Just the beginning

            When Courtney brought up this final idea, I already felt a part of the project and tried to help persuade Professor Lotto (Ed) to agree to the alternative. Being able to create and take ownership of a class urban garden, we would be able to engage in growing our own local produce. And I would be able to continue the growth of urban agriculture over the summer with others and during the following academic year. I decided to keep a journal of the past two weeks and I will reiterate much of what I wrote in the blog posts. I decided to keep a journal prior to this project in hope to establish a how-to grow local and organic produce for jersey shore owners. However, I decided to start the writing earlier now! I have been working on building my own 50 by 50 foot roto-tilled garden at my parent’s beach house in Avalon, New Jersey. Since a variety of shore go-ers from around my parents home, Conshohocken (or the Mainline), PA are moving towards practicing urban agriculture, I will be comparing my experience in the journal to growing various fruits, vegetables and herbs at the Jersey shore to my experience in Conshohocken. Having realized that local is dependent on where you are, I will be able to eat from the land no matter where I am now: home, school, and escape (vacation). My experience in these next two weeks will help further my understanding of community gardening, with an A team and while in one’s undergraduate years. Maybe it will lead to a how to organic garden at Lehigh University.

            Having owned a garden plot in the Maze Garden in the fall and spring of 2011, I have had appreciation for the nutritional value and pure taste of the surrounding soil. Originally, I was confused on where the MLK garden was located, thinking it was just another name of the Maze Garden on East 3^rd Street. But once Sara told me it was on Carleton Street, I thought this would be an even better habitat to spend our time. There would be no surround diesel particulate matter around from passing automobiles and we would be able to engage ourselves in a residential community. The MLK garden is in a tight nit community park with a jungle gym, benches, and green space. The park is about a block long and surrounded by a collector road on one side and an alley on the other.

            On a regional scale, the setting of South Mountain that our two garden bed’s have been convene is ideal for harvesting crops as many have before the ocean of pavement was laid on top of the soil, thus leading to only further development and impervious surfaces.

            On Monday, April 23^rd Sara and I spent time at the garden in the late afternoon, around 3:30 to 4:30. It was a brisk 45 degrees, which made it much to cold to plant, as the weather would further drop over the course of the night. If it were to reach 32 degrees, nothing in the garden would wake the next morning! I would consider our work this day manual labor. We pulled out the remaining cereal rye in the 5^th bed and began to pull some out of the 7^th bed. I laid multiple paint buckets of Roledale compost in the 5^th bed. Breena Holland supplied the compost for all plot owners to use. I asked Breena what she thought about the Bethlehem compost. This is what she said (I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I shared):

            “The city's compost is free but I don't use it because they allow people to drop off almost all forms of yard waste except lawn and I worry that there may be pesticides, fertilizers, and other toxic substances in the organic waste people deliver. Additionally, the city's compost is more like mulch than compost. I brought over a truck of high quality compost from Rodale last week and we dumped it under the tree near the MLK garden, which is really the only place we could put it. You can use some of that for your beds, just bear in mind that it needs to be spread among all the beds there, so be considerate about how much of it you take. Some beds are low and others have a decent amount of soil in them, so you first just need to see what your beds will need. I put an additional pile up at the Ullman garden and I think that we won't end up using all of that, so you can always get some from the pile up there as well.”