Buying The Farm

I’m into the exciting phase of my first garden: Seeds are starting (or, in the case of the edamame, ready for high school already!) and the weather’s been beautiful. We’re getting closer to the actual planting!

The bag gardening method I’m adopting, while faddish, hasn’t developed as deep a literature for things like plant spacing. My research has involved a lot of bouncing between sites. Luckily, though, one result was this website.

The concept is to plant at least one container of vegetables, and they’ve very helpfully prepared short, illustrated cheat sheets for some commonly-grown plants. Not everything is on here, but for amateurs like myself, it’s an excellent primer.

http://www.onepotpledge.org/getgrowing.html

I’ve put aside readings and musings for doings of late: The weather has turned, so a-gardening I will go. The one huge benefit of living in an enclosed condo is the heat that builds up over the course of the day. Warm soil is what gives seeds a kick-start, and mine have demonstrated just how hot it can get in here: From planting to sprouts in 3 days!

I’m limited in space, so have restricted myself this year to planting things I think will bear fruit (in both the literal and figurative senses). I had great success last year with tomatoes – particularly the small varieties – so have started Sungolds, Matt’s Wilds, Dr. Carolyns, and Tiny Tims. Tomatillo seeds, scavenged from a single small fruit bought at the local market, are proving quite as robust as the tomatoes were, but if they’re anything like the ground cherries they so much resemble, I may have a repeat of last year’s bushy-but-barren plant upon which I lavished so much unrequited attention. My Serrano peppers have sprouted well, but it remains to be seen if I can get any to fruit – last year was similarly unsuccessful.

I’m growing chard and beetroot as greens (I don’t know if it was the heat or the confining pots, but all my previous attempts at beets and radishes have produced awful-tasting roots) and am crossing my fingers that I can get the mâche I love so much to grow continuously, rather than have it peter out quickly as it did last year.

Mustard greens, in the form of mizuna and a mix of yellow and brown mustards should grow fine, and even if they don’t I have a secret weapon for cheap sprouts. Digging through my seed packets, I found one from my first growing season from a local, expensive nursery that charged me $1.50 for a pittance of brown mustard seeds. Last year, for 27¢, I got ten times as many seeds from the bulk food store, and they proved just as viable as the foil-sealed packet!

My biggest experiment this year will be the Sugar Snap peas, already nearly six inches high and probing for a trellis. I’ve planted them in self-watering containers, so hopefully they’ll get as much water as they want, and have thrown some jute string around the curtain rod. If I can get even one edible pod off them, it’ll be worth the strange looks passersby are sure to give a 17th floor window filled with foliage.

One of the few things I will sorely miss when I finally leave Toronto is the marvellous Toronto Public Library. The holdings are huge, and items can be ordered online and delivered to local branches for free. Its a rare thing when the catalogue lets me down, but I went into my search for Superbia! with little hope of its availability. Imagine my surprise to have a copy delivered to me within a few days. And imagine my joy to find the book was even more inspiring than I’d anticipated.

Be careful with this book: Its enthusiasm is contagious! The authors approach a topic that is the bane of eco-warriors with a pragmatism that is sadly lacking in much of the environmental movement: While new development can be done with an eye to green building, existing suburbs are entrenched, so we might as well work with what we’ve got.

And what work can be done if we put our minds to it! The authors lay out a series of steps undertaken by a fictional neighbourhood that start with small efforts and eventually lead to an actual community. The fictional aspect does gloss over some of the real-life problems (e.g. legalities, problem neighbours, and plain old human stubbornness) that would probably add friction to a path mainly depicted here as self-lubricating, but there’s no denying it helps build excitement in the reader, and show that even small steps can lead to big strides.

The idea of community-building is intoxicating to a pragmatist such as myself. Being able to pool resources such as cars, lawnmowers, toys and tools opens up space both in one’s home and one’s wallet. Being able to pool talent opens up possibilities and creativity in one’s neighbourhood. The Utopian community depicted in the book features a fenceless backyards transformed into gardens, a shared house where rooms are let out as home offices and weekly potlucks keep the residents close, and a labour exchange so an hour of babysitting can be traded for some renovation work, web design, or whatever other goods and services can be offered.

North American suburbs have a reputation – not unfounded – for being airless, unfriendly and sterile, but the colourful, vivacious and open community depicted in the book makes me feel right at home.