Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Insects Similar to bad odors, people worry about flies and other unwanted pests being attracted to a
garden. This comes up when people inquire about compost programs, too. Unless you get a biblical
plague of locusts, this shouldn't be an issue, but, again, perception is everything.
Vermin This term covers a lot of pests. But mostly, people are afraid of rats. And rightly so—they carry
disease and are creepy. The way to keep rats away is make sure there is nowhere for them to hide and
nothing for them to eat or drink. As scary as they are, rats are timid creatures for the most part, and
won't come around when people are in the garden. (I did once see a brazen city rat sashaying down the
middle aisle of a movie theater.) They are also mostly nocturnal and have poor eyesight.
A perfect scenario for rats is a garden with lots of overhang on the edges of beds and the
garden's perimeter, which provides places to hide and access to food (such as vegetables lying on the
ground—rats are attracted to the smell of rotting vegetables or very fragrant fruits like melons). Since
they have poor eyesight, they follow corners and walls using their whiskers to help them navigate. So if
the rat superhighways around your garden are covered with vegetation, you're just encouraging them.
They also need water, so try to minimize standing water in puddles or ponds (raccoons are also attracted
to ponds). A tidy, well-harvested and dry garden will be an unfriendly place to rats—but a friendly, safe
place to humans and neighbors, which brings me to the next item.
SMALL BEDS, FREE CHIPS, AND FENCES: THE
PETERSON GARDEN PROJECT
My home community garden is the Peterson Garden Project, which I started with no partners or outside
funding. The community members funded the building of the garden and, after the first year, added ad-
ditional programs. This meant the materials used were very basic (untreated pine boards and free chips
from the city). The property was fenced (due to city requirements), which worked out well for two
reasons: it was on a busy intersection and it discouraged theft. This latter benefit was especially import-
ant, since the mandate of the garden was to teach, and it seemed that community members would be
much more likely to become lifelong gardeners if their amateur attempts weren't foiled by having the
fruits of their labors go missing.
The educational mandate also affected the build of the garden. The organizers removed as much
complexity as possible for gardeners to join. Beds were a small, predetermined size (4 ft. by 8 ft., so as
to not overwhelm new gardeners), all plots were the same size to make instruction simple, and organic
methods were employed and practiced (this determined the kind of soil we brought in and how garden-
ers were taught). Community areas were included in the building plan—a seating area and also a
stage—to support the social aspect of the garden.
Removing complexity was also tied to the history of the garden. The site was an original World War
II victory garden. During the war, 90 percent of the food gardeners in the city had never gardened be-
fore, so we actively recruited people who had little or no gardening experience. The simple, uniform
space was a great help for this new crop of gardeners.
Now, with the project entering its fifth year, many of the original participants have mastered the ba-
sic gardening techniques taught at Peterson gardens, and have gone on to be leaders and educators in
new gardens.
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