NxNA Garden Tour 2015: Adelphi Community Garden

In early May, the North by North Austin (NxNA) garden tour had its second annual tour.  The NxNA garden tour has a ton of gardens so you have to move fast if you want to see every garden, or you have to make some calls on which gardens to visit.  The tour generally covers from Mopac to IH35 from Koenig to Wells Branch.  Last year I think there were 19 gardens and this year there were 24.  Again, the price was only $10.  $10!

Last year I'm not sure if there was a theme, but most of the gardens were water wise - this year the theme was Art in the Garden though it wasn't so much about garden art (like I had assumed) and more like Art and Gardens as almost every garden had an artist in attendance with their artwork for sale.

Every year, the tour starts at 3 gardens where you buy your ticket and pick up a map of the location of the other gardens and then you're on your way.

I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone and actually talk to the owners at the gardens, and I think I did a pretty good job; of course, now that it's a month after the fact, I don't really remember what we talked about or who was who.  Maybe next year I will take a little notebook so I can keep things straight. Though to be fair, it's not like I really planned on waiting a month between the tour and blogging about it, but there you go.

Anyhow, without further ado, here are the photos from the first garden I visited, the Adelphi Acre Community Garden.

The welcoming crew

A garden plot - notice the terra cotta chimneys - those are Ollas from Dripping Springs Ollas - the first time I saw them was at the Sunshine Community Garden sale YEARS ago and they were like $50 a pop or something, now they're around $35 and are sold at many retailers.  Ollas are unglazed clay pots (they kinda look like chimneas) with a lid cover - you fill the pot with water and it seeps out slowly to deliver water to the plant roots. You can find some small ones for potted plants, or large ones like these for your garden plot.  In either case, it really reduces the amount of water you need to use to keep your garden going.

A little kid's owl decoration for the garden.

Lavender.  I tried to grow this once, but failed miserably.

Old coffee cans used as growing collars to keep cut worms and other crawlies away from the tomatoes.

Watering collars for other tomatoes - the divots have drain holes in the bottom of them to more directly deliver water to the roots.

Garden flower - zinnia perhaps?

Many of the plots had buried Ollas (mentioned above), or other buried means of watering the plants - here someone uses milk jugs with holes punched in the sides.  I've used this method a few times with very good success (especially around tomatoes).

Homemade Ollas - I know John Dromgoole (of Natural Gardener fame) is a fan of using any means necessary to deliver water to the roots - even just a buried terra cotta pot with a slightly larger saucer inverted on the top is helpful.  In this case, someone took two pots and glued them together so the pots will be filled with water via the drain hole (which is covered by the rock).  The glass pebbles are glued on to add a little pizazz to the garden.

You can read about my previous NxNA garden tours here