The Lovelady Center Victory Garden

29 Apr '08 9:43 am

Well, I have truly jumped into this one with both feet and have landed up to my eyebrows in a giant, exciting project.

The Lovelady Center, as some of you may have already read on my Gardens Through the Seasons blog, is a shelter for women and children. Their population currently stands at 300 women and more than 80 children (soon to be over 150 when school lets out in less than a month now). We are trying to build a Victory Garden of large raised beds on the top two levels of their parking deck. We have used railroad trestle timbers being delivered this week (approximately 216 of them), along with heavy weight plastic sheeting, pvc pipe for a drainage system and 20 teenagers from my Church all coming this Saturday, May 3 to help put together the beds and line them with plastic and the drainage systems. We will then hopefully procure enough soilless mix to fill them and plants and seeds to start our garden. The food they grow will supplement the donated food they use to prepare over 1800 meals per week for their population. It's a huge undertaking, but we are very excited about the possibilities. I'll take lots of pictures on Saturday and share them.

The pictures I am attaching are of just Level 4 of the parking deck and show the size of the structure (approximately 200 feet long by 80 feet wide, sorry I don't know metric equivalents).

Once we get this Level up and running, we will move up to Level 5 just beside and above Level 4.

30 Apr '08 4:01 pm

What a wonderful project! I like the backdrop of trees and I can just visualise that stark expanse of concrete being transformed into a lush productive sanctuary. I'm looking forward to following your progress.

1 May '08 4:28 pm

Me too. And these pictures are the perfect 'before' photographs. All the best for your new project! Cheersd.

3 May '08 3:21 am

Thanks to Maxflax and Mary/Moosey for your encouragement. I am a little stunned personally at how quickly all this has evolved. My original idea was to find a deserving charity serving children and help them plant a small vegetable garden on the ground for teaching the children about organic gardening and help to grow a little extra food for their tables. Within three weeks time that small idea has grown to developing over 2,000 square feet of raised beds on a very large parking deck. And this is just the beginning because there is another level approximately the same size. The Lovelady Center is also interested in obtaining grant money to support installing a "green roof" garden on the roof of their existing building. They have asked our help in writing a mission statement and description of the projects for use in grant applications. They also want to partner with the City in taking over vacant and abandoned lots in the vacinity and converting them to gardens for growing large crops such as corn or grains. The list goes on and on. We now have over 150 youth and adult volunteers from my church coming tomorrow to help with the installation of our raised beds as well as other projects at the Center. They have invited local news media and at least one that I know of has said they will send a crew. Keep all your fingers and toes crossed for us tomorrow!

3 May '08 6:24 am

You are such an inspiration to me. If I was close by I would be there lending whatever I could do, I'm sure.

Tears ran down my face as I read this post. I think the divine spirit has a plan for you.

This seems big now, but it could be just the start of something much bigger.

Bless you.

Christopher

4 May '08 1:31 am

Hope your project goes well. It seems a wonderful contribution you are making, and a lovely new addition to the Moosey Family of Gardens.

4 May '08 5:31 am

Hi Faith,

I was thinking about your project and something occurred to me. I just want to point this out to you to avert a potential problem that could become serious.

Railroad ties are saturated with creosote so they wont rot. Creosote is a bad bad chemical. If it comes in contact with the soil it will contaminate it. If you step on the ties and then walk in the garden you will spread the contamination. This can make you very sick if you eat food grown in soil contaminated with creosote. If the soil has enough creosote contamination, it wont even grow anything.

I'm glad you are using plastic liners, but they could fail, get a small hole where they cover the ties and the poison can leach into your garden. This could contaminate a section of earth and anything grown there will make people sick or even die and no one will know what went wrong.

Don't take my word for it, read this.

Scroll down to "Health effects of coal tar creosote"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creosote

I think you should spread the soil to a uniform depth or find used bricks or cinder blocks for your garden borders. They will last longer and you will have no trouble from them. Your garden will smell better, too. Perhaps you can get a grant or donation for the cinder blocks. They are not that expensive.

I'm sorry if you spent today unloading RR ties. But it's best you know this information before it becomes a big problem.

Christopher

4 May '08 10:34 am

Did I mention that I am very tired tonight. I accidentally hit the new topic button instead of the reply button when posting an answer to your question Christopher. See the topic "Railroad Ties" for the answer.

4 May '08 1:04 pm

This is such an amazing story,Faith.Your original dream has grown so big-it makes me gasp too !
I wish we could all be involved -[GG has brilliant ideas,]so we will be watching for your updates eagerly.
Dixie.

4 May '08 6:10 pm

The Lovelady Center Victory Garden

The Lovelady Center Victory Garden

Lovelady Center Victory Garden

Is that ever great!

Faith's faith...

A word of caution

Railroad ties

Amazing story

Here is Faith's 'accidental new topic'