Chris Zelenka

Our community garden plot is 20'x20' the garden also offers 10'x10' plots.  They occasionally let someone have 2 20'x20' combined as a single plot for their use.  The common area perimeter is jointly cared for and we have a bunch of grapes, fig trees and a few espalier apples.  I know the city offers a raised bed options that are really tall, more than a typical raised bed that is like 4x8 and they reserve these for disabled gardeners.  I view my community garden as a zone 2 / 3 space even though it is 15-minute walk from the house. It is an integral part of our overall approach to growing our own food.   Community gardens rock, we do a ton of stuff on our own property, but we really enjoy being involved in the local garden with others.

Great suggestion.  I remember reading this post back when you made it.  I had a bunch of leftover potatoes after planting my normal couple of rows and a bunch of partially composted straw from our ducks.  Made a 15 foot row of straw, parted it down the middle, tossed in some soil that I had in buckets from digging out the bottom of the duck run when I changed their woodchips this winter and put that down the middle of the straw and planted into it.  Covered it up with straw and watered it in.  Excited to have more potatoes in the ground and building another garden bed in an area that was previously just wood chip mulch in our food forest.

I used several 100% cotton white sheets from the local thrift store when removing a huge area of grass with wood chips.  I recognize it may contain some less than desirable compounds due to it not being organic cotton so I did stick to areas that were going to be paths and the places that I was just loading a bunch of chips and didnt plan to plant until future seasons.  I kept to cardboard, straw, compost in the areas I planted into right away.  It did work very well in suppressing the grass and weeds from coming up and now after a couple of years I have dug in a few areas that I used the sheets and they are gone.  

Eat the cheeks, they are great on the BBQ or the smoker.

I've both dug holes to bury a tuna head and put them under a pile of woodchips.

We love our beds of Hood strawberries.  We are in the PNW, they are a medium sized June bearing berry and they are absolutely delicious fresh and make excellent freezer jam.  They were all loaded up with flowers and some of them already turning into berries this evening.  We continue to expand our patch every year finding new places in the gardens for runners to be planted, we never seem to have enough, we always wish we had more.

It's likely a niacin deficiency. If you have chicken feed make sure it's not the medicated and you will need to supplement with some form of niacin.  You can drop in a tablet into their water, feed them brewers yeast or feed snacks with lots of niacin.  With the duck already showing leg issues I would get the 100mg niacin tablet and drop it in a gallon of water.  Google it as needed, but you will want to do that or the brewers yeast to try and correct the issue with the duckling.  Lots of good duck care details on this site: https://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2018/05/ducks-need-niacin-aka-ducks-love-peas.html