EVERETT — Nothing was supposed to grow in Bob Dahlgren’s garden.
Soil samples confirmed it. The amount of moisture in the soil wasn’t right for growing food.
Dahlgren, 77, and others wanted to try anyway. They started volunteering their time in June to form a community garden off Larimer Road in the Lowell neighborhood. Now, after months of careful attention to the soil, it’s a different story.
“We’ve had an awful lot of naysayers,” he said. “We were told we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t farm it; we would have to haul in truckloads of sand and soil to put gardens in here. We haven’t done anything like that, but our gardens are growing pretty good.”
Success takes form in 10-foot tall sunflowers, ears of corn, seven full buckets of potatoes and a few mole hills.
“If you see you have moles you know you have worms and if you know you have worms, you know you have good soil,” said Dahlgren, who is part of the Lowell Community Garden committee.
Dahlgren spends four or five days a week in the garden. He has relied on an oxygen tank for the past three years and takes 100 feet of hose with him wherever he goes in the garden. Often, he’s the first one to arrive and among the last to leave. On recent mornings, the low hum of his riding lawn mower made his presence known.
The mower was just sitting in the yard next door, he said. A neighbor told him to put $50 in the mailbox if he could get it running and it was his to haul away. A new tire, belt and a recharged battery later, the money was in the mailbox. He attached his oxygen tank to the back of the mower. He was back in the garden.
“It’s a running bit of amusement that Bob is out here with 100 feet of hose, busting his tail,” Shane Gillis, Lowell Community Garden committee chairman said. “He’s a dynamo.”
Gillis said he and Dahlgren would both like to see more people in the garden. The goal, he added, is to finish tilling the second half of the 2-acre property and maintain it as a year-round garden.
Individual 10- by 20-foot, 20- by 20-foot, and 20- by 40-foot garden plots are available for $10, $20 and $40. Four plots are currently being used by neighbors and the Everett Women’s Gospel Mission, but the space allows for at least a dozen 20- by 40-foot lots, Gillis said.
The money collected is used to rent equipment such as tractors to work the land, he said. All food grown in the garden is shared among neighbors or given to local food banks.
“We’d like to get the food bank down here working some of the plots,” Gillis said. “We’re more than happy to donate land for them but we need volunteers to turn it.”
The start of the Lowell Community Garden is an exciting one for property owner Elwin Anderson. His dad bought the property in 1922 and the family grew their own groceries then. There hasn’t been a garden on the land for the past 50 years, he said.
“I was willing for them to use (the land) as long as they eat the food or donate it,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t easy to do but I think they’ve done a terrific job.”
Volunteers know their work is far from over. Soon Dahlgren, Gillis and others will finish harvesting the food they planted in June and turn their attention to planting a winter crop.
Hard work doesn’t scare Dahlgren. Working in the garden gives him a sense of satisfaction.
“You plant the seeds and you water them and you weed them and take care of them and when you’re finished you harvest them, and say, ‘Now I did that, that’s mine,’ ” he said. “Then there’s always the therapeutic value of just sitting out by yourself in a garden pulling weeds.”
Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491, adaybert@heraldnet.com.
Join the garden
For information about the Lowell Community Garden at 5829 Larimer Road, Everett, or to volunteer, contact Shane Gillis at 425-263-0944 or sngillis@gmail.com.
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