It’s mid June and at the Kenney Cottage Community Garden, the table beds are fully functioning. This particular 4’ x 8’ box of soil is supported by 4 thick long stumps of wood that act as legs. You can see men and women rolling their wheelchairs under the elevated garden plot. They would grab a coiled hose attached to the box, push down the lever and spray their veggies with water. The growth rate of the plants in these accessible beds have been faster than the ones in the regular plots. The disabled plot holders are happy to be able to harvest their produce. They are eating the veggies that they grow themselves.

Meanwhile, we have the box of strawberries of different kinds growing on the side of the garden site. These include the albion, sequoia, eversweet, dynamite, hood, quanault and seabreeze varieties. Our wonderful supporters on 4th St have made it possible for us to get the materials to build this special berry box. Dollars were put in the Kenney Cottage jar while we were out there busking and we ran straight with the money to Ashby Lumber and bought the woods for a discount price because the company is also one of the local businesses that support our garden project.

Christian Mollett is now our secretary. Next to his ability to do administrative tasks, his talents in the area of gardening and bio-engineering will spearhead some of the high-tech urban garden experiments you will see in Berkeley.  

We also have a pumpkin patch ready for Halloween, more wild flowers to enjoy this summer and an area where the ground has been covered with mushrooms to stimulate soil remediation.