A short time ago I received an email rom the Food Policy Team at the City of Vancouver, and as the deadline is looming I wanted to make sure you all knew about this possibility for..get ready for it…you to have your own garden plot!

An initiative tied to the Olympics, frown if you must, but only good things can come out of the establishment of 2,010 new garden plots, right? C’mon now! I’m all over this because this year some fellow tenants in my building got together and started our own community/building garden plot, and I’ve been growing my own food since April ‘09 and lovin’ every minute of it.

© 2009 jackie connelly

Here are the details:

“2010 Garden Plots by 2010 is a challenge to encourage the creation of 2,010 new garden plots in Vancouver by January 1, 2010, as an Olympic legacy. The challenge was issued to individuals, families, community groups and neighbourhood organizations in 2006 to help establish more food-producing gardens in the city.”

The email continued on to say that several potential sites for new food producing community gardens have been identified and the City of Vancouver is currently seeking applications from community groups to manage them. If you or your organization is interested in being part of the 2010 challenge by helping to create a new community garden in Vancouver, submit an application to communitygardens@vancouver.ca by October 31, 2009.

So how do you apply?

Applications can be submitted for one or more of these potential garden sites. Please note that successful applicants must be one of the following:

A registered non-profit organization, co-operative or strata council; or,

Sponsored by an existing registered non-profit organization, co-operative or strata council

Questions about the RFP can be directed to Erin MacDonald at communitygardens@vancouver.ca

To download the Request for Applications, please visit www.vancouver.ca/gardens.

© 2009 jackie connelly

I literally swore when I was out in my garden yesterday. Loudly.

Every two or three days I poke around my zucchini plants to make sure the leaves are handling things ok. You see, a couple of weeks ago my zucchini plants hit some sort of insane growth spurt and what seemed liked overnight, began to grow outwards and over top of my cucumbers, leeks, lettuce and carrots. Not good. I researched some vertical gardening techniques, bought myself some bamboo stalks, and voila. Problem solved.

But what made me curse out loud was this huge, ginormous green vegetable underneath all those tied up zucchini leaves. My first zucchini! The last time I saw zucchini’s under there, they were maybe 6″ long. This thing is over a foot! I had better start finding some recipes that call for zucchini. Anyone want one? Hey, maybe I’ll do a ‘Free Zucchini Giveaway’.

There also seem to be a lot of little critters in my garden. Some I know are good, like the woodbugs and the worms and the bees, but then there’s some others that I’m not so sure about. As I’ve chosen to purchase organic soil and not use any pesticides or chemicals in my garden to grow vegetables that are as organic as possible, apparently all I can do is pluck these critters out.

What’s on the docket for the garden for the rest of July? This!

It took roughly 4 weeks to grow.

It was gone in roughly seven minutes.

I feel like I was meant to do this, and I can’t imagine my life without it.

My first harvest from my first garden: lettuce!

I’ve been writing about the development of my first vegetable garden, and I have found it impossible to keep up. Things have been growing back there at an alarming rate, and I feel like I am merely a bystander. I have completely avoided any chemicals, fertilizers, and other nasty things in both the soil and the growing process which I’m very happy about. I feel good that when we harvest, the food we’ll be putting into our bodies isn’t contaminated by anything.

But that brings me to the point of this post…I had my first harvest! It was just lettuce, not terribly exciting in the world of vegetables, but totally exciting in the world of growing my own food. And I decided to make wraps. Again, not terribly exciting in the world of food, but I was hungry and needed to finish off some goat cheese that was in the fridge.

Up next: zucchinis are doubling in size in what seems like a daily basis, carrots are sprouting, and sunflowers have been planted. Considering growing potatoes in a bucket.

In my continued attempt to grow my own food I’m a few weeks in and things are moving right along.  My roma and beefsteak tomatoes are still inside, soaking up the sun on a high windowsill; I’m unsure if it’s warm enough to move them outside just yet. However others have not held back; maybe I’m being too cautious?

my neighbours tomato plants in cages.

flowers and herbs and veggies...oh my.

(more…)

Thanks to 4 willing participants, 1 very large delivery truck, and 9 cubic yards of soil (thanks to Johannas from Yardworks), Dirt Day finally arrived! (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go here first, and then here and then here).

Last Friday…let me qualify that and try again….At 7am last Friday an extremely large dump truck arrived at our building filled with a ridiculous amount of Rainforest soil (75% organic compost, 25% sand and a dash of peat for good measure). Within seconds it was dumped in a pile larger than an averaged size car, and we shoveled it. Shoveled it into our 6 garden beds, for the next 5 hours.

7.10am - let the shoveling begin!

7.40am - the first few loads hit the beds.

8.25am - Norman the Schnoodle, helping. Ok not really, more like trying to stay out of the way.

Since we were dealing with serious blackberry roots in this whole garden area, a few people decided to lay down cardboard as a barrier (below), apparently this should kill the remaining roots, and is more eco friendly than laying down thick, black plastic which was also recommended to us.

cardboad first, then soil.

almost 10am - doesn't look like much progress, but we started at the far beds. 2 full, 4 to go!

A few others tried out a thick layer of newspaper; specifically The Georgia Straights from the previous week.

With a break for lunch, we were finished shortly after 1pm, and yes, I had a nap that afternoon. I was beat. But the upcoming week is when the real fun begins, and I can’t wait. Stay tuned!

Our small but dedicated crew came together Saturday and Sunday for what I’m calling Demo Weekend. Priority numero uno: get rid of everything we don’t want in our garden. And look at what we got done; take that blackberry bushes, and your stubborn roots too!

Compare this to what it looked like last week (photo taken from the other end of the garden) I think we did a pretty damn good job for a bunch of rookies.

Two of our group will be picking up the lumber for the beds before Friday, and then Friday & Saturday we’ll be building our raised beds as per this plan (how can you tell it was drawn by the architect in our collective?):

To do this week: hunt down some weed-free, preferably organic soil and/or compost. Anyone have any suggestions where we can find this?

I feel like a student on the first day of class, except not in the least bit intimidated and totally committed. I’m a sponge for anything gardening 101 . You got info? Tell me about it, I want to know! Here are some more snippets of what I’ve soaked up from other knowledgeable people so far on this glorious topic:

• Keeping records is a must if you want to have hard evidence of what worked and what didn’t. Got my notebook, check.

•Every garden is a unique eco-system, so learn what has worked for others in their gardens, but be prepared for your own individual results.

• Our raised bed depth must be at least 12″; 16″-18″ for high root biomass vegetables like tomatoes. Love tomatoes, 18″ it is.

•Blackberries are an “invasive species” and will be the bain of my gardening existence. Lovely. Plan of attack: rip out the roots by hand, lay down black plastic or heavy netting, build raised beds, cross fingers. Oh, and be prepared to rip a few stubborn roots who make it through the plastic/netting.

•Clover is a favorite for planting tightly around plants once they’ve sprouted for support, to keep moisture in the soil, and build nutrients throughout the garden. And this will equate to less watering and weeding which I like the sound of. Apparently seaweed and leaves are fabulous for this job too.

•Crop rotation gardening is one great way to not only build great soil and conserve soil nutrients but also get variety out of a garden and year round harvesting. The key here though is to alternate high root biomass planting (ie broccoli, cabbage, carrots, peas and tomatoes) with those of low-root biomass (clover, beans, onions, corn, cucmber and pumpkin).

•Vertical gardening rocks my world; trellis’s, re-bar, mesh netting for vegetables to grow upwards. Doing it, doing it, doing it.

This weekend is rip out the blackberry bush roots - in full force! Wish us luck!!

• Do you know that the UBC Farm is the only operating farm in the city of Vancouver? And that it holds numerous programs educating children, students and adults to learn about growing food, farming and agriculture, physical and holistic health and more?

• Do you know that the UBC Farm supplies organic food to Pair Bistro, Nu Restaurant, Sage Bistro, Cru Restaurant, UBC Food Services, Provence Restaurant and more?

• Do you know that this farm land is currently under threat?

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I am a supporter of local farmers, farmers markets, and growing our own food (and now in my own gardening efforts). If you’re new to my blog, well now you know this bit about me too. I studied art at UBC for 5 years and while I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts which I am proud of, the severe growth of ‘University Town’ did not sit so well with myself and a lot of others. Now, the University wants to continue their construction on the UBC Farm land and the Farm needs your help and support to impress the importance of everything that the University will be destroying if they move ahead with this construction.

How you can show your support: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 from 3:30 pm into the early evening to attend the Great Farm Trek 2009! Join thousands as they trek from the UBC Student Union Building (SUB) via the Board of Governors meeting and then on to the UBC Farm. If you can’t make it until after work, they will be shuttling late-comers by bus from parking areas near UBC Farm directly to the Trek crowd anytime between 3pm and 6pm. After 6pm, the crowds will be located at the UBC Farm for festivities. This is a celebratory, family-friendly event…bring snacks, water and weather-appropriate clothing…the event will happen rain or shine! At the UBC farm there will be live music, food, addresses from David Suzuki and others, and a ceremonial planting.

For more info and questions: email friendsoftheubcfarm@gmail.com

For directions, Trek route, and parking instructions please see: www.amsubc.ca

If you’ve just scanned the info above and aren’t sure about how the UBC Farm impacts our city, grab a coffee and take a break to watch these two videos, they say it all.

Officially first day of Spring occurred this weekend, and I thought this would be a good time to start the photo-documenting process of our vegetable garden!

This is what the space looks like now from my loft window. The roughly 25′x100′ plot of land is behind our building, as you can see it’s fenced in on two of the other three sides. Our immediate issues as we rookie gardeners see them are:

• • Roots of blackberry bushes: we now know that ripping as much of the root out as we can then covering the ground in black plastic works well, but isn’t very environmentally friendly. We’re currently looking into a more earth friendly option; someone suggested a gardeners black fabric material, that when doubled or tripled over underneath the garden beds might work. Key word at this point is ‘might’. Will most likely need to rent a rototiller, and we have boys who are looking forward to this part which is good.
• • Soil: where do we get organic weed-free soil?! Currently researching how to garden without using pesticides, chemicals, and other hazardous stuff.
• • Sunlight: this photo was taken on the second day of Spring at 4pm, so you can see by this point there’s not much sunlight getting back there. We figure come Summer time the plots on the east end (top of the photo) will get the best and most light, while the plots on the west end might not do as well. There is potential for eventually constructing some sort of small shed at this west end to keep gardening tools, a hose, etc.
• • Uneven ground: you can see the one side of the plot is quite a bit higher than the other side, so we need to decide where exactly to build the beds and how to deal with this raised area. Right now we’re thinking building the beds right up against the wall of the building so light & heat will reflect back on to the plants would be our best bet.

There seem to be some great resources out there for new gardeners, especially in the Mt.Pleasant/Main Street neighborhood we’re in:

• • West Coast Seeds is an online and Delta-based garden center specializing in heirloom, heritage and certified organic seeds for your organic growing, and we stock over 500 varieties of Untreated no GMO, open pollinated and hybrid seeds. They also have a monthly garden calendar for up to date garden advice which I have found particularly handy, and a garden resource page with such things as a planting chart and a gardening glossary.
• • City Farmer is a great resource and news site, I think the news site is their more recent page.
• • The UBC Botanical Garden and Center for Plant Research has a great and extensive forum page on their website with lots of info on workshops, organic gardening and garden design.
• • Salt Spring Seeds have a page of great links surrounding organic gardening in Canada.
• • Do you know of a resource that could help us and other start/continue their own personal or community garden? Please leave the details in the comments section!

And The White House is doing it, so the more the merrier!

We hope to get started on this very soon, and I will be back with more photos and progress shortly.

Cheers,

Jackie

The building I live in is awesome in so many ways. To start, Artech is where I live and work, so commuting is a non-issue (yay!) except of course when I have to shoot on-location, but that happens just enough to mix things up a bit. Then, our building has amazing recycling facilities downstairs which was a major plus coming from the old-school apartment we were living in last year. And now, on the heels of Mayor Robertson’s new garden, we’re building one of our own! There is this long and somewhat narrow plot of unwanted city land behind our building, right up against the concrete wall of the building actually, that a bunch of us in the building have decided to figure out how to make this work for growing our own food, and I am totally pumped about it! Divided up into individual plots, possibly as big as 10×10, in the coming weeks we’re going to research, build, plant and grow.

A huge thank you to Megan for taking the reins in getting this going, and I’m sure we’ll all have to put in alot of blood, sweat and tears (are there blood, sweat and tears in gardening?) for it to be successful but I know we can do it! I promise to photo-document the entire process, from the ridding of the blackberry bushes that currently reside there (apparently a rototiller will be needed), to the first sprout of a bean or a squash or a strawberry, to the first home grown meal we’ll have this summer. And everything we learn about gardening along the way I will of course share. First up on the list: this March snow needs to stop.