Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Laura McKenzie" <laurabrownmckenzie@worldnet.att.net>]

Pat,  perhaps a little at a time you could incorporate ideas about gardening 
for people with disabilities.
You already know Margaret : ) 
http://www.margaretlauterbach.com/handicapped_gardening.htm

  Its been a little at a time with us.  I've been working on my place since 
1993.  When we adopted our youngest child at age 2, I had no time for the 
garden and basically lost a couple of years and I had no time last year when 
my nephew came to stay with us.  But little by little its grown.

   BTW, I know you've already said you don't have access to downed wood but 
perhaps you could ask around to see if a friend would give you some.  My 
raised beds out of culled trees and hurricane debris work fairly well.  I 
wonder if someone has a rotten firewood pile that they don't know what to do 
with.  I've used partially rotten logs for the sides when I had nothing 
else.  You could ask on your local Freecycle list and see if anyone would 
look out for wood or bed materials for you.

    I understand what you mean about dogs.  We have three rescues. None are 
known for barking but two would escape if they could.  We try hard to stay 
on good terms with our neighbors in case at some point one of the Sibes were 
to get out and be a nuisance.  (Its happened already once about 10 years ago 
actually when a rescue that we had got out and killed one neighbor's goose 
and injured another goose.)  Sibes don't bark but they do howl so at one 
time we set a sprinkler pointed directly at their night time kennel and we'd 
sneak out and turn it on when they set off howling.   They got to the point 
where they'd stop when they heard us open the door but still would START to 
howl so we had to really sneak quietly and persevere.  They don't howl 
anymore.

  I'm lucky in that my newest and right next door neighbor is a gardener. 
I don't believe he cares about sustainability or organic but since his back 
yard reeked for two weeks of fairly putrid cow manure I can bet he won't 
complain about my rare fish emulsion smells wafting his way : )


Laura
> <>``    ><>``     ><>``     ><>``      ><>``    ><>``    ><>``
Laura's Homeschooling, Garden, and Genealogy Site
is found here: http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pat Meadows" <pat@meadows.pair.com>

> On Thu, 11 May 2006 13:18:39 -0600, you wrote:
>
> > Not to rain on anyone's parade, but........
> >
> >
> > Before allot of this can happen, home building techniques and laws will 
> > have to change, and as long as some people have the money, that is not 
> > going to happen.
> >
> > In many places, the available yard is less than 50 sq ft, and if it is, 
> > available, the amount of available sun is low.
> We have a little over 1/3 of an acre - which is really more
> than we can handle in the way of a garden (health problems).
> Much more.  (Although we grow a lot of food!)
>
> We're on the edge of a small town in a very rural area.  We
> are within the town limits.  We are not allowed to garden in
> old tires; and when a neighbor complained, were forced to
> dismantle last year's garden in early July.  Bad timing.
>
> The neighbor complained because she didn't like the
> hoophouse we built.  The hoophouse is fine, it's in
> accordance with the zoning regulations.  We had checked on
> that before building it, of course.
>
> But once the neighbor complained and the zoning board people
> came to our house, of course they saw that we were gardening
> in tires.  And we had to remove them.  We could have fought
> it as the regulation says that we cannot 'accumulate' tires,
> and we were not 'accumulating' them but gardening in them.
> But we both have health problems and just couldn't face a
> knock-down, drag-out fight about it.  So we removed them. We
> had just about decided that most of our gardening needs to
> be in containers anyway:  I wasn't managing to keep up with
> the weeding around the tires.  I can manage containers (with
> help).  We'll put a couple of tomatoes in the ground, my
> herb garden is planted in the ground; for the rest, this
> year it will be a container garden.
>
> What I would *like* to do would be to have lots of old
> toilets in the front yard, and claim that they are my form
> of artistic expression.  :)  But I can't bring myself to do
> it; after all, we live here.
>
> Also, it would guarantee complaints that one of our dogs
> barks too much (he barks; he's a rough collie; collies are
> barkers and there's no real way to train them out of it). We
> NEVER let him bark more than the amount of time it takes us
> to get to the back door and call him in.  And when we're not
> home, we leave the dogs in the house.  But he does bark;
> this is indisputable.  So we don't want to invite complaints
> about him.
>
> Pat
> --
> Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.
>
> Eat local food, change the world for the better!
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