The Silver City, Nevada Community Garden continues to thrive in its 8th season in 2016, and it's an inspiring example of collaboration. As garden committee member Renate Victor puts it, “The real miracle of this project is the spirit of Silver City. We are a community of diverse individuals who may have little in common, but enthusiastically enjoy the things that unite us.”
Below is Renate Victor's beautifully written story of how the garden got its start in 2009, with an update about the garden's current season.
Silver City Community Garden
By Renate Victor
A Shared Vision: We gathered at the Silver City Schoolhouse on a warm sunny Sunday; April 26th 2009, to determine if there was enough interest in starting a community garden project. Over the years we often spoke of communal gardening; in the park, in someone’s yard, on the hillside west of the Schoolhouse, and now we were actually planning to build straw-bale beds somewhere in Silver City and grow our own vegetables. In addition to the gardening passions of a few faithful citizens, and the occasional support of many others, we were further encouraged by the fact that Comstock Youth Works (funded through Community Chest through NevadaWorks’ stimulus funds) offered a summer program for teens that provided a stipend for working in the Community Garden and clearing weeds and brush at the homes of seniors, to reduce fire hazards. The program also provided for an adult supervisor. We now had the work force to make our garden a reality.
A Town Works Together: At the second meeting of the gardening group on May 3rd, we learned that Bill Young had offered his lot, across the road from the Schoolhouse on High Street, for our garden site; a perfect spot. We established work groups: Planning and Design; Fencing; Composting; Straw-bale Assembly; Planting; and Irrigation. Two nonprofits, Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties and Community Chest, Inc. provided $600 for straw bales, fencing, seedlings, etc. Local resident Cashion Callaway agreed to manage a garden account and send acknowledgements and appreciations as needed.
The first miracle occurred after days of researching the quality and cost of soil and realizing what a huge expense that was going to be. In the midst of this dilemma there suddenly appeared at the garden site, two hills of beautiful brown dirt and topsoil; a generous gift from Art Wilson.
The garden site is an open field that is flooded in sunlight from east to west; dawn to dusk. It seemed pretty level to a ‘Comstocker’s’ eye, with lots of dry, wild grasses and just as many rocks as you would expect in an empty field. Straw-bale beds would be great in this space. But the next miracle occurred when Silver City resident Beau Guthrie showed up with his front loader and said he would level the garden-site and help load the straw-bales. He got us moving, and thanks to Beau and the young people of this town, bales were set and the beds were filled with the soil. We all had pizza that day.
The early days of May found us ‘playing in the dirt’. Resident Susan Stornetta brought “treats” for the soil and worked them in, Molly Allander and I drove to a ranch in Dayton where we shoveled aged sheep manure into the bed of her pick-up. We got a little surprise pelting of dirt and manure due to the back window being in the open position as we flew down 50 to Silver City.
Planting Day and a Surprise Hail Storm: We set a date for planting: Sunday, May 31st,2009. The paler-than-usual sun may have accounted for a slow start to the day, but then kids don’t take too well to early Sunday mornings, as I remember. Everyone finally assembled and without too much direction, went to work. Some planted seeds or small plants that were started in-door. Mary MacDonald, a local professional gardener, shared many small plants and advised us on gardening issues. We planted cabbage, carrots, beans, spinach, arugula, lettuce, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, squash, pumpkin, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, potatoes, and many, many varieties of tomatoes in a very long bed. We put in giant sunflowers as sentries for the western fence line. Some folks cleared the paths around the beds of rocks, stones and weeds; others watered. The young men proved their strength; working the post-hole digger, driving in posts to assemble the fencing, moving large boulders, constructing compost bins to add to the one that Michele Busk donated, creating a three-stage system. Silver City resident Ron Reno came down to the garden one day and put a bolt lock on the compost cage to keep the critters out.
Throughout the later morning hours, we heard the soft rumble of distant thunder. By 11:00 dark clouds began hovering and the sun seemed to fade gradually. Suddenly, a lightning flash came nearer with a thunder clap like an exclamation. “Drop the metal!” someone shouted. The boys sort of laughed, but almost immediately another lightning and thunderclap seemed close enough to touch, and we all hurried to put tools away just as the sky opened and showered us with a thick veil of hailstones that became louder, larger and more vicious as we dashed across the road and up the dirt hill to the side door to the Schoolhouse.
We stood in the foyer looking out through the glass at the thick hailstones; at the teen-agers out there on the road and on the grass, shrieking, laughing and writhing from the sharp stabbing ice pellets that finally drove them inside. The hills in the distance were eerie in a frozen white mist, and the roads, fields, trees, roofs of houses, sheds, cars, and power lines in town, shrouded in ice. Winter persisted for five more hours
The next miracle occurred as we checked the plants the following day. We walked the spongy paths around the beds; Mary MacDonald made the rounds, checking each plant for damages and judging the outcomes. “This one looks like it will make it. We’ll just wait and see.” Some plants were clearly destroyed. But what was miraculous was that most of the tender little plants were perfectly intact, protected, tucked into a nest of straw. Thanks to Susan Stornetta’s adamant instructions, the beds were thickly mulched with straw that the heavy hailstones didn’t penetrate.
We lost quite a few tomato plants but when Mary MacDonald mentioned our hailstone planting woes to David Ruff at the Greenhouse Garden Center in Carson City, he donated 9 six-packs of Roma tomato plants to our garden. We had an outstanding tomato crop and nobody complained that there were too many.
Youths and Adults Both Worked to Create It: The Comstock Youth Works teenagers helped care for the garden five days a week through the summer until mid August. They watered the plants, cleaned out the weeds, gathered willow twigs and branches to construct trellises to support the tomatoes that grew stronger and heavier by the day. They picked some of the greens and cucumbers for their lunch salads, and built a scarecrow that made friends with the visiting quail.
A regular group of women met early on Sunday mornings to hang out, assess the garden and compost, water what needed to be, and share gardening expertise and recipes for using the vegetables we were growing. We would nibble on lettuces, arugula, spinach, radishes, carrots plucked from the beds, and take home an eggplant or squash for dinner. Although we were able to harvest a few strawberries from hardy plants, we talked about planting more berries next time.
Our community garden was lush. The tomato beds looked like a jungle. The sunflowers grew tall and had to be braced for the wind. Of course some plants did better than others. We learned better ways to use the beds. The radishes were delicious. The tomatoes ripened slowly and were harvested late. A lot of salsa was made and it was all consumed. We used vegetables from the garden for the town’s monthly community soup and salad dinners.
2016 Season Update From Renate Victor:
"Lila, Molly and Susan have done all the planting, and are the main-stay of the garden, with the help of Elaine Werlinger who has come from Carson City for this past year to garden and hang out with us on Sundays at 10:00. She is a wonderful asset. Gayle and Diane have also joined our ranks...With the wonderful spring moisture, we had a great start to the garden and now it seems we have to intensify our watering to a daily schedule, as the high temperatures continue. We are growing garlic, onions, shallots, peas, chard, pumpkins, lettuce, kale, beets, squash, broccoli, asparagus, jalapenos, rhubarb, herbs, and a whole lot of potatoes. A few tomato plants for now with more to come, along with varied peppers. We have blackberry bushes, golden raspberry bushes, flowers and flowering grasses. It's a beauty!"
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