Community garden plans for end-of-season work

Now that the community garden has put down roots and harvested a successful return, committee members are mulling over what comes next for the budding group.

At its monthly meeting Sept. 20, a few members gathered at the community garden site at 1.5 Mile to discuss end-of-season plans, a final harvest wrap-up party and what will happen next year.

Committee member and co-founder of the group Valerie Massie said there was still work left to do this season, such as building an eight-foot-high fence around the perimeter of the garden to keep out deer and dogs, cleaning out garden beds and tearing down an old wooden outbuilding.

Even though there are a few items left to take care of, Massie said she believed the season turned out well.

"I'd say this year was a success since we had almost every single bed rented," she said. "Basically, we're just trying to finalize the last date for folks to have stuff out of their beds so we can winterize everything. We'll kind of get a sense of who wants to be involved with beds and the committee next summer, and anything that worked or didn't work this year."

Since Massie and co-founder Kim Wickman began surveying residents last November to gauge interest in reviving the community garden, the group has torn down old, dilapidated beds, weeded, cleaned out garbage, laid down crushed rock, installed new beds and smokehouses, planted seeds and grown and harvested all manner of produce.

Massie credited Wickman for all her hard work and pushing for the garden, and Parks and Recreation director Kate Thomas for her guidance in getting things approved through the borough and planning and zoning. "(Kate's) had quite a lot on her plate, but she wanted to finish strong with the garden."

The garden was able to move forward with funds from the Rural Alaska Community Action Program, and support from the Wrangell Cooperative Association, Indian General Assistance Program and volunteers from the U.S. Forest Service and borough, Massie said. A commercial-size composter was purchased earlier this year with the help of the Alaska Division of Agriculture and was hooked up two weeks ago with the aid of the borough and electrical contractor Tim Buness.

Along with renting out garden beds so that members could grow their own lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos, strawberries and more, the community garden obtained 50 pounds of seed potatoes and sold them in less than an hour at the community market in May.

Committee members are also planning educational workshops with Sarah Lewis, an agent with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, in December. Lewis presented food preservation classes in Wrangell in late May. They would also like to bring Meda DeWitt back. DeWitt presented "Alaska Plants as Food and Medicine" at the Sharing Our Knowledge conference earlier this month.

At the Sept. 20 meeting, the topic of cleaning up garden beds and winterizing them cropped up.

"If they want to redo their beds, they'll rebook," Wickman said. She said the beds needed to be cleared out of all plant life, "unless they've planted strawberries. We'll leave those there. We still want to make sure that everything, other than, like, perennials, are pulled out. I want them to at least put down seaweed or something so that everything they worked really hard on with their soil doesn't just wash away."

Hoop houses and gillnet covers also need to be taken down, Wickman said.

The group discussed having a harvest party that would include cleaning beds, light weeding and taking sign-ups for next year. There could also possibly be a celebration to follow the housekeeping items.

In all, the group had positive views on the past season.

"I think, for the most part, it was pretty successful," Wickman said. "We obviously have lots of very happy gardeners. There's lots of things that are growing, and the deer did not annihilate everything."