# My Community P-Patch Plots



## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

Last year was my first at gardening. I documented my backyard garden here:

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f14/new-members-garden-project-10665/

This year I am adding two adjoining 20x20 ft Community P-Patch plots in Woodinville to my efforts. The total 40x20, 800 square foot space costs $200 per year to lease, and I can work it year-round. Much cheaper than buying arable land around here, albeit limited in size. I'll have to employ intensive gardening techniques to get the most out of it. Here are some photos of the plots:

View of entrance









View of plots from southeast corner. Last week I staked it and marked it with neon pink cord.









View from southwest corner. The light tan brush in the center of the photo are raspberry canes. In the southwest corner are strawberry plants. Not sure what to do about either at this point.









View from northwest corner.









View of some of the other people's plots.









Another view of other people's plots.









The P-Patch includes this common area for hanging out and socializing, and the shed has a Roto-Tiller and weed whacker. Wheelbarrows and other equipment next to it are for everyone's use also. On the other side of the fence in the background is a composting area.









This video was sent to me by the steering committee chair and shows last September's annual picnic.






I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to garden here. It should at least triple my food production, and it's a nice sunny spot with good soil, unlike my backyard.


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## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

This is a good idea and glad you have found a place to grow your own.


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

I went down to my P-Patch plot today and pulled up all the raspberry canes by the roots, loaded them up in the trailer and brought them home. I intend to create new raised beds for the raspberries along the fence in my backyard. I also used the garden's communal rotor tiller to try to till up the plot. But it's a rather wimpy tiller (only about 5 HP) so it didn't work that well. So I'm still planning to rent the 13 HP heavy duty tiller in a couple of weeks, after I lay down some soil amendments. Here's what it looks like after the wimpy tiller did its thing:










A couple of weeks ago I rented another plot at another community garden about a block away from the first one. It's called Good Earth Community Garden (GECG). It's half the size of my P-Patch plot, at 20x20 feet, already fenced. I'll need to get a tiller in there too. This garden does not have a communal tiller, but does have a lot more hand tools in its shed. So now I have a total of 1200 square feet of rented garden space, and about 470 square feet at home, to which I will be adding to this year. Here's the new GECG plot:


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

I rented a 13 horsepower rear tine rotor tiller this weekend and went to town on my two community garden plots. What a beast of a machine. Weighing in at around a thousand pounds, it required serious manhandling. I shared the cost with several other gardeners, and it ended up costing me nothing. In fact, if the last contributor comes through and mails me the check he promised, I'll actually come out ahead, enough to rent a small tiller for my raised beds in my backyard garden. (This tiller was too big for that).

So now I can start constructing frames for raised beds at the community garden plots. I'll post photos when I've done this.


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

Wow! I don't think we have a community garden here. Down by the beach where we moved from I found the community garden 2 weeks ago.  Wish I had found it before we planned to move.


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

Time for an update.

I have not planted anything yet in any of my gardens except the potatoes and raspberries in my backyard. I've been working on getting these community garden plots ready, and today I FINALLY finished all the preparations there, so tomorrow (Saturday, 5/11/2013) I can begin planting. Pretty late in the season, I know, but the early spring weather was too wet and cold to even till up the ground, let alone all the other preparations.

You can see in the photos above what rough and neglected shape these plots were in. The photos below show the final stages of work and the completed plots.

Here's the smaller plot just before installing fencing and gates:


















...and here is the same plot this evening with the fence and gates completed.









Here is the larger plot with the fence and gate being installed:


















...and here it is with fence and gate completed:









I used cedar fence boards and cedar 2x2's to make the frames for the raised beds, and bright yellow mason line for the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) grids, stapled in place. Poultry netting for the larger fence, and leftover hardware cloth for the smaller fence. A lot of gardeners use t-posts, but I cut 1/2" x 10' EMT conduit in half and was able to use those as posts for less than 1/4 the cost of T-posts. Good enough to keep the rabbits out, i think. I stapled the fencing along the bottom to the sides of the raised bed frames. That should keep the rabbits from crawling under. They'd have to do a lot of digging to get into the garden plot.


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

*7/2/2013...Time for an update.*

After getting planting off to a late start, now that the weather has warmed up the community plots are really taking off. Here's how they looked about 10 days ago:



















...and here they are today:



















"Three Sisters"--corn, pole beans and squash growing together. It's about waist-high now. The idea is that the corn provides a "pole" for the beans to climb up, the beans give nitrogen to the corn, and the squash provides a mulch with its big leaves closer to the ground:










Tomatoes are held upright using the frame and string method:










Brassicas (Broccoli, cabbage):










The bush bean and pea beds are growing into one another:









And the last bed (left) is for root crops, beets, turnips, rutabagas and parsnips. I've been having trouble with flea beatles in these (they like the greens), the brassicas, and in the other garden, arugula.










Finally, I had to get a couple pictures of Mt. Rainier in the background, with this sunny weather we're having:


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

I know that you're not getting a lot of comments on this post but that's likely because there's not much to say other than "nice garden." Don't take that to mean that people aren't interested. I very much enjoy viewing your progress and looking at your beautiful handiwork, so feel free to keep posting updates knowing that some of us are really appreciating your accounts. 

BTW, nice gardens.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

Locutus, I'm totally blown away by your efforts, great job on the home garden, green house and the fantastic community garden. Looks like you invested well, it should pay off big time :congrat:


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Beautiful. I've got no idea why I hadn't seen this thread before. 
Wonderful job.


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## cedarguy (Nov 19, 2012)

Very nice! It doesnt look like the same area.


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## lovetogrow (Jan 25, 2011)

Justs saw this thread today - nice work Locutus :2thumb:


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## Enchant18 (Feb 21, 2012)

Beautiful. Thank you for all the pictures. It's a very satisfying experience creating life from bare ground. Congrats!


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## ContinualHarvest (Feb 19, 2012)

We don't have much in the way of community plots in our town. Thankfully, we have a big back yard. 
Nicely done! I be the sense of community makes it easy to trade heirloom seeds and plants.


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

*Final Update for 2013*

Thanks for all your kind comments, folks.

Here is my final update for this year. I finally got almost everything harvested (except for a few Brussels sprouts plants and celery), beds all cleaned up and covered with black plastic:



















I kept a harvest log this year. I forgot to log some stuff and I didn't keep my units of measure straight in some cases, but I thought some of you might find it interesting to read an approximation of how much yield I got out of a mere 1200 square feet of garden space using the Square Foot Gardening method. So here goes:

Broccoli: about 10 pounds primary and secondary crowns.

Cucumber (slicing type): 140 each counted, missed those harvested between 7/24/13 and 8/10/13 (probably an additional couple of dozen).

Cucumber (pickling type): Made 27 quarts of dill pickles.

Romaine Lettuce: about 100 plants in 24 SF. Most went to waste due to bolting, planted all at once. Note to self: stagger the planting next year.

Spinach: a few grocery bags full.

Summer Squash: 35 counted, missed counting from 7/24/13 to 8/10/13.

Zucchini: 34 counted, missed counting from 7/24/13 to 8/10/13. Tried to pick them small but if I was away for more than a few days they got huge.

Turnips: yield was poor due to worms. Managed to salvage 8 clean quart freezer bags worth.

Rutabagas: same here, only managed to save 4 quart freezer bags.

Carrots: 80 pounds, or 40 quart freezer bags.

Yellow Wax Beans: 15 quart freezer bags and 12 pints pickled beans.

Cabbage: 12 quart freezer bags and 40 quarts of sauerkraut from over 100 pounds of fresh cabbage heads.

Peas: 9.5 quarts, shelled.

Blue Lake Pole Beans: 30 quarts.

French Bush Beans: 38 pounds. I didn't get to these until they were "over the hill," unfortunately. Managed to sort out about 6 quart bags before giving up and gave the rest to neighbors.

Tomatoes: 171 pounds. Those we didn't eat fresh in salads we canned. My first attempt at canning tomatoes rendered 40 pounds of nice, delicious heirloom tomatoes into 4 quarts of burnt-tasting tomato sauce.  My next batches were better though: I used tomato paste to thicken instead of reduction, and used a crushed tomato recipe. Total yield of the later batches was 22 quarts crushed tomatoes rendered from 83 pounds of fresh.

Corn: 89 ears. Many were small, none longer than 8 inches.

Onions, Walla Walla Sweet: 60 each. Largest was about 3 inches diameter, many were much smaller.

Green Onion (Evergreen bunching): about half a grocery bag.

Beets, Red: 9.5 pounds

Beets, Golden: 13 pounds.

Cantaloupe: 31 each.

Peppers, Bell and Marconi Rosso: about two 3-gallon buckets.

Parsnip: 22 each.

Acorn Squash: 14 each.

Swiss Chard ("Perpetual Spinach"): about 8 grocery bags full.

This was a surprisingly large harvest, one I could barely keep up with. We ended up completely filling both our chest freezer and our kitchen freezer (top part of fridge), we have dozens of quart mason jars of canned tomatoes, sauerkraut and pickles, and buckets of squash and peppers that we're still trying to eat before they spoil.

Good gardening year over all, I'd say. I was hoping to figure out a cost per pound to compare with store-bought produce, but unfortunately my recordkeeping wasn't good enough for that. Anyone want to make a guess at the value of this list if had been store-bought?


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Beautiful garden. Fantastic harvest, you should be very proud


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## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

Very nice. And most important, productive.


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