Sunrise P-Patch @sunriseppatch-blog - Tumblr Blog

Miners Lettuce, fresh from P-Patch. 4 season gardening at its best.

We have plots! Good paths make good neighbors, just saying.

We moved 33 cubic yards of topsoil today! Tomorrow we move 17 cubic yards of compost. Come help! We start at 8 am to hopefully avoid the rain.

More mulch for the ppatch. Covering up the paths, one shredded tree at a time.

The first of the mulch paths. Die weeds, die! #ppatch

#ppatch

Ppatch plan. Takes berms into account. Takes actual measurement into account. All plots fit well.

July 6th, 2013

Esteemed elders

and cherished children

and everyone in between

are building

a community.

June 29th

Guest post (Leah):

Today we covered the sod berms

(Go, Alissa, go!)

and planted a few squash plants

(Delicata variety; they are sad without water :()

and worked on the water ditches

(Tu and Eric)

and talked about lumber for the beds

(Allen)

Speaking of Allen, he went on a field trip to West Seattle to look at how other PPatches and Community Gardens do things. The following are his photos and commentary:

Here's a pic from my field trip today to High point in West Seattle. I visited two PPs and they were really similar. Beds are slightly raised using 2x10s and the beds are like four or five feet wide. I didn't measure length but my sense is these are NOT 100 SF per garden . Also, the paths between these narrow beds are like 18". There is a main boulevard that is four or five feet wide and the narrow beds and narrow paths are perpendicular. In short it's a very different layout.

Same concept as first garden. Narrow beds with narrow walks all accessed from a central four foot wide path. Same single board high "raised " bed. This garden did not have chips on the paths and it was weedy.

35th & Barton

Leah's comment - Wow- dig the bench nestled around the tree. <Swoon>.

June 22th

Today was all about strange buried objects (SBOs), geometry, and ummm, what do you call those dense ovoid things again? Rocks. Yes, lots and lots of rocks.

First up the SBOs.

Started innocently enough with Eric versus the sodcutter. For the record, Eric won.

Sod was getting rolled and the whole thing was going like clockwork. Those are Dean's boots btw.

And the man himself.

And then the works got gummed. This is not actually a photo of the moment of gumitude, but it illustrated it quite nicely. Artistic license et cetera, et cetera.

Thanks goodness for Juanita (or Wanita)! J or W, she's awesome. Not only did she spend her vacation helping us out for nothing but thanks, BUT she also dug this metal, erm, thingie out of the ground.

Meanwhile, things were rocking on the other side of the patch. (You can thank me for that hi-la-rious pun later.)

Hillary and Tao git 'er done.

After. For the before see the previous post.

Then we took a much-needed break while we waited for the surveyors.

Pei and Peter talk shop.

Hillary and Josh make hauling rocks under the hot sun look glamorous with their movie star shades.

I entertained myself by taking pictures of a pair of rusted shears.

And finally after all of the rock stacking, we got to the exciting part.

The master and his dedicated, knot-unraveling assistant at work. Leah and Allen measuring the beds. Like, to the inch. And before they even got done, some of us descended and started trying to dig a trench. But they kept their cool through it all, even when, as Allen pointed out, our initial trench was crooked.

Kim in the trench.

Fraunck demonstrating the correct form for pick axe swinging. He tried to show it to me, but I couldn't quite master it. I think my biggest failing was not having arms like his.

Bonus:

The first crop of the patch. A volunteer fennel plant hiding behind the shed.

If I didn't interrupt your work to stick a camera in your face, take heart. I'll probably sidle up in the next couple of weeks and then you too can have a blurry picture that will live on the internet forever!

This rocky patch and the surrounding ~1700sq ft was cleared today. Closer and closer every weekend. #ppatch #urbangarden

#urbangarden #ppatch

Dakota

Dakota is our friendly western neighbor. Pop across MLK and veer to the rightmost corner of the development (the exact same directions for our patch if you're coming from RV East) and you'll discover a little oasis.

This patch is carved out of a hillside and is set into three ascending terraces, which you can kinda see over Jeff's shoulder.

View from the up on the hilltop. There's still a bit of undeveloped land, but most of the private homes in RV East have decent-sized lots. Less demand for P-patch plots, I guess. One of the homeowners even has their very own fig tree in their backyard. (Drool)

Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

Most of the plots in Dakota are of the long and skinny variety, except for the ones (last picture) that go right up to the hardscaping. I'm guessing the low beds are what Julie has envisioned for our patch. As she put it: it's not so much building raised beds as it's outlining the paths.

This is a new bed that just got put in. The person it belongs to just used whatever bits of wood/stone they could find to outline their plot.

The Dakota compost pile is kind of in the center of the upper level. That might be where it worked best for everyone...or maybe they just like having it in the center.

The wildlife: bees and worms.

As far as community space goes, there is a little round of flowers and a fruit tree that's still getting established.

They also have a larger open patch that looks a little ignored.

But, luckily (or maybe strategically) a couple of the beds were planted with berries, which basically grow themselves in the PNW.

Yes, I had a strawberry. I'm a part of the community, right?

Dakota would be worth a visit on its own, but being right next to the Urban Farm bumps up to a definite must. There's no quicker way to figure out what grows really well in our specific Rainier Valley micro-climate than to mosey over and see what the farm dedicates its limited, but highly productive, beds to growing.

Kale, chard, spinach, and every member of the allium family. Also, a ton of rosemary and parsley/cilantro and a bunch of other crops I didn't photograph.

Jeff making himself at home among the pea vines.

But that's enough of us. If you're home on an afternoon with nothing much to do, take a walk and see whats growing.

Thistle

The thing to know about Thistle is that it is hugenormous. So big in fact, that my cutting-edge 3GS was hopelessly overwhelmed. Behold my unfocused photographs!

That little maroon dot to the right is Jeff and the houses in the distance mark the perimeter of the patch.

Trying to get another perspective shot. These folks have their own in-plot trash and compost area, and corn...lots of corn.

Most of the plots had fences of some sort: stakes, pallet wood, store-bought materials, saplings--we saw it all.

Jeff insisted I take a picture of this. In case you can't tell, it's old carpet being refashioned as landscape fabric. The weeds are pretty unimpressed though.

This gardener subdivided their plot into lots of skinny beds using shallow walking paths. It's a fairly good example of how one might manage 10'x10' plots.

Jeff's mixed-media interpretive dance piece. I think he's titling it: Gosh, The Plots are Big. You can say you knew him when.

The only fly in the ointment was the common area which, disturbingly enough, was at the entrance. It consisted of a rotting picnic table (which I did not photograph) and trash-smothered fruit trees. I can see why Julie delayed all plans for the common area until the main garden is established. Tragedy of the commons much?

All in all though, Thistle is pretty legit and the dizzying array of vegetables these dedicated gardeners are growing is kind of spectacular. We recommend a visit. It's down MLK a few blocks past the Othello LINK station.