Gardening: New group will help organize community gardens

Now is a great time to think about starting a community garden, and Spokane has a new organization to help make that happen.

In late November, the Spokane Community Gardens Association was created in partnership with the Spokane Associated Garden Clubs. The Associated Garden Clubs have been supporting community beautification projects for decades and wanted to expand their mission to growing food. The new group will bring the more than 20 community gardens in the area under one network that will help marshal resources, develop gardens and provide an advocacy voice for community food production.

To kick off the effort, the Spokane Community Gardens Association and WSU Spokane County Extension are teaming up to put on a class: How to Start a Community Garden will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Feb. 28 at Spokane Community College.

A community garden is 90 percent community and 10 percent garden, which means you need to build the community that will then build the garden. All kinds of groups can start a garden: churches, neighborhoods, community centers, schools, retirement communities, housing projects and clubs.

To get the effort off the ground, gather a group of six to 10 likeminded folks. As the old saying goes: Many hands make light work. Having a big enough core group will help keep individuals from getting burned out before the project gets going. Discuss what you envision for the garden. Gardens can take many forms, from a communal space where all the produce is shared to those where people have individual boxes. Take stock of who has the various skills needed to get things started, including organizing people, fundraising, construction and, finally, gardening.

A good garden site will be flat with more than eight hours of direct sun a day. Talk to churches and other community organizations about offering a site for the garden. Often these organizations have pieces of land that can be used and, even more importantly, liability insurance coverage. The site should be free of junk and construction debris and have access to water from the hosting organization or a willing neighbor. Putting in a feeder line and a meter from the street is expensive. Plan on sharing the cost of the water.

The soil in the garden should be tested for heavy metals like lead, arsenic and molybdenum, especially if the plot is in an older part of the city where lead paint and chemicals could be found. While a garden can be planted in the ground, it might be better to build raised beds that can be filled with quality soil to cut down on weed issues and increase the potential for success for the gardeners. Start small and build your group slowly the first year and learn as you go.