Workshop members each received a water bucket to reuse household gray water.
Seven new gardeners attended our gardening workshop yesterday where they built raised bed frames and talked about the principals and advantages of year round intensive gardening with plants in square foot areas. Our goal is to set each of them with a garden that will have freeze and shade protection for year round vegetable growing.
The Foxworth Galbraith Lumber Company in Deming, NM gave us the wood for the 4′ x 4′ boxes. Proper Food Company gave us buckets so that the gardeners could recycle water from their in house use. Several workshop participants already did that by using wash water to flush their toilets.
Water use is always a problem due to its high cost. Border Partner has agreed to pay for any increase in the square foot gardeners’ water bills for the next six months caused by the garden usage of water. Tests of the square foot gardening system show that, if managed correctly, they use only 25% of the water used by row type gardens. We did a quick survery and found that water bills averaged about $15.00 per month, a significant cost in a town that suffers over 70% unemployment. Even those who have a job generally earn only $50 to $60 per week.
Our chief gardener Juana and her husband Fernando hosted the meeting and gave tours of their full yard garden and orchard and their new greenhouse built of Papercrete blocks. It is always fun to see people learn a new skill even if it is just learning to drive a screw with a electric drill.
Learning to use new tools is an additional benefit of gardening workshops.