Meeting Minutes

March 24, 2024

  • on budget items:
    • $500 – Summer Party (6/15)
    • $200 – Open Garden Day (6/2)
    • $300 – Chicken Wire for Rats
  • Outstanding/Non Determined/Not Voted on Budgets
    • $500 – Fall Party
    • $200 – Community Bed Trellises and Fixtures
    • Will place an order for starters with Grow NYC, but also lookin lookg to seed start by members. Please reach out to Victoria or Sam if you’d like to assist with seed starting
    • New Bench – try and find a second-hand bench or reach out to local groups to see if anyone has one they’re willing to donate. Can also look at freecycle groups. GreenThumb can also help supply this.
    • T Shirts – please reach out if you want to coordinate or design. We should look to vote on this pretty soon in case there is long lead time before the summer party
  • Summer Party – 6/15
    • Contact Ariel if you’d like to get involved
    • Aiming to raise $2,000
  • “Vermin No More! 2024” strategy – ridding the garden of rats, mosquitoes and lanternflies 
    • Tranquility Garden used chicken wire and gravel to keep rats at bay UP TO $300 FOR 1/4 IN WIRE MRSH
  • Vote for Membership coordinator (and possibly other positions?)
    • Luke voted in as Co-Membership Coordinator 
    • Allyson looking to have a co treasurer. Please reach out if you are interested (need to be with the garden at least 1 year)
  • Explore interest in growing mushrooms
    • Mary is taking some initiative here. Please reach out to her if you are interested in learning more or helping
  • Soil testing
    • Caroline to look into 
  • Green Thumb Updates 
    • Will order as much woodchips as possible 
    • Picking up equipment on 3/30. Equipment includes… Watering Can, Canvas wheelbarrow, trash bags, 
    • No current need for compost or soil-
      • Given yesterday’s work around the garden has this changed? It looks like we went through a lot of our supply.
    • If green thumb does not supply watering cans, we should buy some
    • Green Thumb only supplying a canvas wheelbarrow so we should buy 2 more.
    • Looking into getting a bench provided from Green Thumb
    • Will follow up with Green Thumb about getting water barrels/lids. 

November 19, 2023

  • Fence contractor coming back after Thanksgiving for more fence work 
  • Move sensitive plants along the fence to pots 
  • Pedestrian gate being installed on the Maspeth side 
  • Need a chain and lock for the new gate – what is access like? Can we open it from both sides? This gate should be strictly used as the hydrant access gate.
  • Need to think of a better way to waitlist private plots. 
    • Landed on becoming more involved is helpful, but the garden is so much more than private plot access. Can potentially provide little areas throughout the garden that people really desiring a private plot can maintain themselves. Also encourage, as always, to get heavily involve in community beds. 
    • have historically documented involvement, but this can get tricky and “micro manage-y”
  • Question came up that what if they want to plant something in the community beds that’s personal to them? Need to run by Sam and Victoria – they are both open to planting community desired plants, but want to do so if it makes sense
    • talk with Sam and Victoria if you have a specific desired plant for the community bed for 2024

Dates

  • Open garden day – first Saturday of June 
  • Summer party – June 15

 Projects for 2024 

  • Rat mitigation. Hire someone to help?
  • New furniture 
  • Finish compost bins 
  • Raised beds (smaller) throughout the garden. We have some excess wood from the tree guards that may be able to be used 
  • Fix rain collection barrel next to stage 

What equipment do we need that green thumb doesn’t provide? 

  • New watering cans

October 8, 2023

  • We noted that the community bed cleanup went well, and the remaining plants are still growing, with peppers ripening.
  • We approved a $300 budget for the Oct. 29 Fall party.
  • We discussed rats, especially that:
    • The best way to drive out rats is to find and collapse their burrows continually and to try to make the garden less hospitable to new burrows. During the work day, we placed red flags where that needs to happen. Some burrows go around plant roots and must be addressed in the winter. Corey explained why other strategies, such as traps and poison, won’t be effective in the long term.
    • The compost bin needs to be rat-proofed, especially having its lids completed.
    • We approved $200 in rat-proofing materials (meshes, copper and/or foam fill, etc) so we can evaluate how well various options work and how well they fit within the garden.