April 2024

                                       

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

April 10, 2024 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Lily, Alex, Jolene, Ann, Jessica, Pam, Ron, Sam, Nick, Doug and Karen.


Jessica started the meeting.

The meeting started with introductions, including the new garden workers, Sam, Pam and Nick. Will is also a new garden worker who was not able to attend.

Minutes With a motion by Ann and seconded by Lily, the March 2024 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

There are 2 to 3 half plots left in all the gardens, but they will be assigned soon. The Seed Fair was well attended with 234 plots picking up 8 packets each. Our major donor is no longer giving us older seeds, which is why we were not able to give more packets. Lily proposes a mini August Seed Fair for fall crops. We will purchase spinach and other fall crops in bulk and repackage them. The committee agreed to this idea.

Lily says there has been a request from a gardener to grow lotus in their plot. The committee agreed to the request if mosquitoes are controlled and there is no water hazard present. Permission will be revoked if the conditions are not met.

Jolene reports we have new keypads for the sheds and asks all of us to turn in old keys as they can be reused by housing. Keys can be returned by placing the key in a green garden envelope and putting it in the drop box. Please contact Lily if you had a key and need the code.

Lily requests we buy a second post driver so we can have one in each shed. The committee approved.

There was discussion about there being a sapling puller in the shed. It has not been found yet according to Nick, who has been cleaning the shed. Nick also said there was row cover in the shed.

Garden Calendar

Lily shared the Garden Calendar with the committee. For March, tree removal, tree pruning, and servicing the mowers and other equipment is a priority. Repair of carts and especially wheelbarrows at University Houses is also a priority. Ric and Karen agreed last fall to repair carts, but that never happened. Ron said he would also help.

UW Housing does the mower servicing for the gardens. Jolene says that the Garden Workers will have a meeting with Sean of UW Housing Grounds to find out how to get gas for the mowers and understand how the gardens work with Housing Grounds.

The discussion turned to tools. A tool inventory was not done last fall and probably some new tools need to be purchased.

Motion by Karen and seconded by Ann to spend up to $800 on tools and cart/wheelbarrow supplies. Motion passed.

The committee stated that the garden workers should divide up the tasks on the priority list and get the jobs done among themselves. Discussion ensued. One of the garden workers suggested a rotating schedule of mowing when the mowing season starts and the committee thought this was a good idea. Someone else said there might also be some specialization of tasks.

Weedpile

The background on the weedpile is that UW Grounds cannot remove the pile until the large sticks, dirt balls, metal and trash are removed. Doug was in the gardens during the meeting and said he thought it would take about 2 workdays, and he agreed to lead the first one this weekend.

The plan is the usable sticks can go in the barrels for reuse. The dirt can go back to the gardens. The unusable sticks that can be chipped will be placed by the Christmas trees that arrived mysteriously over the winter. This pile can be chipped by Housing Grounds when the pile is done. The organic matter left over can be transported by UW Grounds to a composting facility.

Then we will be able to have Shorewood start again taking 15 loads of weeds a year for us as is our agreement.

Online Maintenance Form

Lily will remind gardeners to use the online form for maintenance requests when the water is turned on.

Jessica states she will be taking a maternity leave at the end of April. We wished her well.

Motion by Ron and seconded Karen to adjourn

Adjourned 7:44

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee

March 2024

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

March 13, 2024

Remote Meeting

Lily, Ann, Barb A., Barb L., Ron, Jolene, Alan, Jessica


Minutes With a motion by Ann and seconded by Lily, the February 2024 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

Lily reports that the gardens are almost full now and she expects them to be completely full by next week. She reported that the demographics of 2024 gardeners are overall at usual distributions, although there might be a slight uptick of resident gardeners (25 additional gardeners). Lily said there are plenty of volunteers for the Seed Fair. She is working with Kirsten of Blue Moon Farms to establish the plant sales dates, which will be similar to those last year. Lily reports that we received new dumpsters at Eagle Heights, including a dumpster for recycling. It's unclear whether metal can be recycled in this bin and whether we want it for the Gardens.

Lily said that Rosemary had questioned whether the 12-inch path between plots is sufficient now that many people have fences. There was a long discussion about the walkways. Lily thought we should work on enforcement before we change the rules on walkway width. She thought the new jury system will help identify gardeners not complying with the walkway rule and give a heads up when further discussion is needed. And she thought the juries should start earlier in the year. Committee members also discussed providing help to move fences, researching whether fences do help with pest control, and designating a time when the whole garden could concentrate on fence compliance.

Lily proposed that we schedule the weed pile sorting for May. She also talked about putting up informational sandwich boards signs at the weed piles and the dumpsters that can help us avoid having to do a weed pile sorting in the future. Lily also brought up that it would be good to touch base with current FH King/Peoples Farm gardeners to help them comply with our weed piles rules. Finally, she called the committee's attention to the GOC documents that Karen has been working on and said she would send them to the GOC.

Hiring More Garden Workers

Jolene reported that 6 and possibly 7 people have applied for the 3 garden worker positions. She expects that we should have a solid crew of garden workers by early April.

Jolene will be traveling for family business, but will remain our primary University Housing contact. One of her co-workers may fill in when she has to be gone.

Finally, Lily brought up the issue of the shed locks and the fact that as people leave, they often don't return their keys. Jolene will look into getting a keypad lock for the shed.

Motion by Barb L and seconded by Ann to adjourn.

Adjourn at 7:50 PM

February 2024

 Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

February 14, 2024 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Lily, Alex, Jolene, Ann, Jessica, Barb A and Karen.


Alex started the meeting.

Minutes With a motion by Lily and seconded byBarb A, the January 2924 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

There was a discussion about what constitutes a quorum, since all the gardeners are able to be members of the committee. After discussion, we will have the quorum be 50% of the attendance of the last 10 meetings. If we have a low attendance meeting, then we can solicit input through email, understanding that this is time consuming for the Registrar.

Lily reports there are now 65 new gardener applications and 432 renewals from returning gardeners. We have around 568 plots. Lily will send a reminder out about tomorrow's deadline for renewing plots. Last year here were about 2 dozen late renewing applications. Some of those people lost their plots and made the plot assignment process difficult.

Lily asked if there were volunteers to lead orientations

Opening day will be March 30th.

Seed Fair April 6

The UW Preserve produces a report about pesticide use. A small part of University Houses is non organic. The Committee agreed that the goal is to phase out the non Organic section over time. All existing gardeners will be allowed to continue in the non organic section. This year there are a few non-organic applications which will be honored.

Hiring More Garden Workers

Jolene said we technically have three vacant garden workers positions. Jolene reports that Nichole is no longer a garden worker. Ian has not responded to Jolene’s calls and messages. It is possible that we will have no garden workers at the beginning of the season. Volunteers should prepare to run workdays if there are no garden workers at the beginning of the season.

The recruitment of Garden Workers has been approved by HR. Jolene will run the requirement as fast as possible. The position will pay $17.00 an hour with a shift premium for nights and weekends. It is helpful if the person is available some weeknights and a weekend day a week. Most people work 5-10 hours a week, but the position allows up to 20 hours a week. Tanya could mow, but it would be expensive. As soon as the job is posted, Jessica will post it on gardening sites and Sandra will put it on our website. Jolene is happy to answer questions about the position.

Alex reported that there was one potential candidate but they have not responded to her email.

There will be a salary increase for longevity.

Jolene needs to travel for family business and will be available via email or there will be a substitute contact person for the Gardens. She will keep us informed.

Motion by Lily and seconded Barb A to adjourn

Adjourned 7:35

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee

January 2024

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

January 10, 2024 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Lily, Alex, Jolene, Barb A and Karen.


Minutes With a motion by Barb A and seconded by Lily, the November 2023 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

Since there were so few people at the meeting, this meeting is advisory to the larger group.

Lily reports there are now 30 new gardener applications and many renewals from returning gardeners.

Kristen from Blue Moon Community Farms would like to do the Plant Sales again this spring. The committee agreed that was a good idea.

Lily has received two applications that require review of student status. The first from a student gardener with a UW Whitewater course schedule attached. The committee agreed to accept this as fitting in the student status. The second is from a graduating senior with not quite enough credits and the committee also accepted this for student status.

There is a pending request for a gardening with a children group to have a plot in the gardens. This group will require permission from UW Madison/UW Housing and the Lakeshore Nature Preserve and will include background checks of the adults. The committee approves this request pending the approval of both UW Madison/UW Housing and the Preserve.

Seeds

Seed Donations are down because Agway is no longer donating seeds and they were the largest provider. Lily has sent requests for donations to seven new companies and received three more donations.

Lily proposes that we buy some seeds in large quantities and repackage for the seed fair. For this to be fair to all gardeners, we would only buy seed that could be directly sown in the ground. Not all gardeners have the room or supplies to sow seed indoors. Seeds that would be good for purchase would be spinach, bok choy and other seeds we normally run out of at the Seed Fair. The committee members present recommend this.

This purchase program could be augmented with a seed saving and sharing program of our gardeners. We need to avoid saving seeds like squash that can be cross pollinated with gourds that produce inedible fruits. We can provide a list of accepted saved-seed contributions from gardeners.

Weed Juries

There have been some further questions about the weed juries and the difficulties last year. Here is the plan that was approved at the September 2023 meeting.

“The weed juries did not go well this year. Some groups did not report, or were quite late. Of the reports, some groups always list many plots in their section, including some that look very nice, and others don’t list plots that are obviously abandoned. Lily did a walkthrough anyway, but the whole system creates extra work and makes it more difficult to hold people accountable for weedy or abandoned plots. It only takes about an hour to walk all of EH and check the plots, so Lily proposes just one group for each site that meets with the registrar once a month and we walk through together. This would be fairer, more consistent and would be much easier too. The committee agreed to the change.”

There was some discussion about how many people should be on the jury. The committee recommends 4. That way if one person can not be there three gardeners would still be present.

Common Areas

There was discussion about how difficult it was last year because it was so dry. Watering the common areas took a lot of time. The discussion about having watering the common areas be a workday. We agreed that this would be a good idea.

Hiring More Garden Workers

Jolene said we technically have two vacant garden workers positions. Jolene has had no reply from Nichole. She needs to complete some required UW training sessions to keep her position.

The student that Jolene was creating a position for has decided she is no longer interested.

The committee and Jolene agree that hiring more Garden Workers is a priority as there is way too much work for one person. Lily will send an email to the list of gardeners from last year about the positions. Garden Committee members are also encouraged to suggest candidates if they know of anyone that may be interested. If we do not get any candidates Jolene will start the recruitment in February.

Motion by Lily and seconded Barb A to adjourn

Adjourned 7:45

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee

November 2023

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

November 8, 2023 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Ann, Ian, Lily, Alex, Jolene, Barb L, Ron, Jessica,

Barb A and Karen.


Minutes With a motion by Barb A and seconded byBarb L, the October 2023 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

Lily reports there are now1 full plot and 2 half plots empty at Eagle Heights. University Houses has one empty half plot

Alex agreed to proofread the Chinese application and Barb L will ask her husband to check the Turkish application. Jolene said that there are Spanish speaking teachers at Eagle Wing that could maybe help with the Spanish application.

The Seed Fair will be April 6th and the seed repackaging and sorting is on January 15th.

Lily has sent out some of the seed donation request letters and the rest will be sent soon. Lily called Ktizawa Seeds to try to get a donation of some of their Asian specialty vegetables. She was told to contact True Leaf Market and they might donate in exchange for us promoting them on social media.

The flooring in the Community Center will be replaced in late December. Jolene is helping organize a new drop box location so Lily can receive the application. She will be able to work from home.

So far there have been 150 responses to the survey and the due date is in the middle of November.

Lily requests we require no workday for plots given out after August 1st. The committee agreed. Weedy plots are free after August 1st.

97 plots have had no one do a workday.

A gardener has requested that we install the sink at University House or get rid of it. Discussion ensued. We agreed to make sure the sinks were installed and worked properly next year. The green chain link fence should be offered to SWAP and if they won’t take it Ron offered to take it to Habitat. There is an old abandoned shelf behind the shed. Lily will check to make sure it does not belong to anyone else before we get rid of it.

One of the share shelves at Eagle Heights is falling down and needs repair. There was a suggestion to orient the shelf so it was in the shade in the morning so the vegetables people leave for others last longer.

Garden Worker Report

Ian has been shutting down the garden and fixing some carts. He will buy more fruit tree wrap to protect the trees this winter.

He has been making marker posts for both corners and number posts. The only marker missing in Eagle Heights is 1308. Lily and Ian will do a walk through for University Houses where there are many posts missing.

The other big task is removing trees in plots. Barb A asked Ian to remove some trees in the Arbor Garden and she will show him where they are. Ron said there was a hand tool called a sapling puller. Discussion ensued. The Committee thought we should get one. Ian said we might have one in the shed.

There was also a discussion about the large amount of buckthorn growing on the borders of the garden in the Preserve areas. Lily will check with the Preserve about the buckthorn.

Garden Worker Hiring

A person was recommended for the empty Garden Worker position. Since she is an international student, she cannot be hired as a temporary employee. Jolene is working on the problem.

Jolene said Ian has been working lots of hours and wonders if there is work for him in winter. The next task is repacking and sorting seeds in January.

After discussion it was agreed there will be no December meeting.

Motion by Barb L and seconded by Ann to adjourn.

Adjourned 7:36

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee

October 2023

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

October 11, 2023 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Ann, Ian, Lily, Alex, Jolene, Barb L, Jessica,

Barb A and Karen.

Minutes With a motion by Ann and seconded by Lily, the September 2023 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

Lily reports there are now 4 empty plots and the water will be turned off sometime next week.

E and R Seeds has already donated a box of seeds for the Seed Fair. We also received a box of seeds from a local garden center.

The Seed Fair will be April 6th and the seed repackaging and sorting is on January 15th.

The committee agreed to spend up to $100 on Seed Fair supplies.

Andy, a former garden worker, asks if he could have the old metal pieces of the removed Arbor. Discussion ensued. Jolene said that we are not allowed to give away state property. Some people suggested replacing the arbor with a good concrete foundation and the committee agreed to discuss it this winter.

The weed piles need to be removed. Lily asked for a cost estimate from UW Physical Plant to remove both weed piles. Lily will ask if any of the other gardening groups have been using the pile also and can contribute to the removal costs. When the weed pile is removed, UW Pest Management will be there to check if there are rats living in the pile.

Nicole and Lily met with NRCS representatives last week. Pollinator gardens were discussed. We will hear more later.

The date for putting away the carts and tools is November 5th.

2024 Applications

The 2024 applications are being updated. Could the student status be based on the number of credits? Are auditors considered students? Jolene suggested we use the UW Housing criteria for verifying student status. Discussion ensued about the rise in price and people's ability to pay. The lowest is the student price. For people in the community price range, we could have an appeal process to the committee. Lily will send any email telling gardeners about the new fees.

Garden Worker Report

The last path mowing will be soon. Very few people are signing up for workdays lately. The tasks still to be done are replacing a few faucets, digging trees and generally cleaning up. Ian said he had a discussion with a Preserve volunteer about the 500’s native shrub border. There will be a discussion with the GOC about who has responsibility for this area. Lily will send an email to Laura and Rhonda about the boundaries and connect with Ian.

Ian will send an email to Ric and Karen about repairing carts. Ian would also like to clean out the shed.

COLA

Jolene suggests that the Gardens keep pace with the UW cost of living increases so there is not such a jump in wages like we had in the recent past. The committee agreed we should follow the UW cola in the future.

Adjourned 7:43

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee

September 2023

Eagle Heights Garden Committee Minutes

September 13, 2023 7 PM

Remote Meeting

Ann, Ian, Lily, Jolene, Alex, Nichole, Robert, Jessica,

Hema and Karen.

Minutes The August 2023 minutes were approved.

Registrar Update

Lily reports that the only people on the waiting list are people that have requested specific plots near or adjacent to current ones. No new applicants are on the list.

The tomato tasting was a big success! There were many varieties and a good turnout. We should plan to do it again next year around the same time.

The weed juries did not go well this year. Some groups did not report, or were quite late. Of the reports, some groups always list many plots in their section, including some that look very nice, and others don’t list plots that are obviously abandoned. Lily did a walkthrough anyway, but the whole system creates extra work and makes it more difficult to hold people accountable for weedy or abandoned plots. It only takes about an hour to walk all of EH and check the plots, so Lily proposes just one group for each site that meets with the registrar once a month and we walk through together. This would be fairer, more consistent and would be much easier too. The committee agreed to the change.

Weed piles are huge and Lily learned that Shorewood is no longer picking them up. There was a meeting that we were not present for a while ago and Shorewood left with the understanding that our agreement with them is over. Lily will try to have a meeting with all parties and try to find a solution.

UW Housing Apartment Facilities has been extremely helpful. They helped remove the unwanted chips from EH and they will work with us to deliver leaves and chips as much as they are able.

Lily has also requested horse manure but has not gotten a reply about that either.

There was a discussion about when to present new fees and potentially have a town hall meeting. Ann suggests October to inform people, and said an online meeting in addition to in-person would be a good idea. Jolene says the Community Center will be closed Oct 9-16.

A gardener who is an artist asked about painting shed at EH to make it more colorful. If this is of interest, in addition to committee approval we would need Preserve approval.

There has been a request for tools closer to piles. We talked about this last year also. Something to consider for next season.

Would it be possible to have some quarter plots in the future? There are some gardeners that still struggle with maintaining a half plot. Quarter plots would only be possible at the ends of rows but this might make gardening more accessible to them.

Seed Fair date is April 6th 2024.

Garden Worker Report

Nichole now has a full time job with the USDA- Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS). The NRCS can provide advice and help and are expanding their mission to help community gardens. It also may be possible to receive grants. Discussion ensued including installing pollinator gardens, improving irrigation, fencing, the ever expanding turkey population and having some accessible plots. The committee thought accessible plots would be more easily done at University Houses because it is closer to the parking. Lily will check to see if Eagle Heights Garden is eligible.

Ian reported that he and Nicole want to clean out the shed. All are welcome.

There is ongoing confusion about where the University House water shutoff is located. Discussion ensued. Jolene will assist in this matter.

Co-Chair Applicants

The three co-chair applicants each spoke to the committee. After their presentations they were asked to leave the remote meeting. Discussion ensued.

The Committee unanimously chose Alex as the new co-chair.

Adjourned 7:55

Submitted by Karen, subject to correction by the Garden Committee