One Year Ago Today

We broke ground on Campbell Community Garden one year ago today! After many months of planing, fundraising, and permitting, volunteers from Landscape East and West arrived at the Campbell School Grounds on Saturday April 28, 2012, to install water lines into the garden site.


Campbell Community Garden, April 28, 2012
First day of construction; waterlines and hose bibs installed,
 professional labor and materials donated by Landscape East & West. 


Today the garden is thriving! To date we have donated 978 pounds of food grown in the garden; novice gardeners have successfully grown and harvested veggies to feed their families; we have learned a lot from tips shared by experienced gardeners, learned from our mistakes, and made many new friends.

Campbell Community Garden, April 28, 2013
Most gardens have early spring crops started, and one gardener has taken the plunge
and planted warm weather crops including tomatoes.

The 2013 growing season is off to an awesome start. Many gardeners are returning for a second year, and the vacated gardens have all been filled. We have already harvested 117 pounds of veggies (mostly greens and herbs) to donate and have set a donation goal of 2,000 pounds to be donated by the end of the year. We have started in on building a bed for rhubarb, next we will work on our blueberry patch and build a shed.

Thank you to all of the volunteers and sponsors who helped us get to this one year milestone!

Garden Construction Nearly Complete!

Once all of our paths are coverd with cardboard and wood chips, we can say we are done with the construction phase of Campbell Community Garden. As long as we get our planned wood chip delivery tomorrow, we will be done with construction by the end of the weekend!

Work days are planned for Thursday June 14th from 3:30 to 7pm and Saturday from 10am to Noon, our grand opening celebration will be at 4pm on Friday June 22nd.

Campbell Community Garden, June 12, 2012

Gardens For Rent

There are only four plots left to rent for the 2012 growing season!

There are two 10 x 10 foot plots available, $40 for the year, and two 4 x 12 foot plots, $30 for the year. Sign up on the Registration page.

We have two more construction work days scheduled: Wednesday (5/30) and Thursday (5/31) 3:30pm to 7pm. We will finish building the paths and cover them with wood chips; all to prepare ourselves for the first day of planting: June 1st!

CCG gardeners work together to build garden plots.

Garden Work Days

The total volunteer hours donated to the construction of Campbell Community Garden as of today is 243 hours! This is for construction only, there have been many more hours donated in the planning phase. Thank you to the hard work of all of our dedicated volunteers.

This weekend we need more help! We are on the home stretch of construction, the main tasks left to complete before planting day are installing the cedar bed frames and building the paths. Please be a part of breaking the 300 volunteer hours donated mark!

Work Day schedule:

Today, Thursday May 24th, 3:30 to 7pm: moving mulch, setting bed frames, and covering the paths with cardboard and mulch

Saturday May 26th, 10am to 2pm Moving mulch, setting bed frames, and covering paths with cardboard and mulch.

Wear work gloves, and clothing appropriate fort he weather, we will be working rain or shine. If you have a shovel, wheel barrow, cordless drill/driver, bring it. Please RSVP so I will know how many people to expect. 503-313-0638

Milwaukie Lumber delivers to Campbell Community Garden

We continue to make fast progress towards planting day at Campbell Community Garden. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon CCG volunteers put in 96 hours of work removing sod, hauling compost, and tilling the planting beds.

On Monday morning we had two big stacks of cedar delivered to the garden. A reduced price and free delivery by Milwaukie Lumber, a donation from Greg "Frank" and Michelle Hemer, and $500 from the the Clackamas County Master Gardeners Gray Thompson Community Projects Grant Program, allowed us to purchase enough cedar to edge all of our paths and planting plots. The edging will help to reduce the time needed to keep the beds from encroaching into the paths, making the garden easier to maintain. Our next work day, Saturday May 19th (10am to 1pm) will be spent installing the edging.

Glad we planned a wide gate! The fork lift delivery saves our volunteers the work of hauling the lumber from the street.

Garden Work Days

Here is our work schedule for the weekend:

Friday 5/11 3:30 to 7pm: sod cutting and tilling, and moving compost.

Saturday 5/12 9am to 2pm: tilling and moving compost.

If you want to volunteer on one of our first big work days, please let us know when you will be able to help; and if you have a friend who would like to volunteer some time, invite them too!

We will be using a Toro Dingo and a sod cutter; kids will not be allowed to run the machines, and this is probably not a good work day for little kids to participate in. Please bring a wheel barrow if you have one, and wear work gloves, closed toe shoes and sunscreen (yes! Sunscreen, not rain gear!)

For more information or to RSVP contact Sarah Smith: 503-653-0015 (office) or 503-313-0638 (cell)

Tilling Day

The rain is delaying us again. Tilling has been postponed for one week. The long range forecast looks great! http://www.wunderground.com/US/OR/Milwaukie.html

I have reserved a Toro Dingo for Friday (5/11) afternoon through early afternoon on Saturday (5/12); that should be enough time to get all of the beds tilled; but, just in case there isn't time to get to them all, we will till the beds already rented first. If you want to rent a plot, fill out the form on the tab at the top of this page!

We will be working from 3:30 to 7pm on Friday May 11th, and 9am to 2pm on Saturday May 12th. It would be great to have groups of 3 or 4 volunteers working in 2 to 3 hour shifts over the weekend. I will have our first load of compost delivered on Friday to spread over the weekend. Please RSVP so I will know how many people I have for each shift.  I need someone with a vehicle that can tow the Dingo to volunteer to pick up and/or return it with me at Johnson Creek Rentals.

Since we won't be able to till tomorrow (5/5) we can attend the soil health class at Saint Paul church (10am to Noon) and the Clackamas County Master Gardeners Plant sale in Canby!

April showers bring May flowers. May downpours make for an impatient CCG director!

~Sarah

Water!

On Saturday, Landscape East and West installed our waterlines and hose bibs. They generously donated the double check, timer, pipe, hose bibs, etc. and their employees volunteered their time and cut no corners to professionally install our water lines and eight hose bibs. Thanks to them, CCG now has a water system built to last for many years.

Making Progress

Thanks to Timberline Development, we have water at Campbell Community Garden! Our water meter is all ready for Landscape East & West's volunteers to hook our hose bibs up to! Soon we will be watering tomatoes!

Garden Kick-Off Meeting

It appears that we have crossed all of our permitting hurdles, now we are just waiting for weather dry enough to till and the installation of the water meter before we can start really building. We have over half of our plots reserved; if you want plot, act now.
On Saturday April 21^st at 10am we will have a Kick-off meeting with introductions, and a Question and Answer session at the garden site. I will share my tips for planning the start of your new garden. IF the weather has cooperated and the site has been tilled, we will have a mini work day after the kick-off, to measure and mark the paths and water lines. The kick-off will happen rain or shine. If you have any neighbors who would be interested in a plot, invite them to the kick-off! If you drive to the garden Kick-off, please be courteous about parking in front of neighbor homes, don't block driveways in the cul-de-sac.

Here is our "before" picture!

 I'm looking forward to taking some "after" pictures and harvesting veggies with my neighbors!

~Sarah

Calling all helping hands!

Green thumbs not required!

The Hector Campbell Neighborhood is ready to break ground on Milwaukie’s newest community garden at the NE corner of the grounds of Campbell Elementary School (off of Adams Street). The garden will have 28 plots for neighbors to rent and four plots for growing produce to share.

Garden Work Days will be held most Saturdays in April (depending on dry weather!) Check back on this website to confirm dates. If the soil is too wet, we won't be able to work.

NOTE: the list below has been edited (4/4/12), the wet weather has put us off schedule; we will post dates once we have an idea of when the big tiller can get it to do the first tilling. If the weather allows, we will have work days Saturday 4/14 & 4/21, plus a weekday afternoon or two.

• First tilling & grading: TBA (this will be done for us by the parks district, no volunteers needed)
• Survey/measure water and fence lines, mark out plots and paths: TBA
• Install water lines and hose bibs: April 28th (this will be done by Landscape East and West; we will need a few volunteers to help back fill trenches)
• Wood chip paths and edge with lumber: TBA
• Till compost into planting beds: TBA

Please RSVP to Sarah Smith, 503-653-0015 so we will know how many people we will have helping.