Tag: Community garden plots

Community Gardening-Year Four

by barbstruestories, posted in Community garden plots, Gardening, Green (sometimes) thumb

We are well into our fourth year of tending our 1,000 sq. ft. community garden plot.  Looking back:

Year One

Our first year was about discovery and learning the ropes.  It had to be about something for it certainly wasn’t about garden bounty.  The soil was hard, there was lots of clay and we spent hours weeding (unsuccessfully) as it was pretty much impossible to dig down to most roots.

Year Two

Year Two we decided to go big or go home.  We invested in 9 cu. yds. of mushroom compost, an irrigation system, uber row covers and more straw for mulch.  The results were outstanding.  Broccoli plants higher than your waist, tomato plants burdened with fruit and weeds that were much easier to remove. And bounty was an issue, a good issue at that.

Year Three

We are starting to get the hang of this, sort of.  As with any garden, there were failures and successes.  There was enough butternut squash to feed a small village, tomatoes by pail and the squash beetles continued to win in the end.  As they had every year in the past.  

Year Four

We are officially an expanding enterprise.  We are now three partners tending the garden.  

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There is plenty enough for three to do and it’s great in giving some flexibility in time away over the summer.  Snippets of the season thus far:

  1. A few planning sessions to determine what we’ll grow and where it should be grown (plant rotation and all that).
  2. Everyone took on starting some plants from seeds.  For the most part, we all had success.
  3. More mushroom compost was ordered and delivered in spite several false starts and an almost saga of a stuck dump truck.  
  4. Introduced our friend and new gardening partner to the garden and the neighbours.  
  5. Garden progress to date:
  • Late start to spring/summer
  • Everything is planted (sometimes twice)
  • Trying to grow leeks from scratch. Am thinking we may be lucky to have leeks that are the width of a pencil by harvest time.
  • Trying other new things this year, such as horseradish, kale and arugula.
  • The garlic is prolific.  
  • Irrigation system up and running, straw mulch in place.
  • Cut worms have murdered two pepper plants.
  • Squash beetles are showing up already.

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No matter, it’s great to get out there with your friends or on your own.  We convene with Mother Nature and if we’re lucky, we’ll have carrots, organic carrots, from our own effort and they will average about $10 a two pound bag!  

How is your garden growing? And do you have any advice about combating squash beetles?

 

Late August Garden Ups and Downs aka Three Parsnips

by barbstruestories, posted in Gardening, Green (sometimes) thumb

We are working alongside Mother Nature for another growing season.  She’s been mostly tolerant with us although she continues to let us know who has the upper hand.  This past few years of active vegetable gardening has made me realize how much you need to know to grow a parsnip.  Or a cabbage.  Or a squash.  To grow anything really.

Here are some late August vegetable garden observations from the Ottawa valley.  It might be seen as wisdom but that would mean I had knowledge and while I/we learn more every year, it’s a drop in the bucket of garden smarts.  We have some particular ups and downs in our little plot.

1. Beans mature in 20 minutes.  When you pick beans from the row or from the pole structures, you move along and pick all that are ready.  When you turn around to walk back you see many more.  They weren’t there before.  Honestly.

Beans in camouflage
Beans in camouflage

2.Parsnips are not easy to grow. I blogged at one point about our efforts to grow parsnips last year.  The package says parsnips take a long time to germinate.  We knew that but found there were many “weeds” along the row and we pulled them up regularly.  We learned, too late, the weeds were parsnips and so we had no parsnips last year.  This year we tried again.  Now we recognize their little tops (and know they don’t look like carrot tops).  We sowed a row.  We waited.  Three parsnips came up.  We re-seeded.  None came up.  

While parsnips will be sweeter if you wait to harvest them after a frost, I decided we’d eat them when they were big and healthy.  By the time they got sweeter another creature might have decided they were tasty.  And we only had three.

The Entire Parsnip Harvest 2013
The Entire Parsnip Harvest 2013

3.A Day Can Make a Big Difference.  

Saturday:  I visited the garden last Saturday.  Mildew was showing up on the many squash plants, those ugly squash beetles that we had kept at bay were making a reappearance but overall the squash plants looked pretty good for this time of year.  The tomato plants were burdened with tomatoes.  So much so they were falling over.  Should we have staked them differently or perhaps removed blossoms to make it so there wasn’t so much fruit?  The leaves looked pretty healthy.

Sunday: When I arrived I wondered if this was the same garden.  Overnight it seemed the plants had receded from their fruit.  Squash plants looked shrivelled and beleaguered.  Leaves on the tomatoes had spots on them and a number had started to curl and die.  This process must have been under way the day before but it seemed to be such a big change.  Anyone got any suggestions/advice?  The fruit looks fine and there will be lots of both.

Garden Starting to Look Tired
Garden Starting to Look Tired

I spoke to our neighbour Kahlil and asked him about a couple of other things in our garden.  For example, our pepper plants are healthy but only now do we have a couple of blossoms on them.  It is way too late.  Kahlil said he has been gardening at his community plot for 32 years and his observation is that every year there are “two things that don’t work”.  It’s a mystery, he says.  One year green peppers are great and the next year the same variety of seeds will have disappointing results.

We won’t be at the garden for 32 years.  Perhaps Mother Nature is handing us more than two failures a year as she realizes our overall experience will be shorter than Kahlil’s and we need concentrated lessons.  On the other hand we have harvested beautiful cauliflower and broccoli, cabbages and carrots and we will have tomatoes and huge butternut squash.  It’s a pleasure to visit and work at the garden, ups and downs and all.

Carrots-Two Bucks A Bag-Day 18-A Poem A Day

by barbstruestories, posted in A Poem A Day, Green (sometimes) thumb

This is the third year in a row

My friend and I have taken to hoe

And rake and seeds, watering cans and such

Hoping our community garden would produce much

Each year we have measures of success and some not

As we bend and tend in that garden plot

There’s plenty of joy and a fair amount of toil

In hope of nutritious vegetables from the soil

We try to start many seeds indoors

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The little pots lined up on window sills and floors

If you accounted for your time, in planning, caring and more

You realize how little you pay at the store

It takes some spunk to not let your spirits sag

When your friends tease you about your garden saying “Carrots-two bucks a bag”

Are you a gardener?  Got any stories to share?

Three Truths of Community Gardening in Ottawa

by barbstruestories, posted in Community garden plots, Green (sometimes) thumb, Life's observations

Green (sometimes) Thumb-Year Two

A former colleague used an interesting phrase when trying to make a point and wanting to convince you of the veracity of his comment.  “There is a truth”, he would say and then he’d go on to tell you that “truth”.  I always thought it odd, that phrase, and a bit of a push to have you believe something or make it true by prefacing it with that phrase.  

Yesterday at the “farm” (community garden plot), in addition to several weeds, I unearthed the following three “truths”.

1. There is no such thing as making a “quick visit to the garden”  

If you are a gardener, do tell me if it’s possible to have a quick visit to your garden.  There’s no such thing in my experience.  Oh, I’ll just go quickly and see how the tomatoes are doing.  I’ll pinch them back and bit and then I’ll leave.  Well, the tomato pinching is one thing, then you see potato beetles and off you go down those rows, and hey what about those squash that need watering and well look at how the weeds are taking over in that corner.  And so the planned 20 minute visit ends 2.5 hours later.  It is a truth there is no such thing as making a quick visit to your garden-whether it be flower or vegetable.  

2. Gardeners are generous in spirit and advice

Gardeners are a friendly sort.  It’s not a competition and they give freely of their advice.  “Cover up your cabbages until they are stronger or the moths will eat them”.    They commiserate in your sorrow.  They say, “Yes,  those cucumber beetles are terrible and no I don’t know what to do to combat them.  It really is too bad after all the effort you’ve put in but it’s a bad year for them this year. ”  If they have too many plants, they will ask you if you want some for your garden.  Here, take these.  I thought they were romaine lettuce plants and turns out they are swiss chard and now I’m drowning in swiss chard.  Or, have some peas and some beans, they are very good and here’s how I cook the beans.    It is a truth gardeners are generous in spirit and full of advice.

3. Gardening in Ottawa is an opportunity or observe the interaction of many cultures and to joyfully watch the mingling and richness of the interaction.  

Ottawa, Ontario is a very multicultural city.  This city has the 5th largest immigrant population in Canada.  Our neighbours in the allotment garden are a shining example of Canada’s rich multicultural citizenry.  Here’s an example of interactions yesterday in our little corner of the garden:

  • Lebanon: Lebanese born neighbour (Lebanese-first language, English-second language) brings over some sort of beans.  He doesn’t know their English name but explains how to cook and serve them and hands over a goodly amount to this unilingual anglophone.  He grows Lebanese beans.
  • Burundi: Burundi born neighbour who speaks either Rundi or Swahili along with French and English.  He grows African corn. He is a neighbour to the man originally from Lebanon.    They don’t seem to understand much of what each are saying but they stand around and point at different plants.
  • Francophone: the man who does roto-tilling with his garden tractor speaks French as a first language, English as a second.  The Lebanese neighbour tries to explain some sort of request to the francophone who does not understand.  When he’s not understood the Lebanese man starts to speak louder, as if that would help.

Quite a thing to be part of and to observe.  Makes you happy to be Canadian…even if you aren’t much of a gardener compared to many of those around you.  

If we stay at it long enough perhaps we will be able to make short visits to the garden (because we are on top of everything), we will have bounty to give away to others.  We already are part of the culture, although learning some new languages like Lebanese and Burundi would be a nice touch.

Do you have any garden observations to share?  Or multicultural experiences?