Heather har­vest­ing let­tuces from her com­mu­nity gar­den plot.

If you’ve got no sun­shine or space to grow veg­gies, a com­mu­nity gar­den plot can come to your res­cue. Perfect! Now you’ve got space, and all day sun­shine, but now what? Do you just toss in some bean seeds, water with the hose, then go home? It’s pos­si­ble to have suc­cess that way, but there’s no guarantee.

There are def­i­nite chal­lenges to grow­ing food in a gar­den that’s away from your liv­ing space. With a back yard veg­gie gar­den, you have the lux­ury of being able water any­time you step out your door. Not the com­mu­nity gar­den. You may be walk­ing, cycling or dri­ving to your plot, so it’s not always easy to nur­ture and water those seeds every day dur­ing the crit­i­cal ger­mi­na­tion period. Heather solved many com­mu­nity gar­den chal­lenges with these methods:

• Start seeds at home, even let­tuce and peas, which are tra­di­tion­ally sown in the ground. Since you aren’t there to water, plants will have a bet­ter chance than seeds which may dry out before they germinate.

• Use chicken wire around your gar­den to foil hun­gry rab­bits and ground hogs. (Our East York Community Garden, pic­tured above, has both of these, as we are sit­u­ated next to a park with wild areas)

• Test your soil. Heather found that the soil in her plot was alka­line, and the peas weren’t doing well at all. She added some amend­ments to bal­ance the soil and bring it closer to neu­tral; now her peas are luscious.

• Create raised beds to warm up the soil in spring and to improve drainage. Piling manure and com­post on top each year will raise the soil level higher, mak­ing your gar­den soil richer and deeper. Plus raised beds help to attach the chicken wire, or wooden bean supports.

• Don’t plant every­thing at once. Heather found she now has way more let­tuce than she can han­dle. Giving away is a fun part of hav­ing a gar­den, but suc­ces­sion plant­ing (sow every two weeks) can make sure that you have beans and let­tuce right through the season.

• Once you have planted, mulch. This keeps soil from dry­ing out too quickly. Again, because you are off-site, con­serv­ing mois­ture in soil is even more impor­tant. You can use par­tially rot­ted straw, leaves or nat­ural cedar or pine mulch. I use my huge rhubarb leaves to green mulch my gar­den, when I har­vest my stalks.

Of course, the oftener you can get to the gar­den, the bet­ter luck you will have.