I’ve gone and done it again – I’ve completely neglected my community garden plot. I pretty much predicted I would do this, but there was some small bit of hope that maybe things would be different this year. With the neglect aside, the garden has been doing really well.

The good thing is that this year has been fairly good in terms of weather. It has been mostly warm and rainfalls have been pretty frequent. So the gardens have been generally happy. I actually hadn’t realized how well the community garden was doing because it had been a couple of weeks since I’d seen it. I walked over one evening and discovered that I already had a few zucchini that were on the verge of being too large for my liking, the kale and swiss chard were exploding, and the bush beans had a million flowers (some plants even had tiny beans!).

I really need to keep on top of this garden now. Luckily it is virtually weedless, so I don’t need to do much to it in the way of weeding. But I do need to water it occasionally, and most importantly, I need to be harvesting from it frequently.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that gardening space lately and whether or not I want to continue growing there after this season. On the one hand, it is very convenient because it is pretty much within seeing distance from my front door. And it also gives me extra growing space that I don’t have in my own back yard. But on the other hand, I do have to pay a fee to use it (and unfortunately the fees went up quite a bit this year), and I’m not convinced that my yields are offsetting the cost of the plot, also factoring in the cost I put in initially for the seeds (although fairly minimal, I do need to take it in to consideration). The other thing I’ve been waffling with is whether or not it is fair for me to have a plot at a community garden when I have the space in my own yard to grow vegetables. There is a wait list every year for the community garden, and I get priority since I’ve rented in past years, but it might be time for me to let someone else, who may not have access to another growing space, to garden there. Alternatively, I have been wanting to convert some of the space in my front yard to food gardens, so if I do that I would have the equivalent to or more space than the community plot. As well, I’ve recently been considering something like a yard-share which would give me access to growing space in a residential backyard in exchange for some of the crops. I can’t believe I’m already planning for the next growing season!

Do you grow in a community garden? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Is it your only growing space? I’d also love to know if you find it to be cheaper than buying fresh produce, factoring in the cost of the plot fees.