Community Gardening in the Mountains by Ginger Baer

As a home gardener for many decades. I have grown flowers, vegetables, herbs, bulbs, fruit trees and just about anything else that will grow when placed in the earth. I am joining our local community garden for the first time. This garden is for vegetables and it is in the mountains at an elevation of 9,000 feet. There are many good reasons to grow in a community garden. Mine were purely selfish. I have raised beds for my home garden, but have run into some soil problems in the past 3 years. At first I thought that I had herbicide contamination from some purchased manure. The problems started that year.   Things just would not grow. Seeds would not start and already started plants would not grow. They just sat there, as if they were dormant. I did the “bean test” this spring. That is where I dug up some soil from the garden to start some bean seeds in pots indoors.   I did this side by side with some bean seeds started in potting soil.   The beans in the potting soil grew more vigorou