Category: Blog

Gardening Hours

Garden hours for gardeners are from sunrise to sunset 7 days-a-week. This means a gardener can take their vehicle and park as close to their plot as necessary.

Gardeners and Vehicle Access Issue

Something changed in garden hours and vehicle access.

Yesterday, Saturday September 12, 2020, I (other gardeners as well) was stopped and prevented from entering the garden with my car by the on-duty patrol man. The gate was closed and the sun had not yet set. This was around 6 pm when there is still light out to garden.

The Issue

RMI has arbitrarily changed the hours, and access for gardeners without permission from the LA Garden Counsel, Lott To Spott, Mayor Buscaino’s office, and the Garden leadership.

If any of the above groups were involved in the agreeing to cut off access and limit the garden hours, then that decisions needs to be communicated to all the gardeners affected by this decision. As of today, RMI has went ahead and made this decision by themselves.

RMI sole purpose is to provide security to the Recycle Center. The City Recycle Center shares an easement with The San Pedro Community Gardens and City Services. By cutting off access and reducing hours to the other groups who use this easement is an issue.

Cutting off access is very problematic for gardeners who have water, compost, soil, veggies, and equipment to take from their car to their gardens and vice versa.

Why This Is Now Our Issue

RMI security allowed a parked vehicle over-night when it should not have. This is an RMI issue and not a garden issue. The patrol person should have been more alert and told the car to move after sunset. Now they have over-reached and cut-off access to gardeners.

The Solution

There is a patrol monitoring the bottom Recycle Center easement and can easily close the gates after sunset 7 days-a-week. After sunset all cars must be moved.

This unofficial posting was posted at the San Pedro Community Gardens.

The content may lead some to believe this is an official notice from Mayor Buscaino’s office and other groups involved in the garden renovation, but based on the following reasons it is not:

It has been about 3 months since the meeting with Maria From Lot to Spot and nothing has improved at the San Pedro All Year Community Gardens (SPAYCG).

There has been no word to the gardeners if nothing of the ideas presented at the meeting is moving forward. Maria and Julie from the LA Garden Council presented at the last meeting and there seems to have been no progress made.

A vote was to be arranged to move ahead with the proposals presented by both Maria and Julie, yet no meeting or votes have been scheduled.

The watering schedule is still limited to 2 days. Most gardeners maybe water 1 day per week. Each day the water is only for 3 hours. So, the garden is in bad shape again.

2018 is almost over and the SPAYCG is in the same situation as 4 years ago when the Sanitation department first cut water to the gardeners.

The city needs to do something again if these organizations they bought on don’t do anything soon.

The watering schedule arranged by Carlos (Board) has inequality built in again. Carlos and the “Board” consistently makes bad decisions.

The biggest issue with this water inequality schedule is in Sector 3. Sector 3 was the most affected by the water source being closed on the north side, no water for almost 3 years while other sectors did. Then, with the pipe reconfiguration, many were left without proper piping and/or irrigation.

Now, to add insult to injury Carlos is burdening Sector 3 water-load to 8 areas ( #1, #13, #14, #15, and +4 lotes (lots)). It makes not sense to have another 4 “lotes” included in Sector 3 when all sectors have their appointed watering days and times listed on the schedule. Unless Carlos is opening the water to other sectors when he should not be.  Carlos needs to be questioned about this decision.

Sectors 1 and 2, the least burdened, only serve water to  5 areas. Remember each area serves about 40-50 gardens, so the more areas, the more water is required and the longer hours needed.

Making a schedule that changes every 2 weeks is bad. This means we don’t know when water is going to be available consistently and without change. Also, it would help if there were watering days in both the morning (AM) and afternoon (PM). This would also help spread the water load to different times. Now, people are forced to use it at the same time, causing low water pressure, and not enough water. People have different schedules and by not offering both leaves gardens to die.

Once again Carlos and the Board have made decisions that are bad for the San Pedro All Year Community Gardens. They have let down the gardeners they are meant to serve. This trend of bad decision making will continue with Carlos and his appointed “Board” until they are replaced.

In area 13, 14, and 15, the irrigation system is a mess. The foundation of the piping was bad to start with. When the water source on the northside was shut down there were many unsuccessful attempts to solve the water problems.

There was the initial piping with the water source from the northside, so all piping was configured to water the gardens from that source. It worked fine.

After, there have been 2 new attempts to route water to area 13, 14, 15 (there might be other areas without water which I am not aware of).  For now, we will address these areas since I know what has been done.

There was an attempt to re-pipe and configure the water initiated by 2 gardeners. Let’s call this system the “A-system” with the water sources coming from the northside. Because of conflict with Carlos (Board), the system was never “official” even though the new piping was completed.

Then, another system, let’s call this “C-system” was implemented which was a hybrid system connecting to A-system using the water source closer to the Green house.  This C-system is done incorrectly.

The diagram below shows the dashed (–) lines as the main ateries into the garden. The pipes are setup to distribute water into only half of one artery leaving the rest of the lower gardens without water.  The 2 smaller pipes (right of diagram) only supply water to private gardens.

It exludes piping to one of the main arteries into the garden. This cause gardens to not have water and places the water piping in private gardens which makes no sense. This then becomes an issue when trying to connect new pipes. Gardeners who benefits from the placement of water pipes do not want others connecting to that water sources as they feel a right of false ownership because of pipe placement in their gardens. They don’t want to have less water and or pressure. These private water pipes should be moved to the main artery of the garden.

This is the C-system in place and needs improvement to provide water to lower gardens.

I was really hopeful to have water, but I’m sad to report no water.

So what was done?

Dues collected from the 85 gardeners who have not had water. A notice was put up and then taken down after about 7 days. It was more like 2 days for collection of dues since I was there on the first day and Carlos was not in the office at the allocated time to collect money.

No emails were sent to them, no calls were made, no attempt to be proactive by “The Board” to notify people, except for a posted notice. I’m sorry to say, gardeners might have lost their gardens since they did not have a chance to see the dues notice. This is unfair to them. How could they anticipate this after so many years of no water when the notice was going to be put up? There should be an appeals process put in place to rectify this issue.

New LA Garden Counsel rules were given to us. I have compared the rules to other gardens, and the main rule that say’s gardens should be for the residents of San Pedro was missing. Other community gardens have this requirement and so should the San Pedro All Year Community Gardens.

As for the water – it appears as if it was a pipe that was already connected. The shut-off valve was simply turned on to allow water to move to our side of the garden.

The gardens at the top benefit because of the water pipe location and being turned on. It never reaches the bottom gardeners who are affected the most severely from not having water for years. This tells me, no additional piping was done to fix the water problems and supply water with proper pressure to all the lower gardens.

“The Board” has once again done a below expectation job of implementing this new water system. Right now, it’s simply a schedule. Until more thought, and all gardens are getting water fairly will not improve our gardens. For now, there is NO water.