate the effort that it is, to go against the cemented in 'norms' in some places. Go you!

It's looking wonderful Heather! I hear that half of the world is having heatwaves and drought - you'll be glad to have some shade, then. I hope it's all ok?

I buy odd balls of vintage wool at the thrift stores - the kind with the labels still on. Alas I'm old enough to know if the label is correct for most of the yarns.
I wrap a tight ball, felt it a little with a needle until it shrinks some, wrap more, felt again and so on - a good practice for when I'm bingeing a series on telly. I end the ball by felting particularly well at the loose end, and give it a thorough once over. I have lots of dryer balls, lol, it's something to do. I also use these felted balls for pincushions. I glue them into odd coffee cups, also from the thrift. It's handy to have pins and needles available in more than one room.

I never feel guilty about using the dryer, as we have solar and a battery and my allergies make it a dangerous practice to dry outside. We have clement weather for the majority of the year, you'd think I could get some outside drying time in winter, however there's always some joker with a wood fire going and not only is everything kippered and stinking, I'm also allergic to woodsmoke, so I get bad rashes as well as asthma attacks from the particulate. Dryer it is!

Carla Burke wrote:When on Tuesday, a local friend asks if you have any goat milk (or replacer) on hand, for the fawn her mom is trying to get to the rescue, half a days drive away; on Wednesday, another local friend is begging you to take another friend's baby goats(but they're NOT the ones you're looking for); on Thursday night, you have an ER visit with the vet, for your sick goat(no - she didn't make it); on Friday morning, you discover 3 newly hatched ducklings; then on Monday, another local friend asks if you can take half a dozen of the 30 pullets she bought 9wks ago, thinking she was getting a straight run (mixed sexes)!!

OMG LOL! "These are not the goats you're looking for" Just throw a couple of Jawas into that and you have a blockbuster film trilogy...
"Fawn Wars" "The Ducklings Strike Back" "The Return of the Veterinarian" I'm dying.....🤣🤣🤣 But I was sorry to hear about the goat.

Oh my gosh - we are starting a community garden with allotments and an eco/organic approach - but being in Australia and growing year round, we never till -in small gardens, anyway. Good grief, that's a hill I would die on if they ever decided to start! Our gardening shows are big on the permaculture, no dig, environmontal things, so it's more mainstream here.
I have to use ollas for 9 months of the year in my own garden, swales and berms notwithstanding. However I like your 'set in' fast watering idea as well... I'm starting to think that I want  'fast' and 'slow' duos side by side in my section. Fill the 'fast' first so the soil is moist enough to efficiently wick from the 'slow' as required.
Oooh you got me thinking!
Don't worry, the allotment neighbours will start asking questions when you're pulling out boxfuls of sterling produce for not much effort! Ask the committee if they'll till in the bags of horse, cattle or chicken poop you'll bring and spread, along with the green manure you'll bring - hopefully they say yes, and it will be so stinky and messy they'll be happy to leave you alone after that, lol. Wishful thinking, probably. Good luck with all that! I faithfully promise that if I ever hear any of our lot say 'till', I shall make them into the very next chop and drop manure on my section, lol. Should get some good corn out of that!
Thanks for the ideas, and I hope you can be the change they so obviously need.