Community gardens blossom in fourth season of growth | The ...

Tomatoes, lettuce and herbs grow in the community garden located on the southern end of the Chautauqua grounds off Bryant. There are 15 plots for residents to work. Photo by Michelle Kanaar.

Joanna Hamer |?Staff Writer

The Chautauqua season is nine weeks long, but for some who live on the grounds, there is a longer, more important season to arrange one?s summer around: the growing season.

At the southernmost end of the Institution, hidden behind bushes that grow along Bryant, are 15 small plots that together comprise the Chautauqua community gardens. The gardeners who tend them extend their Chautauqua time for planting and harvesting.

The Subaghs

It is the fourth summer for the gardens, started by Subagh Kaur Winkelstern in the spring of 2009 with help from husband Subagh Singh Khalsa, Institution staff and other interested gardeners.

?It was about when Michelle Obama was really doing the community garden thing, so there was a lot of additional support for the idea,? Winkelstern said. ?There were no funds available for it, but the gardens department brought down a couple of rototillers and a truckload of compost, and then we borrowed from the golf club a sod cutter.?

The process was more involved than originally thought, said gardener Jane Stirniman.

?The sod is this thick, it?s the roots of the grass for a million years in there,? Stirniman said. ?(Khalsa) rolls up these huge rolls of sod, but they?re too heavy to lift and move. We had to hire some young college-age guys to lift these out to the side of the road so a truck could pick them up.?

Once the plots were cut out, they were assigned to individuals or families, who could grow what they liked, however they liked. Most of the gardeners are year-round Chautauquans, as the seeds need to be planted in May and crops continue to flourish well into the fall.

?Everybody did their own thing,? Winkelstern said. ?If you wanted a fence, you put up a fence. The (Chautauqua Utility District) provides us the water, which is very nice of them.?

Both Winkelstern and Stirniman said community gardeners watch out for each other by watering other? plots whenever they water their own.

And the vegetables, flowers and fruits are coming up in abundance as the season progresses: zucchinis, squash, broccoli, string beans and herbs. Winkelstern said that many of the vegetables in her diet come from her garden in the community plot or the one at her house.

?This time of year, it?s all the tomatoes, and cucumbers and some herbs, parsley and basil,? she said, ?and in the spring and early summer, I have lettuce and arugula, and now I could start cutting that swiss chard and collard greens.?

Before coming to Chautauqua, Winkelstern lived in Rochester, where she also had a garden. But she?s still learning about what works and what doesn?t in every garden.

Jane Stirniman

Stirniman, who grows an impressive flower garden at her house, grew up in Iowa where family gardens were the norm.

?Those who are my age have always been in gardening, and this gives them a space to do it,? she said. ?There?s so much joy in just harvesting.?

She also sees the gardens as a way to address environmental concerns.

?We?re trying to be green, and we give voice to it and credence to it, and then we don?t do anything,? Stirniman said. ?We?re trying to take more CO₂ out of the air and do our little bit. It?s a small fragment, but it?s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.?

Though she suspects her neighbors have begun to pull down the curtains when she approaches to avoid being given her excess green beans, Stirniman enjoys the variety her vegetables bring to her diet.

?There?s something thrilling about growing your own food,? she said. ?It?s a small part of our diet, but it?s still a connection to the earth.?

Stirniman said that she was immensely grateful to the Institution for giving them a plot of land on which to work, and hopes to see more Chautauquans interested in gardening.

?It?s satisfying, it really is. It?s very meditative, too. There?s may be something wrong with me, but I just love digging in the soil, getting dirty,? she said.

Stirniman?s flower and vegetable gardens are her retirement project, but the gardeners who tend one of the plots next to hers are far from retirement age.

The McKees

The McKees joined the community garden project just this year, after hearing on the Grapevine, a community bulletin board, that there were open spaces. Lisa and David McKee were originally interested in the project, but their three children ? Max, 12; Shannon, 11; and Alex, 6 ? have made the garden their own.

The plot was overgrown when the McKees began to plant in the spring, and they found themselves in for much work.

?It was all weeds,? Lisa said.

?It was the worst plot in the lot,? David said.

Visitors to the community gardens at the end of the season would never be able to tell which was the troublesome plot after all the work the McKees have invested.

?On Mother?s Day, my hero over here rented a rototiller and tilled it,? Lisa said. ?On Shannon?s birthday, I bought her a bunch of plants ? she wanted strawberries ? and then I went to the garden center and got broccoli, and cauliflower and parsley.?

It is the McKees? first time having a garden, and it has been a running start.

?It?s been a learning process,? Lisa said. ?We?ve eaten more vegetables this summer than ever.?

Shannon has taken a lead role in maintaining the garden, coming down to check on the plants when her parents pick Alex up from camp. She has some experience exercising her green thumb: growing a flower garden with her grandmother that features her favorite bloom, lilies.

Alex also tries to survey the garden whenever she can, and she and her dad stopped by on the Old First Night Run/Walk.

All the McKee children have noticed the difference fresh vegetables make in their diet and found new interesting ways to eat them. Alex loves cauliflower cheese, and Shannon enjoyed how they turned their abundance of zucchini into zucchini bread.

Lisa comes from a gardening family, as her mother grew up on a farm and was the president of the Bird, Tree & Garden Club. She believes that food is an important part of life and can affect your health.

?Up until just this last year, I?d been a vegan,? she said ? ?A vegan is a vegetarian vampire,? Shannon explained ? ?so everybody always sees me eating all these oddball things, but now that they?re growing them, they?re not so oddball for them anymore, and they?re willing to give them a try.?

Lisa loves that all the food they grow is organic, and the family tries to combat plant illnesses in the most natural way possible. Their zucchini has powdery mildew, and their tomatoes are affected by a fungal blight, but it hasn?t impacted their harvests so far.

John Allen

The blight also affects tomatoes growing in John Allen?s plot, who treats his plants with copper fungicide to keep the disease at bay. Allen has been gardening for more than 40 years, first at his home in Ohio, and then at Chautauqua when the community gardens opened.

When he retired and began spending more time at the Institution, he found it difficult to keep up his garden in Ohio and didn?t have space for one on the grounds.

?I was in limbo there for a while, and it was really good to see the community garden come up,? Allen said.

Though experienced and knowledgeable about gardening, Allen has found many things different working the soil at the Institution.

?I?ve had to readjust what I?m planting. I?ve been doing more swiss chard and onions, and next year, I?m going to do cucumbers,? he said.

Back home in Ohio, an onion harvest wouldn?t survive the maggots, but on the grounds, there doesn?t seem to be any issue. Before coming to Chautauqua, Allen worked in his garden every day of the week.

?Up here with all the other activities, I don?t get down there every day at all. I?ve probably spent three of the last seven days down there,? he said.

Allen enjoys tending his plot to keep down diseases, to ensure good growth, and because of the time he gets to spend talking to people. Chautauquans who spy the community plots through the brush often come in to investigate, and are usually gardeners themselves.

?That?s really one of the side benefits of this,? Allen said. ?I do get to meet other people who are here. A lot of my time there is spent talking.?

The community gardens really are just that ? a community and gardens. They provide vegetables, fruit and flowers for the tables of the participants and the chance for them to continue a lifelong hobby, or to discover where food comes from and how it grows.

Source: http://chqdaily.com/2012/08/24/community-gardens-blossom-in-fourth-season-of-growth/

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