2018
GARDEN: KERHONKSON
With reliable voluntary assistance not sufficiently forthcoming by late 2017, plans to commence the intended 2018 cultivation of a half-acre plot belonging to Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Ellenville, were postponed twelve months. A new schedule of activities was therefore devised to move the program forward in 2018.
The planning of a new community project must necessarily proceed with pragmatism and with the incorporation of contingencies, such that progress can always be made according to a “Plan B” or a “Plan C”. Revision of our 2018 schedule was viewed as an opportunity to consolidate what we had already created, while serving as a valuable reminder that we must look afresh at our outreach approach in the Ellenville community (we will make greater use of Ellenville Farmers' Market as a resource to promote the community vegetable gardens program).
Pressure had been relieved from a probable year of struggle in 2018 to maintain our three existing community vegetable gardens while also revitalizing the relatively large garden at Broadhead Street. Being afforded such “breathing space” would allow us to devote more time in 2018 to improving the productivity and the aesthetic of the gardens we had created in recent years. These improvements would also prove useful when showcasing the program's gardens as part of our efforts to attract new partnerships and volunteer commitments.
We had always been interested in applying season extension practices to this organic vegetable gardening program, in order that we may cultivate crops outside their normal growing season, and so harvest more fresh vegetables for food pantries. Although we have failed thus far in our efforts to obtain use of a greenhouse to achieve this objective, when a new area of garden close by the program's 2016 garden in Kerhonkson became available to us in late 2017, it was determined that this plot could serve usefully as a cold frame plant nursery.
We received donations of the materials necessary to build several rudimentary cold frames (transparent-roofed, soil-lined boxes used to protect plants from frost damage), as supporters of the program provided old windows, glass doors, and pieces of old lumber. Rather than waiting until after the last hard frosts of spring to direct-sow in the gardens, the cold frames now allow us to transplant young vegetable plants into the gardens in mid May.