The air in my garden is full of the smell of rotting strawberries at the moment, and here’s a picture from the garden next to mine where the smell is coming from. Even the birds don’t seem to want to eat these berries.
While the guy that has this garden is a friendly guy, and someone I like making small talk with, he is really disliked in the gardening complex. In particular, he is well known for his strawberries, which take up nearly half of his plot. His strawberries are as modern as it gets, he has connections at the local agricultural university and gets the latest varieties they are working on in the plant labs.
He does almost no weeding in his garden. What’s his secret that he doesn’t need to pull weeds? Well first he just lets his garden grow wild. When he needs to plant something, he clears a rectangle with Round Up, rakes it clean a week or so later then puts his plants in.
He also doesn’t need to protect his plants from the birds. What’s his secret here? He doesn’t care if the birds eat them, because he doesn’t want the berries. He’s just growing the plants for the experience and for the sake of experimentation. He’s quite happy to just let the berries rot on the ground. He’s told me I’m welcome to help myself any time I want!
He’s on the management committee (board of directors if you like) of the garden complex. This is an important position for him, because it exempts him from volunteer hours the rest of us have to put into the upkeep of the garden complex. Other members of the garden management complain he doesn’t do anything. The excuse he has for not doing anything, is that he has another garden in a nearby city, and has to do work there.
I can understand that everyone has different reasons for wanting to have a garden and grow vegetables, but I really don’t understand this guy.
It seems a waste of gardening space…I can’t really understand that.
Odd, to say the least. There must be soemthing else to it, surely. What a waste of space and of strawberries. Does he ever grow other things – I mean to eat??
I am very lucky not to have to share my gardening space with anyone. I didn’t realise how lucky, though.
Nowt strange as folk, Patrick.
My allotment neighbour to my right grows a wide variety of veg and soft fruit most of which he never picks and it is left to rot. In five years he has never invited any of us to pick what he clearly doesn’t want or use.
Strange.
Kate: A community garden is very nice in it’s own way. Lot’s of friendly people, lots of plant and seed swapping.
Yes, there are all kinds of gardeners. I’m so used to like minded gardeners in my blogging world that sometimes it takes the shock of a community garden to remind me there are people out there who like growing hedges and lawns, and believe in chemical intensive gardening. We all have a great deal of respect for each other, and go to a lot of trouble to coexist peacefully.
Gintoino and John, I sometimes get some grumbling about the garlic I grow. One or two people have asked me how I can justify growing so much garlic when I can’t possibly use it all. Until now I have managed to use it all or give it away, and in fact I am always running a bit short.
The thing is when you grow vegetables yourself with zero airmiles, it’s only your own labor that gets wasted. You can always compost the unwanted vegetables. When you are breeding or selecting plants for traits, you are always growing extra plants you don’t eat anyway.
It’s not so much the wasted strawberries that bothers me, as it is the whole of wasted food, Round Up, avoiding his volunteer hours, abusing his plot so it will be a mess for the next gardener and then taking on a plot in another garden complex and presumably doing the same thing there.
Some people just don’t get what community gardens are all about.
I think he’s really doing medical research. He’ll be coming round to take everyone’s blood pressure once they’ve seen (and smelled!) his patch.
I am very tolerant about people whose gardening standards are not up to those of their neighbours. And I am intolerant of people who are critical of those whose efforts and achievements don’t match their own.
But I have just discovered new levels (depths) of intolerance when I read that this strawberry waste is intentional.
I’m jumping up and down with intolerance!
Esther Montgomery
Hahaha, a garden to defeat the purpose of gardening. No wonder no likes him. Maybe he’ll succumb to excessive Roundup use, so they can finally get him off of the board of directors.