Waiting List Update

The Sweet Willow Garden is full for 2010. We were able to bring on 2 new gardeners, and now have 20 people on the waiting list for next year (and beyond).

Almost time to garden!

Which means it's time to update the waiting list and for all returning gardeners to confirm their intentions. I've contacted everyone by e-mail at the address you've given. If you haven't heard from me and want to confirm your interest in gardening, please get in touch with me by April 15th.

Look how fast things have changed!

My plot on February 28th:



And again on March 26th:

Square foot gardening

Mel Bartholomew taught me everything I know about gardening.

I grew up in the suburbs. We had a big front yard that was all lawn. The back yard was mostly lawn, a couple of trees and a swing set. I remember my dad digging a bed for a vegetable garden one year, but although I may have dug in the dirt once or twice I have no memories of eating anything that may have grown there. After grade 5, my family moved to a townhouse with a postage stamp sized yard surrounded by a wooden fence. The fence threw so much shade that it was hard to keep grass alive. All this to say that I didn't learn to garden as a child.

I stumbled across Mel's "Square Foot Gardening" book in the spring that I started my plot at Sweet Willow. I liked the anal retentive attention to detail, like plotting out the space with string to make sure you don't overcrowd the plants. And what he said made sense - you can maximize the potential of a small space by close planting and also reduce the amount of pests and weeds. As an added bonus, close planting leads to better water retention in the soil, since the plants provide cover through the mid-summer heat.

I tried some crazy stuff the first year. I had all my vines - cucumber, squash, snap peas, growing up on netting (looked like a hockey net really...). It worked well for the peas, but the squash got picked off by the squirrels and the cucumber just didn't produce any fruit. I got a lot of comments on the look of the plot - with the strings and the net it looked like some odd science fair project. Sadly, there are no pictures... I was amazed at how big things grew. The cherry tomato plant was supposed to be a compact bush variety, but by the end of July it was as tall as me and took a full three square feet of space. Fortunately I'd planted it in a corner, and it just spilled over the edges instead of pushing out other plants.

I missed Seedy Saturday yesterday but I'm starting to plan my garden for this coming summer. Believe it or not the snow has completely melted from the plots, so I might be cheeky and start planting a first crop of lettuce in mid-April. I've been spending time on Greta's website - she's local and the descriptions & images are very tempting. I'll keep you posted as I decide what's growing this year.

One month closer or further away?

Funny how different the blue of the sky is in summer than in winter, eh? I'm eating crab apple jelly that reminds me of last fall - a perfect day with a long walk in the Arboretum sampling endless varieties of quasi-edible fruit. Some almost fermented and sweet, others bitter that I secretly thought were poisonous. The weather changing from warm to chilly and back. Sweater on, sweater off. All in Cinemascope colour.

Nice daydream. Back to the dead of winter.

Harvesting the beetles

Most of the gardeners at Sweet Willow live within close walking distance of the garden, so they can stop by often to see what's ripe. It's also convenient for keeping an eye on pests. Japanese beetles have been a problem for the last couple of years. They show up en masse in mid summer and start munching the leaves off of the bean plants - they'll take out a whole plant in a day! Since we garden organically, we've discovered that the best way to deal with these beetles is to hand pick them off of the plants in the cool early morning and drop them into a bucket of soapy water. In one day, we've harvested more than 100 beetles. After a few days, they seem to get the message and the stragglers move on. Here's a picture of the pesky critters, that I snapped on a wild rose bush next to the Corkstown Bridge. (I think it says something about my age that I have to correct the spelling of beetles every time I type it... beatles looks better).



Another huge problem is squirrels. The best tactic we've worked out is to cover the whole plot with netting in the spring and then carefully peel it off once the plants have grown sufficiently. They still get at the cherry tomatoes of course, and it's super annoying when they take bites out of the cucumbers. But I suppose we've got it easier than our suburban gardening friends who have to deal with all manners of creatures - raccoons, skunks, deer and rabbits for starters.

Micro gardening in a micro climate

Maybe it's why I like growing cherry tomatoes... tiny fruit in a tiny space. With the largest plot in the garden only 87 square feet, the Sweet Willow Garden's got nothing on the allotment gardens in Orleans or Kilborn. This is kitchen gardening for easy to hand tomatoes, herbs and salad greens. Not for us the rows of peppers, squash or strawberries, and forget about growing enough to preserve for the winter. Here's a map of the garden, just in case you don't believe me when I tell you how small the plots are.


The one special feature that gives this garden an extra edge is the extended growing season. There are two reasons for this. First, the planter boxes are only 18 inches deep, so there's less dirt to freeze over the winter. And since they're on the roof of a heated building, the thaw comes a lot sooner for us than for in-ground gardens. Second, the heating plant has a vent that blows warm air over the garden. Even if there's a snap freeze in late spring or fall, our plants tend to be safe from frost until the end of October or longer.

So we can plant a bit earlier and harvest longer. The lettuce tends to bolt in the front plots due to the excess heat, but the small plots at the back are great for a second crop. And chard, which is hardier and better for you, grows like a weed until the end of November!

The Where Of It

Trying to explain where to find the garden can be confusing. Where's the garden? On top of the heating plant. Where's the heating plant? Under the garden... and so on. So here's a google street view map from early last spring, before anything was planted.



The official address is 31 Rochester Street. It's between Primrose and Albert on the east side of the street. Most plots on the western side get some pretty good sunlight, but the small plots on the east side are shaded by buildings and trees. The front lawn is also fairly shady (blame the tree!!!!).

Here's a pic of my plot from mid-summer. What a difference, eh?



This block of Rochester is part of the Lebreton Flats. It's the southern edge of the area that was razed by the NCC in the 60's, and has some older buildings that were retained (like the buildings on either side of the garden) while others were torn down. In the late 70's, the NCC developed a plan for what was then called Phase 1 of the Lebreton Flats renewal.

A call went out asking for groups to develop small parcels of land. The offer was in large part taken up by co-ops and non-profit housing providers, who all built groups of rental townhomes or low rise multi-residential buildings for low and moderate income tenants/ co-op members. The community heating plant was built as a demonstration project by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Originally intended to provide heat and hot water to the whole area, it now heats 150 units from Tompkins Coop on Preston Street to CCOC's 5 storey apartment building at 170 Booth Street.

Dreaming of spring...

I'm whiling away the winter hours by working on gardening projects, such as this new-fangled blog. The intention is to provide a space to record the history of the garden, to help answer questions and show pretty pictures, and to distract me from the mounds of snow and minus 30 windchill.

Thinking about the garlic buds tucked in underground that I planted from this fall's crop helps too.