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Harvesting Community Garden Roots

This week we thawed out from that crazy November snowfall and I jumped at the window of opportunity to dig up the rest of the root veggies from the community garden plot.   It was a very beautiful day at the garden.  Even though the plots are a mess I found it quite romantic with the setting sun beaming through the skeletons of  our summer gardens and sky-high pampas grass.

It felt great to get out and dig in the soil, and harvesting is always fun.  While I was disappointed to only have a few pounds of potatoes, I did get a bunch more Gladiator parsnips and a ton of various beets that I didn’t expect.  I roasted up this bunch of roots for a family dinner tonight.

Now that the community plot is officially put to bed for the winter I wonder weather I want to keep up the space again next year.  I have enough room to grow a small variety of veggies at home and while I love gardening with the community members, it has lately been feeling more like a chore.  Much of the food at the gardens gets stolen, many say because of the part of town we are in (notorious for homelessness and drugs) but sadly, the folks that I’ve seen steal are (gasp) other gardeners or visitors in suits who drive Hondas and show off their knowledge of growing food by cutting off all my garlic scapes or plucking a pumpkin.  Mostly the thieves are foodies with a sense of entitlement and little concern for community.  So that sucks.

Then there’s the growing conditions.  The soil is poor and disease is rampant.  Without daily weeding the plots are soon overrun with buttercup, horsetail, bindweed and in some cases the dangerous giant hogweed.  This year I just wanted to grow squash.  I ended up planting 10 types of squash and got about 12-15 orange spaghetti squash and downy mildrew killed the rest.  I did also plant strawberries, potatoes, artichokes, tomatoes, beans, celeriac, beets, parsnips, peas, fennel, carrots, garlic, leeks, and kale, so I strayed from my focus and got a little of everything (except the celeriac which was a big failure).  It’s fun to bring home fresh veggies and I haven’t really shopped for any in the grocery for the last 5-6 months.  The number and variety of what is left after theft and disease is just a taste.  Despite a valiant effort–I added manure to the soil, a bacterial / fungal mix that we bought at the farmers market and compost compost compost–the soil still lacked nutrition.  This combined with the fact that disease is so quickly spread in a community garden space that I fought rust, mildew and blight daily.  I certainly appreciate the fresh food I brought home, yet this alone is not worth the effort when I can buy the like at the farmers market each week.

Even if I never brought home a veggie I would still be a member because I joined the garden in the first place for the community.  I wanted to learn from others, connect and share.  In my mind perhaps I had the idea of a communal gardening group of people laughing and sharing huge baskets of fresh produce, while tending their lush green plots and beautifying the neighbourhood.  The reality is that you see most of the members only at the monthly work parties.  For most of the year I went to the work parties religiously.  A few of the other members have the same commitment, a few.  It’s great to see some of them, sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a community.  There is rallying around the condom/needle clean up and stopping the crazy dude from pouring rat poison on our plants, but it’s not quite what I had imagined.  I’ve made a few friends at the garden though, so that’s something.

Now, as another year comes to a close I’ll reflect on whether or not it’s worth the effort or if perhaps there is another group or space that would be a better fit for me.  For all the reasons above I almost gave up my membership last year, but something kept me there.  The promise of something new, perhaps.  Maybe this year some new people with join and keep me company at the work parties.  Or perhaps I’ll get to run a seed starting project with the new greenhouse or learn something new.  Who knows?  But if I’ve learned just one thing about being a member of a community garden, it’s that it is about a whole lot more than just growing food.

December 06 2010 | Gardening and Growing Food and Harvest and Vancouver | 13 Comments »

Take That, Carrot Rust Fly!

When I went to de-blight the tomatoes at the community garden plot this morning, I noticed a carrot top & greens of what was most likely one of my prized multicoloured carrots (pulled and eaten by a yet another vegetable thief) which made me think, “Hey, my carrots are ready!”  While the greens sure didn’t look like much, I decided to pull them anyway and to my delight, beautiful red, purple, white, and orange carrot with no sign of carrot rust fly damage.   Booya!

Back in April I pulled up my winter carrots and sadly, I lost the battle to that wily carrot rust fly.  This year I planted a summer crop, planted each seed individually spaced (painstakingly), mixed lots of sand in the soil and watered well.  Oh, and the most important thing: full sun.  My home garden is so crowded and lush that there just isn’t the sun there is at my new garden plot.  This, I’ve noticed, had made all the difference in the world to my vegetable gardening.  6-8 hours of direct sun just isn’t enough.

So here they are, some lovely purple carrot sticks, without a rusty track to be seen.  Take that, carrot rust fly. 

Me: 1 ; Carrot Rust Fly: 1

August 14 2010 | Community Garden and Growing Food and Harvest | 12 Comments »

Strathcona and Cottonwood Community Gardens: Open House and Epic Plant Sale

July 09 2010 | Gardening and Vancouver | 8 Comments »

Community Potatoes

One of the reasons I got into gardening, was because of the community. Gardeners share gardening tips and plants and harvests, they create beauty in their front yards for the enjoyment of passersby, and they may even sneak onto your property and share in the labour.  One day, I asked a man at the Community Garden how he was growing his potatoes.  He shared with me his 200-year old technique as passed down by his Irish grandmother.  He told me to dig a deep trench (about 2 ft deep) and put sprouted seed potatoes in there, sprouts up, then cover the potatoes with a little dirt just so that they had just a light blanket of soil, spouts showing through. 

So, I went to my plot (which was about 100 meters from his) and dug my trench.  He came over to inspect my work and pleased with my trench, he took my seed potatoes from me and poured them out on the garden edge.  He took his 60-year-old gardening knife he started hacking at them (hey, wait a minute!): he cut some of the seed potatoes in half (Aaa!  My potatoes!), and then made deep gouges into the other ones (this isn’t what it said on the package!).  Yet despite my alarms I gave into his help and guidance and made an effort to trust this man, his 200-year old method, and his grandmother.  I planted these scarred and bleeding potatoes in my newly dug trench, tucked them in for the night with some soil, and put some sticks on them to prevent the birds from snacking.  Every few days or so, I was to come back and mound the soil up over the first few leaves of the plant.  My new friend said he would “bring me some sand from his beach” to improve my soil and he picked off any large sticks or bark in my soil and swore at them.  He then brought me a handful of worms and said, “My grandmother always told me that if you give someone worms for their potatoes, they will have a bountiful crop.”  I was so very touched as I accepted the worms and set them free into my new potato trench.

A week later, my potatoes had grown a little so I added a bit more soil and some sand I had collected from the beach.  Another week when I went to top up the soil again, I found leaf mould around the edges of the bed.  And another week there were chunks of burned wood scattered around the plants.  Now, a month or so later, my trench has turned into a hill with huge healthy potato plants above and I suppose about 500lbs of potatoes growing below.  I have not seen this man since he taught me to plant potatoes, but he has been at my garden plot watering my potatoes, mounding the soil, and adding his own special brand of magic.  It is this sense of community that I love about gardening: that a man I’ve only met once parents me and my plants while teaching me so much more than just how to grow potatoes.

August 17 2009 | Community Garden and Growing Food | 2 Comments »