[Community_garden] Tips for help list for Efficient Gardening on a Community Garden Plot

[Liz Gardens]

Hi,

Many of our community gardeners are new to gardening.  So they have a steep
learning curve on a variety of vegetables, fruits, and herbs in their first
year(s).  We are finding that a number of gardeners have a difficult time
being successful enough on a regular basis that they get enough produce to
make the garden work worth the effort and time they put in.  So while they
often enjoy the gardening time itself, the results are not great enough that
they want to garden again another year.

In discussing this with the successful longterm gardeners, most of the
longterm gardeners said that they had grown up gardening and mostly
continued on with what they had learned in childhood adding a few tweaks
they learned about as adults.  So they were hard pressed with how to help a
new gardener ramp up.   Also a number are retired and can spend a lot of
time at the garden.  Many of the newer gardeners work full time and have
families, so they need to be able to garden efficiently in a shorter time or
in short increments between picking children up from daycare or school and
dinner or nightfall in the spring.

So we thought we'd try and come up with suggestions for gardening
efficiently before and after work and in and around children's weekend
sports.  We'd appreciate anyone's ideas or suggestions.  Even if you think
something might be obvious, we'd welcome that too as often what's obvious to
the experienced gardener is a nifty novel idea to newer gardeners.  Also,
does anyone have suggestions for work patterns that are particularly
effective?  For example one gardener said she always transplants and plants
seeds on Tuesdays.  She does the transplants first and then as many seeds as
will fit in the remaing time.  She said this is a great way to keep harvests
coming along at a steady rate.

We are in the mid-atlantic in zone 7, if that helps, and would welcome ideas
from anywhere--could just adjust the timing to fit our frost patterns.

Thank you!

Liz
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