Community Garden flourishes in Tinton Falls

Community Garden flourishes in Tinton Falls
Sale of produce will fund Crawford House restoration
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

Teresa Maltz (l-r) and Robert Maltz work on their plot at the Tinton Falls Community Garden located at the Historic Crawford House in Tinton Falls on Sunday, June 20. Lauren Casselberry Teresa Maltz (l-r) and Robert Maltz work on their plot at the Tinton Falls Community Garden located at the Historic Crawford House in Tinton Falls on Sunday, June 20. Lauren Casselberry TINTON FALLS — Just two months after planting, the Tinton Falls Community Garden is close to producing enough crops to sell at a farm stand.

The ribbon cutting for the community garden took place May 2 at the site of the historic Crawford House on Tinton Avenue, and Community Garden Committee member Stacey Slowinski said the first two months have been successful.

“The garden is progressing nicely, and we hope to have our farm stand operating in the next couple of weeks,” Slowinkski said. “We are going to have enough grown to start selling soon.”

There are four community plots and 20-25 leased plots that have all been filled.

“All the plots are full, and we have lots of vegetables growing. I was just over there this morning — we have squash and baby cucumbers and beans,” Slowinski said on June 30. “There is one area [for community plots] with four full rows; there are probably three or four plots in most of the rows.”

Lauren Mayer (l-r), Bryan Mayer and Alex Mayer work on their garden plot at the Tinton Falls Community Garden at the Historic Crawford House on Tinton Avenue on June 20. LAUREN CASSELBERRY Lauren Mayer (l-r), Bryan Mayer and Alex Mayer work on their garden plot at the Tinton Falls Community Garden at the Historic Crawford House on Tinton Avenue on June 20. LAUREN CASSELBERRY Community Garden Committee Chairwoman Teresa Maltz said there are individual plots and community plots. The community plots have produce that will be sold at the farm stand.

“The money from that goes to the CrawfordHouse for restoration and improvements,” she said.

Slowinski said that most of the money raised from the community plots most likely will be used to pay the water bill.

“With all the rain we’ve not had, we will probably just be paying off our water bill,” she said. “It’s been so unusually hot that we’ve had to water it.”

For the first year, she said, the produce will be sold on the porch of the Crawford House.

“It is going to be a couple of tables and baskets on the front porch,” she said. “If it takes off, we will see if we need a different facility next year.”

Maltz said the planning stages for the garden date back to June 2009 as a subcommittee of the environmental commission, where she volunteered to be the chairperson.

“We basically met for almost a year before we got to the point where we could open the garden. It was a process — we had to figure out … the size, space, what kind of guidelines we wanted to have,” she added. “We really didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much; we looked at what some other community gardens were doing.

“We are kind of unique because we are on a piece of historical property in the Crawford House.”

Maltz said she is hoping different generations help out with the garden. So far, a Girl Scout is coordinating the farm stand for them as part of a scouting project.

“We want to make this an intergeneration type of community involvement. It is nice to see the community come together. It’s been a really good experience for all of us to see this vision become a reality.”

Maltz said there were times when she wasn’t sure how the garden would turn out.

“We talked about it for so long and we didn’t really know how things were going to shape up,” she said, noting that the weather didn’t always cooperate and they got a late start putting the fence up.

“Everything came together really nicely; now we’re still working out some organizational things, and we’ll see how it goes this year,” Maltz added.

“So far we seem to be successful with everything that’s in there,” she said.

Maltz said this year people could lease a plot 4 by 10 feet or 4 by 5 feet at $20 per plot; the fee covers the various expenses and any supplies they may need, like extra twine.

“[The plot size chosen] depends on your gardening skills and how much you can handle,” she added. “Most people took a 4-by-10- foot plot. There were a few people who took a smaller plot.”

Most of the startup money for the garden came from private donations, and one committeememberwas able to fund-raise for some extra supplies, like hoses, nails and fencing.

“We had a couple of our members that solicited donations, and we had local residents contribute,” she said. “We had a table at CommunityDay that generated a little bit of income selling pumpkins.”

The garden has a wide range of vegetables being grown, such as cold-weather vegetables like lettuces and radishes and warmer-weather vegetables like tomatoes and peppers, Maltz said.

“There are vertical plots that have tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, lettuces, and horizontal plots like watermelons, melons and squash. It is pretty much an assortment; people have onions, herbs, broccoli and even corn being grown,” she said.

Maltz said the first year is a learning process and that the committee already had to deal with weeds.

“Maybe we will learn which ones are going to be better there,” she said. “We had to put newspaper andwoodchips down to cover a certain weed that was very invasive.

“We don’t want any pesticides being used unless they are OMRI [Organic Materials Review Institute] approved,” she added.

Slowinski said that for the most part, the fencing has kept foraging animals out.

“We saw one little baby bunny that got through our fence, but so far the fence is holding most of the critters at bay.”

She also said the garden will most likely keep producing crops until October or November. In the fall they will take out some of the hot-weather crops and put in some coolweather ones.

The biggest challenge, Slowinski said, involved installing the plumbing for the garden and getting the watering system in.

“We need to get water to the house and run it to the garden,” she added. “We have four field hydrants where we want to have spigots available. That is just a matter of finding time with our volunteer plumber.”

Slowinski said that on any given day, people can be found working in the garden.

“People who have plots come whenever they have time to check and water their own plots or do some weeding and planting,” she added. “We are very pleased with the success so far, and we just hope that the rest of the summer is going to be as successful.”

“We are looking forward to a productive growing season and getting our farm stand going. We are hoping people will come by and visit us,” Maltz said.





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