There's One In Every Crowd

Medfield's Community Garden

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will remember that I wrote just a few weeks ago about community gardening being wonderful therapy for a country caught in the jaws of a pandemic, and how I predicted, “people will wave greetings to one another from their respective plots until it is once again safe to offer a hug.  In short, I think it’s going to be a great season for the Community Garden.”

Well, scratch that idea.

A ‘community garden’ is just that… a community built around a common interest in gardening.  Those gardeners, in turn, bring a diverse level of skills and depth of experience.  Some are true, hard-core dirt gardeners; others are dipping their toe into the soil for the first time.

The garden, circa 2007.  Some plots
were never claimed...

Running a community garden is akin to being the mayor of that community.  Ten years ago, Betty and I somehow found ourselves in charge of the Medfield Community Garden; which was then as dysfunctional as an activity could be.  There was a four-page-long, single-spaced rule book, but no one cared about it, much less heeded its Draconian list of commandments. There were nominally 40 plots but just 25 gardeners (some had assembled three- and four-plot dynasties).  Moreover, if a gardener dropped out or the space was never assigned, the plot or plots grew up in weeds.

... others were abandoned, like 
'Mom's Garden' from 2009

When we took over, our number one goal was to keep all the plots filled.  Six hundred square feet of fertile topsoil will grow a lot of weeds in just a few weeks; and an abandoned plot will quickly spread its weed seeds to its neighbors.  Our solution to keeping the garden populated was to a) drum up a lot of interest in the garden to ensure each plot was filled at the beginning of every season; b) encourage gardeners to hang in, even if things didn’t go perfectly (and, the corollary to that solution of not doing things that would cause gardeners to leave); and c) have a wait list in the wings for the inevitable mid-season dropouts.

Each year, Betty does
a gardening presentation

Having nominally mastered the art of running a garden, we (and, by ‘we’, I mean Betty) turned our attention to educating gardeners and upgrading the garden’s practices.  Every March, Betty gives a well-attended vegetable gardening talk at our town library.  A steady stream of emailed educational materials (including soil test results and an explanation of how to read them) goes out to plot holders, and even simple queries receive serious responses. 

With the support of Medfield’s Conservation Commission (which oversees the town land upon which the garden is located), we banished pesticides, herbicides, and smoking.  We began sub-dividing plots to give gardeners a choice of size.  We required fencing and well-maintained paths.  The garden grew by nearly half, to 70 plots on a full acre of rich land; 30 of those plots 300 square feet in size and 40 of them the full 600 square feet. We went no-till when it became apparent our annual plowing of the garden disrupted the soil food web underneath.

Despite its claims to the contrary,
scientists were increasingly
questioning plastic mulch's effect
on the food soil web

As a Lifetime Master Gardener and avid horticulturalist, Betty regularly attends talks by people who are at the cutting of gardening science.  By last year, what was once a murmur that perhaps ‘plastic mulch’ (rows of plastic matting laid down over fields to warm the soil and prevent weeds) had significant downsides, had become a rising, though hardly universal, chorus of concern.  Betty read the studies, and reached a logical conclusion: there is nothing a plastic mulch can do that an organic mulch cannot do, and there are truly important things (like break down into humus and ultimately new soil) organic mulches can do that plastic ones cannot.

We decided to implement a ‘no plastic mulch’ policy effective with the 2020 gardening season.  It would affect perhaps four gardeners who had laid down plastic over their entire plot in 2019, and another twenty or so who lay down plastic sheets between raised rows.  On March 29, the date we opened the garden after staking it, we sent an email to everyone in the garden giving our reasons for the new policy. To those gardeners who questioned why we were making the change, we explained and they said, ‘OK, we understand’.

Seven days later, I was walking the garden when I was stopped in my tracks by a garden partially cloaked in plastic sheets, with additionally rolls of matting waiting to go down.  I went home and wrote the gardener – I’ll use the gender-neutral name ‘Reilly’.  I politely pointed out the earlier memo.  The following afternoon, Reilly responded at length, starting with the observation that this was “an awfully silly thing to quibble about during a global pandemic.”  The gardener went onto say, “there is ample science supporting the beneficial use of landscape fabric.”

There are two things I know with certainty.  The first is that, on any controversial topic, the first page of Google results – including the ones that don’t say ‘ad’ – have been bought and paid for by organizations with deep pockets, a vested financial interest, and an ability to ‘game’ Google’s ranking algorithm.  The second thing I know is that there is no upside in picking fights with my fellow gardeners.  As self-appointed 'Garden Ogre', my management policy is to ‘nudge’ gardeners into doing the right thing; not make enemies of them.  I agreed with Reilly on a few points and offered praised for having had the foresight to purchase a better grade of plastic mulch.  But, I stressed, the policy is the policy. No plastic sheets. Please remove them.

Reilly responded with an even longer missive, ending with the statement, “I intend to leave my ground covering down.”  That’s when I went to Medfield’s Conservation Commissioner, Leslee Willetts, and said, “This is above Betty’s and my pay grade.”

On April 12, the scientific journal Global Change Biology published the blockbuster results of a peer-reviewed study on plastic mulch, concluding its use boosted yields for a single season, then became injurious to the soil and crops grown in it; all the while doing long-term damage to that soil food web.  Concurrent with the publication of the study, China – hardly an enlightened paragon of environmental practices – set in motion laws to outlaw the use of plastic mulch.

Ultimately, Reilly asked for and, last Thursday got, a hearing (held via Zoom) before the Conservation Commission. Reilly came prepared with a PowerPoint presentation.  I responded with abstracts of several peer-reviewed studies and said Reilly was ‘flat wrong on the science’.  The Commission voted unanimously to uphold the ban on plastic mulch.

Reilly then shifted gears and asked for a hardship exemption for this season, stating it had taken Reilly’s family all day to put in the fence and plastic sheets, the garden was now growing and well established, taking out the plastic was impossible at this late date, and Reilly’s family was uneasy about going out in a Covid-19 world for such a task.  Reilly’s plea swayed three commissioners.  The plastic would stay down for this season.

The photo I wish I had at the
Commission meeting

The next day, I went to the Community Garden and took photos of Reilly’s plot – something I did not think to do before the Commission meeting.  There are no thriving plants.  I could have taken out the plastic sheeting in a morning without disturbing the site.  If there were sprouted seeds, they were likely killed by Saturday night’s hard freeze.

But Reilly’s plastic will stay for this season.  Betty and I won the larger battle – a ban on plastic mulch.  It will not make me alter my management style; I’ll continue to change behavior by nudging, not by wielding a sledgehammer.  But it was a learning experience that will stay with me for a very long time: the world is full of people like Reilly who choose to follow only those rules that do not inconvenience them.