Starter guide
Grow your own food on a shared plot, with neighbors who know how.
Community gardening is growing vegetables, herbs and flowers on a piece of shared land: usually a small plot you rent for the season inside a garden run by a city parks department, a church, a school or a neighborhood nonprofit. The garden supplies the land, the water and often a shed of shared tools, so you can start with little more than gloves and seeds. What you get back is fresh food, a reason to be outside a few times a week, and a row of experienced growers one bed over who are glad to tell you why your squash is sulking. It suits renters and apartment dwellers with no yard, and anyone who would rather learn next to people than from a screen.
Short visits, two or three times a week
A typical plot is a raised or in-ground bed somewhere between 4 by 8 feet and 10 by 20 feet, rented for a yearly fee that usually runs $20 to $75. You sign a short agreement, get a gate code, and from then on the bed is yours to plant. Most of the work is ordinary gardening done in short visits: sowing and transplanting in spring, then watering, weeding and picking two or three times a week through summer, and clearing the bed in fall. The shared part is what makes it different. Members split chores like turning the compost, mowing paths and keeping the shed tidy, most gardens ask for a set number of volunteer hours a season, and there is nearly always someone around to ask.
Open one to see where to start. Guerrilla gardening can add its two lines to the kit.
Start here
Find the two or three gardens nearest your home on a garden map or your parks department site, then email each coordinator this week to ask about open plots, the yearly fee and the waitlist.
Start here
Ask a nearby garden for its next workday or volunteer shift and go once. Communal gardens have no waitlist, so you can be planting this weekend.
Start here
Pick one neglected spot you walk past often, find out who owns it (the county's online parcel map will say), and ask that owner or the city's adopt-a-spot program for permission in writing before you plant anything. Then add the guerrilla gardening gear to your kit.
Find plants native to your zip code
Tick each label off as you go
What you can grow in your first month
Radishes
The fastest crop there is, ready to pull about four weeks after sowing and a clear sign your bed and watering are working.
Cut-and-come-again salad greens
A short row of leaf lettuce gives baby leaves in three to four weeks and regrows after each cutting.
A marked-out, mulched bed
The plot cleared of weeds, laid out in rows with string and covered with mulch, which is half the season's work done.
Bush beans up and growing
Sown straight into warm soil, they sprout within ten days and flower soon after the first month.
Basil seedlings
Sown after the last frost, basil is up within a week or so and ready to thin, and taste, by week four.
The waitlist
In big cities a plot can take a season or more to come up. Put your name down at several gardens and volunteer at one while you wait.
Planting too much
A full plot of seedlings in May is a jungle in July. Plant half the bed in your first year and leave paths you can reach from.
Summer gaps
A week away in a heat wave can kill a bed. Trade watering with a neighboring plot holder before you travel.
Shade and sprawl
Tall corn or sunflowers on the south edge shade the next plot, and squash vines wander into paths. Keep tall and sprawling crops inside your own lines.
Losing some harvest
Open gardens lose the odd tomato to passersby, squirrels and birds. Grow a little extra and pick as soon as things ripen.
Letting weeds seed
Most gardens send a warning, then reassign a plot left weedy for a few weeks, because the seeds blow into every other bed.
Posted: planting off the plot
Guerrilla gardening without permission is not legal
Digging or planting on land you do not own, public or private, can be charged as trespass, vandalism or criminal mischief, and cities routinely mow or remove unapproved plantings.
Get permission first
Find the owner through the county parcel map and ask in writing. For public land, look for your city's adopt-a-spot, adopt-a-median or tree pit stewardship program, which exists to say yes to this.
Your plot agreement is binding
It sets what you may grow, which sprays and fertilizers are allowed, and when a neglected plot is taken back. Many gardens ban synthetic pesticides outright.
Ask about the soil
City soil can carry lead from old paint and traffic. Ask whether the garden's soil has been tested, grow food in raised beds filled with clean soil where it has not, wash produce and wash your hands after digging.
Plant natives only
Use species native to your region and check your state's invasive plant list first. Many general wildflower mixes include species that are invasive somewhere, and scattering them on open land spreads them.
Leave utilities and sight lines alone
Call 811 before digging anywhere outside a garden bed, and keep plantings low near corners, driveways and fire hydrants.
Keep your tetanus shot current
Soil work with cuts on your hands is the classic route of infection, and a booster is due every ten years.
Plan on two or three visits a week of 30 to 60 minutes each from late spring through early fall, plus a longer session or two at planting time. On top of that, most gardens ask for 4 to 12 volunteer hours a season on shared jobs. In hot weather watering cannot wait more than a couple of days, so a plot is a poor fit for a summer spent mostly away unless you share it with a friend.
Your best teachers are the plot holders around you, who already know what the garden's soil, shade and pests do. For everything else, your state's Cooperative Extension service publishes free planting guides written for your climate and runs Master Gardener help lines that answer questions by phone or email. Many gardens also run their own spring workshops and seed swaps, which are free to members.
Free growing advice for your climate
The garden covers the expensive parts: land, water, hoses, compost and usually a shed of spades, forks and wheelbarrows. Your own kit is what you carry in and out each visit, because most gardens do not let you leave things on the plot and shared hand tools go missing. That means gloves that fit you, one good hand tool, seeds, and a bag to carry it all. The plot fee is the first purchase and is paid to the garden. The guerrilla gardening lines are only for planting a spot outside the garden, with permission.
The first line is not something you buy online: it is the plot itself, paid for at the garden. For the rest, compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out. The guerrilla gardening lines and the optional row cover start out of the kit.
The plot is the hobby. The yearly fee pays for your bed, water and use of the shared tools and compost.
Not sold on Amazon
Not sold on Amazon. Apply through your city parks department or the garden's own coordinator. Expect $20 to $75 a year for a plot, often on a sliding scale, plus a refundable key or cleanup deposit at some gardens. Communal gardens and workdays are usually free.
Shared beds hide thorns, broken glass and splintery timber edges, and loaner gloves from the shed rarely fit.
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Showa Atlas 370 Garden Club Gloves. Assorted Colors - 4 Pack. Size Medium
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Snug, coated-palm gloves let you feel seedlings and still grip a wet tool. These are sold in sizes rather than as men's or women's: measure around your knuckles and pick your size on the listing.
One tool that digs planting holes, slices weeds off at the root, cuts twine and measures planting depth, so you carry a single hand tool instead of four.
Nisaku NJP651 Hori Weeding & Digging Knife-Hardened HRC58 Edition, Authentic Tomita (Est. 1960) Japanese Stainless Steel, 7.25" Blade, Wood Handle, w/Premium Leather Sheath
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Look for a full-tang stainless blade with depth marks and a sheath. Wipe it dry before it goes back in the sheath, and check your garden's rules, since a few do not allow knives on site.
A mixed collection covers a first plot with radishes, lettuce, beans and more for less than buying packets one at a time.
20 Vegetable Seeds Variety Pack - 12,465+ Non-GMO Heirloom Seeds for Planting Vegetables and Fruits in Individual Seed Packets, Home Garden Seed for Hydroponic, Indoor and Outdoors Gardening
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Heirloom varieties are accepted under organic-only garden rules and let you save seed for a swap. Even the smallest collection holds more seed than one plot uses in a year, so split a larger one with your plot neighbors.
Your gear travels to the plot and home again every visit. A tote with outside pockets keeps gloves, seeds and tools together and the dirt off your car seat.
Housolution 14 Inch Gardening Tote Bag, Garden Tool Storage Bag, Gray+Black
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Burpee Waxed Canvas Garden Tool Tote | Heavy-Duty Tote Bag Storage Organizer for Gardening Tools | Great Gift for Gardeners | Canvas Tote Bag Caddy 8 Exterior Pockets for Tool Storage, 12" H x 14.5" W
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Buy the bag on its own. Totes sold with a tool set repeat the hand tool above.
Once the plot is producing you carry home several pounds at a time, and soft tomatoes and greens bruise in a shopping bag.
Fiskars Garden Harvest Basket with Tool Caddy, Container for Gardening
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Maine Garden Hod Basket for Vegetable Gardening and Harvest Gathering or Farmhouse Decor, Pine and Oak with PVC Wire Mesh, USA Made, 16 x 9 in, 8 quart
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A basket with mesh or drain holes lets you rinse the soil off at the garden's tap.
Stretched between two sticks it marks straight rows and the edge of your plot, and later it ties tomatoes and beans to their stakes.
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Natural jute can go straight into the garden's compost pile at the end of the season. Plastic twine cannot. The dearest option is a refillable tin that pays out twine without tangling in your bag.
Labeled rows tell you, and the neighbor watering for you, which green shoots are crops and which are weeds.
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Write the crop and the sowing date in pencil or garden marker. Ink from an ordinary pen fades in a few weeks of sun.
Garden plots are sited in full sun on purpose, and there is rarely any shade to weed in.
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A chin cord keeps it on in wind, and a brim of 3 inches or more covers your neck when you are bent over a bed.
Native wildflowers suit a neglected spot because they cope with poor soil and no watering once established, and they feed local pollinators.
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Eden Brothers Native Southeast Wildflower Seed Mix, 1oz, 18 Wild Flower Seed Varieties, 100% Pure Seed No Fillers, Bulk Wildflower Seeds for Planting Outdoors, Attracts Pollinators & Hummingbirds
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Texas Oklahoma Wildflower Seeds Mixture - Bulk 1/4 Pound Bag - Over 60,000 Native Seeds - Open Pollinated and Non GMO
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Each option here covers one part of the country, so open the listing and choose the mix made for your own region. Read its species list against your state's invasive plant list before sowing, and sow only where you have the owner's permission.
Reclaiming a neglected spot starts with clearing it, and a grabber keeps your hands away from broken glass and sharps.
RMS 34 Inch Extra Long Reacher Grabber - Foldable with Rotating Jaw (Blue)
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The Helping Hand Company Litter Picker 2021 Litterpicker Pro Gel Extra 37-inch
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A cleanup needs no digging, so it is the easiest thing to get a yes for when you ask the owner or the city.
For later, once you know your garden's pests. Fine mesh over a bed keeps cabbage moths, beetles and birds off crops on the days you are not there to check.
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Weigh the edges down with soil or stones. Check your garden's height rules before adding hoops.
