Friday afternoon was sunny and beautiful!  A bit chilly but in the sunshine it was delightful.  I convinced my Daddy to help me prep the soil in my community garden plot for an hour or so.  He's going to help me a bit more but we only had about an hour on Friday afternoon.  And honestly, that was plenty.  I am, uh, not exactly used to doing physical labor.  Ha.

The following three photos are the before shots.  When not a single thing had been done.  It's hard to tell the size of my plot and see where others begin right now in the photo.  But shortly that should be remedied 

My allotment is full of weeds and rocks.  Plus one leftover strawberry plant and one leftover either onion or garlic (time will tell...want to take a guess?) plant.  And then more weeds and rocks.  Bottom line, it's a hot mess.  It's also right next to the hose.  Which could be both a blessing and a curse.








And the two photos below are the after.  I know it's doesn't look like much but it wasn't exactly easy given the solid mass of weeds and rocks everywhere bonus.  Really all we did was dig up all the weeds and turn over the soil.  It's step #1.  Many steps to go before I can harvest (or even plant) anything.

This also should make it easier to see in the photo which spot is mine.  The small space that is now dirt vs green weeds.  The soil closer to the fence line is ALL rocks and old bricks from when a house once stood on this piece of land.  The great news is that the entire garden gets direct sun all day.  And even though my allotment isn't very large, it should be plenty big enough for my first foray into community gardening.  Or as I call it, farming.  There are several experienced gardeners in my garden and I hope they impart lots of insight and wisdom in me this summer.






I already know I need to quickly put up some sort of fencing along the side (above right) with the garden hose to prevent it from constantly ending up on my plants.  When I got there it was all over my plot.  Hmph!

Have any of y'all ever gardened in a community garden before?  Do you have any tips or tricks?