Learning to garden

I live in a rented apartment complex with 26 separate units. You are looking at the back of the complex here. Some of the renters approached the owners with a proposition for a community garden, and they agreed to fence in a spot for us to use. Ten plots are available here, since the guy behind the idea, Clint, went around to each apartment to assess the level of interest. That's me standing out there in the yellow shirt with my new shovel.

Once the fence went up, two piles of horse manure were brought in by another tenant, Roger, who works for a landscaping company. He and Clint shoveled it all into two piles. Then for a little more than a week, two goats were brought in to help get rid of the grass. They did a pretty darn good job, as you can see in the two pictures. The difference in the level of grass inside and outside the fence is quite noticeable. A closeup:

Although I was dubious about this fence being able to keep out determined deer, there is a single strand of wire at the top of each post, which supposedly deters critters from jumping over the fence. (I'll believe THAT when I see it.) Next, it was necessary to finish the job of getting rid of the last of the grass, so Roger went over it all with a special weed cutter. He told me that he uses it every day at work, and it runs on propane so has a smaller carbon footprint. His company has won a few awards for being environmentally friendly, which I found out when I visited their website.

Here's Roger getting rid of the last of the grass. It was really hot yesterday, but once he finished with this job, I went out and the two of us got busy shoveling the piles onto the ground. (More people came after I got tired.) I removed some of those plugs that had been pulled out of the ground to help it dry out. We had so much rain in April that our plans were delayed for awhile, but we are on track again. I was plenty tired yesterday but put in at least two hours with my new shovel. I found out from Roger that it is bigger and heavier than I needed, but I really had no idea what kind of shovel to purchase and decided to get the medium priced one.

Here's the garden today, with the manure spread out rather uniformly so that Roger can now rototill the area. The weather today, Sunday, is nowhere near as nice as we had for the previous two days, as you can see. The wind is blowing and the sunshine is gone for awhile. It would have been much nicer to shovel in today's weather, as it was HOT yesterday. I was surprised to learn that inside those piles of horse manure the temperature had risen enough to cause steam to come out. Roger cautioned me to be careful not to touch it as it could grow quite hot. (There was little danger of that.)

Once the manure has been tilled under, we will mark off the areas and get busy planting. I will buy my plants from a greenhouse, with the plants already in progress, and I look forward to the day when I will be having my first delicata squash from this garden, not to mention carrots and kale. We will have a compost heap, and I've learned what is okay to put in there if you want to have an organic one. Who knew I could recycle my tea bags? And lots of other things as well. Roger sent around a four-page list of compostable items. We plan to have a central area of plants that we will all share, such as herbs and other items to be decided upon as time goes by.

If anybody has any tips for this neophyte gardener, please let me know! I am quite excited about this opportunity; it's the first time I've ever had more than indoor plants or my outdoor flowers. To be able to eat things I grow myself is quite a novel idea!
:-)