House and garden upkeep over the summer!
Hey everyone! Grinnell tried to have a garden this year, and failed pretty badly. In the past, we've had residents living in the house who have taken care of the ecohouse garden over the summer. However, this year, very few members were in town over the summer and the garden ended up being neglected, growing weedy, and getting mowed by facilities management. How do folks at other schools manage summer projects such as gardens? Any advice would be appreciated!
Our garden paid 4 students to
Our garden paid 4 students to live in town (off campus) over the summer as Garden Managers. They did a beautiful job taking care of things for us, and now there's a ton of great veggies for the cafeteria, as well as mountains and mountains of garlic that are making us a lot of money. This probably isn't a feasible solution for a garden that hasn't really gotten off the ground yet, of course.
Ours was started as a project in an Environmental Science Symposium in 2005. Since then it has become a permanent student-run organization that is, I believe, financially self-sustaining. At first, though, what you need to do to get a garden going is ask your school (probably the student council) for a big pile of money!