Yep I said it. Comm garden comms?
No, not "breaker 1-9 breaker 1-9, this here's the mater man. What's the 20 on that mushroom soil? I got to hill these irish taters with somethin'."
Definitely not what I mean.

I mean, for those that do community gardening, how do you keep in touch with the other gardeners and/or management?

The one I have nearby is church affiliated, but was opened to the public at some point. Since I have been there, a few years now, it is just a few flyers and a whiteboard at the garden, and an email list. Now the flyers don't get updated and the whiteboard abandoned, so I guess it is just email. I don't go to church there so never really felt too involved with planning and such. Not like some of the others that I presume might discuss things before or after services. With covid we didn't do much in the way of group work days last year. At times I want to contact some or all members but emails...they go unchecked, get lost, ignored, forgotten, etc. And to me emails can have an awkward tone.

One person was talking about doing facebook. That's not something I want. I don't "text" either. I use a phone to talk, you know, sound, but it seems like no one else has time nowadays. Almost everyone screens calls anyway.

I had considered floating the idea of everyone joining a garden forum and having a devoted thread or subforum or group but I'm not sure how that would work. I like the idea that the announcements and such would stay in place, and there would be a pseudo record for everyone to refer to equally. I was looking here on TJ and I don't see any comm garden group threads. Have I missed one or many? Lots of sub categories here. I considered this before TJ (I always think Tijuana when I abbreviate that) but tville didn't seem like the right place due to the join wait/difficulty.

I'm not sure how public everyone would want it to be. Or how public I want it to be. Reading about the thieves some have had to deal with, publicity seems almost counterproductive. At our comm garden, nothing needs locked up, at least not yet, while I can't imagine leaving stuff unlocked just 15 miles closer to the cities. Do I really want to advertise to 7 billion ppl that I have 25 butternut that I need to pick by mid October located RIGHT HERE or that my second stand of sweet corn is about ready, any day now RIGHT HERE at the comm garden at such and such. When local corn costs $5-6 a dozen?

So I'm not sure what, if anything, to suggest to the group. Currently I am the most active gardener there. For the rest, the most active time is May and June, then slacks in July usually. I don't expect anything has changed, but I haven't heard anything from anyone since October. I haven't been over since planting garlic in December. I'm okay with the status quo, but at the same time I wish there were some more participants, and more coordination and 90 minute work sessions etc.

Thanks for thoughts and suggestions.

3s and 8s, I'm 10-10 in the shade.

[mention]JRinPA[/mention]
Facebook would seem to be your best option as the group could be restricted to just the members of your community garden and they would receive notifications via Facebook to their email that a new message had been posted to the group. Text would be the next option, but some people don't like to give out their cell number or don't have a cell phone. I am not a big fan of Facebook for a lot of reasons, but it does have its place for some things. What are your reservations about Facebook?

There are other social media platforms similar to Facebook but not as well known. I am thinking of Band and MeWe , however I find them a bit clunky to use. Facebook of course demands a "real name" unlike any other format I have ever run into. IF you use anything that looks "real" Facebook can let it slide but it is a pain in the butt when everyone on forums knows you by another name. ie Wykvlvr but on Facebook I have to use my real name.
Facebook groups can be made public or private and you can totally hide them so only folks who get a link from another member can find the group.

Nextdoor is a free app/forum for neighbors which is becoming more widely used, and has the focus on local stuff. IDK if they also allow private groups within your neighborhood but it's possible they do. But at least for starters, you can only access posts within your "neighborhood" area. Check it out.

I would want a fence with a gate and a programmable lock that only let people in during the day, as well as cameras and signs about the hours the garden is open. If the garden is on private property, there needs to be liability insurance as well.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm still curious to know how other comm garden groups communicate. I know there are some people here on the forum that use community gardens.

I've been in several community gardens. None of them has had gardener-to-gardener communication other than in person. They've all had occasional emails from the garden coordinator, mostly simple announcements of upcoming work parties. My current garden has an irregular newsletter that sometimes highlighted individual gardeners.

The best of the community gardens (I've participated in 4 of them, all in the middle of suburbia) had active gardeners I saw frequently who were willing to stop and chat. Being present in the garden has been the best way to stay informed on what was going on!

One garden was 2.5 acres across the parking lot from the library. Dog walkers and others regularly walked on the perimeter path. My garden plot was right next to the main gate. So I'd see other gardeners who had plots near my end of the garden when they came in, and I also chatted with dog walkers who had garden questions! I even gave away tomato seedlings and other plants to passers-by. On Fridays, I'd get to the garden by 7:30 am and be there until early afternoon, and I was there for shorter amounts of time at least a couple other days.

My gardens communication is much like habitat-gardener's. We have a coordinator who sends out monthly news letters of what diseases or bugs are going around and what has been going on at the gardens. If we have issues or things to discuss, we email the coordinator and she posts them in the newsletter. I too have thought that it would be fun to have an online place where we could talk to one another. I mentioned TV to many people there but I have not seen on single person join us here so I doubt there is much interest in starting a FB page for me.

Comms are already broken this year...I got asked by the garden head via email about rehabbing a plot, so made a forum post with a query(here or tville), collated an answer, wrote an email back to them after a couple days. Now two weeks later I got another email asking me again if I had an ideas...apparently they never got my answer two weeks ago.

For communication, you can try Discord. It's what i use for many of my groups. I've even started using it to make "phone calls" now. No phone number required and they have a very 'Slim' app that doesn't hog my phone space.

It allows chatting, talking and video calling. You can easily upload to it by simply dragging files and photos right into the chat bar. It's a very useful form of communication.

It originated in the computer gaming industry, but has expanded to all industries. I laughed when everyone started using Zoom, because Discord had been around longer and is free.

We used to game with roger wilco...that was 56k days.

Discord might work.

Basically I think we need one ongoing text thread to communicate. Just like a forum thread like this, that anyone in the group can access and post, and the all posts stay up in order. And when a new post is made, you get an email or whatever.

It just seems like email is unreliable nowadays, between spam filters and the massive headers attached that multiply each reply, and some people reply, others reply all.

Then Discord definitely sounds like a great option. I've used it in "tech support" for a coding channel with over a thousand people on it at a time. So long as there are rules and proper moderation, it should do everything you want it to.

Then if you decide to get fancy, you can add "Bots" to it and automate much of the busy work.

PS
The app has the ability to notify you. Kind of like what you are looking for in an email.