More Reasons Why I Don’t Grow Edibles in My Street Garden

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

The snow has melted and it is time to take stock of what has accumulated in the street garden since the fall. In my neighborhood, gentrification is running rampant like a pack of drunken college kids and has brought with it bigger troubles than my little garden has seen in its decade-long existence.

I’ve decided to begin this one where I left off with the last post on this topic in April 2007. And then there was a 13th. I’ll wait for you to refresh your memory and then we’ll reconvene here and go through the newest additions together.

14. Years of accumulated alcohol-laden urine from bar-hopping dudes soaked into the soil: Thousands of liters and counting, since the number of bars and young dudes driving in from Ajax and Whitby hoping to get their “cool on” is sky-rocketing exponentially. Apparently, my garden is the number one outdoor public bathroom around. My question is: Do I get a shiny Public Service ribbon as a prize?

Forget “Gardening for the People.” Perhaps I should change my slogan to, “Beautiful Outdoor Bathrooms for the People.”

Photo by Davin Risk All Rights Reserved

15. Now With Even More Butts: Because our new neighbors like to smoke their darts out the window and the garden is like a magical disappearing ashtray. Poof! The butts just go away! None of that annoying having to dump them in the garbage or see them accumulate all wet and nasty in the backwash at the bottom of a beer bottle.

I can make funny, sarcastic remarks about this, but in all honesty, my blood boils whenever I think about just how many butts are out there. I will inevitably waste an hour of my life because these people are too steeped in denial to take responsibility for their own mess. It sometimes surprises me just how dense adults can be. An apt metaphor for our overall disregard for this planet, I suppose.

Needless to say, I am waiting for a calm moment to knock on their door and discuss it with them. Going over there raging probably isn’t going to do much good. The only problem being that my rage isn’t subsiding. Perhaps I should send them a bill for both the cleanup and the therapy required to work through my anger around their butts?

Living in the world with other people isn’t always easy.

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

16. Cigarettes + White Dog Poo: I know both of these have already been covered, but I can only imagine that while they are both nasty separately, together they fuse into a toxic brew with which nothing can compete.

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

17. Spinach?: First there’s the brand name, “Topless.” Topless? Sounds like someone needs to put a paper bag over that spinach to protect the eyes of the innocent. Then there was that whole poop in the spinach/ecoli fiasco in 2006 that put everyone off the vitamin-rich vegetable for at least a few months. Can a bundle of spinach of unknown origin left in my garden be considered toxic waste? And last but not least, huh? I can only imagine that this is more of that bewildering “Back to the Source” logic at work. I am building evidence to support this theory. Expect my thesis in 2011.

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Taking all of this into account, I don’t think I can face the cleanup alone this year. My heart rate goes up to dangerous levels by just looking at the disaster that has been enacted upon the garden. I am going to set aside my general inability to ask for help… and ask for help. If you have an hour to spare this Saturday afternoon, and have not been frightened off by the content of these posts, I would gratefully appreciate your help in cleaning this mess up. Beverages will be provided; however, you will need to bring your own Hasmat suit.

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Seed Organizing

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Miracle of miracles! Not only have I managed to begin my seed purchasing and acquiring process on time this year but I also spent a few hours the other night organizing them all. Ironic that the year I manage this feat is in a crazy busy one when I also happen to be unsure about where I will be gardening.

I like to do things ass backwards. That is my way.

I thought I’d give you a peep inside my “highly efficient” Seed Organization System. Mine is a three part system, although technically my fridge’s butter bin acts as a forth part for seeds that require some time in the cold (aka “cold stratification”). And there is also a soon to be gone recycled coffee bean bag that contains all of the extras that I have packaged up for trading and give-aways at this year’s Seedy Saturday Toronto event (Saturday, Feb 28). Over the years I’ve considered fancy binder systems or making a proper bin, but this works for me.

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

Part 1: The Square Basket – This is where I keep most of my direct sown seeds including lettuce greens, carrots, beans, peas, beets, radish, some herbs, and edible flowers. Also included are tags, permanent markers, empty envelopes for seed collecting and sharing, scotch tape for resealing opened packets, and a small plastic dibbler aka dibber aka dibble for quick sowing. I keep this basket in the hallway next to the door to the roof so it is always on hand when I need to pop a radish seed into an empty spot or replace gummy old lettuce.

Part 2: The Tool Box – I store my early season vegetable seeds in this old, kid’s tin tool box. You’ll find tomato, eggplant, squash, melons, and pepper seeds inside to name a few. It is kept on my garden book shelf just behind my work desk for easy access to indoor sowing or when I need to remember the exact spelling of a particular variety. When I am organized the packets are arranged by plant type and held together with elastic bands. FANCY!

Part 3: Yee Olde Gigantic Jar – This jar contains the plants I don’t go-to as often; less popular flowers, grasses, strange fruit I have purchased or collected (i.e. coffee beans, prickly pear, tamarind), and assorted oddities many of which are past due. I’ve got a little sachet of dried milk in the jar to keep the seeds from going moldy since air flow inside the jar is minimal and I don’t have occasion to check it very often.

How do you keep your seeds in order?

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Related:

Tons more seed starting resources

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Gayla’s Garden: A Short Film

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Local filmmaker Stacey Dodge visited my rooftop garden in the spring to shoot a short for the Toronto Urban Film Festival. Fast forward several months and her film (edited by Beau Dickson) was selected and will be showing this Sunday, September 8 on monitors in the Toronto Subway System. The short will be in rotation throughout the day so don’t forget to look up if you happen to ride the subway this weekend!

See the film online here.

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Mystery Tree in the Garden

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

I found an entire tree laying flat across the street garden this morning. Just, you know, laying there. How it got there or why is beyond me.

Okay. Here’s the thing: The garden’s a mess. I have barely touched it since the last big incident. I just haven’t had it in me. Call in the garden police. Seriously, the way I have been neglecting that garden makes me feel like a total fraud. And yet whether I garden or don’t garden the weirdness continues. All sorts of interesting Happenings have occurred since the last incident. Things I haven’t bother to write about here because that would mean crawling out of the nice soft and fuzzy blanket of denial I’ve been slowly sinking into as a way to put all of this nonsense out of my mind.

Garden? What garden? I walk by the remains of each new occurrence shaking my head in disbelief and then turn away to look in the other direction and pretend the whole thing isn’t even there. I did deal with the used potting soil someone threw on top of the plants. The plume poppies that were trampled down to make a path to the back wall. And the dead squirrel someone tossed from off the road. At least I did that much.

Sometimes I think about the garden late at night while laying in bed waiting to fall asleep. I make plans to pull out the weeds, rebuild the broken fence, and throw out the slowly accumulating collection of big beer cans and giant Freezie wrappers. But then I wake up in the morning and focus my attention on the roof garden, my sanctuary in the sky that only the raccoons and squirrels can have their way with. They drive me nuts but at least their behaviour follows some kind of logic.

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

But this on the other hand is just ridiculous. Is this some kind of joke? Performance art? We looked up and down the street a block but couldn’t see a single ripped out sidewalk tree. Which means someone actually dragged this one from a fair distance and then heaved it onto the iris bed. When I try to imagine the rational behind this act the only thing that comes to mind is, “Back to the source.”

It’s as if the person thought, “Man, I sure am getting tired of hauling this small tree down the street. I wonder where I can ditch it? How about with this other plant matter?”

I suppose it only stands to reason. Like belongs with like. Or something like that.

I think it’s about time the street garden had it’s own internet website. That and a web cam. And then once it’s making some money it can pay for all the wasted therapy sessions I’ve had to put towards working out its issues.

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Roof Garden, Slightly Less Chaos

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

Click the image to see full-size.

This is a panoramic of the roof garden taken just this week. There are a lot more plants out there then I was able to get into a composite. Unfortunately with the gazebo top on I could not shoot the photos from above, perched high up on a ladder like I did for the before image. As far as Project The Best and Most Ass Kicking the Roof Garden Has Ever Been, EVER 2008 is concerned I think things are well underway. One of my challenges for this year was to Eliminate All Messes. I’m not quite there yet but I have managed to reign it in by strategically placed furniture that acts as holding pens for the junk. I only just managed to get most of the transplant chaos alleviated so more attention to aesthetics will be coming up shortly.

I recently did an interview with REV Magazine that is now up on their site. I love what they wrote in the introduction about how I complain about the weather. Because I do, don’t I? Quite a lot actually. But I want you to know that I withheld this week and didn’t tell you about THE HAIL. In an act of progress that shows that I am rolling with the punches and conceding to less need for control I did not bring up the tiny balls of ice that plummeted to the ground threatening my basil in the last days of the month of June! And then the next day was hot and sweaty — a proper summer.

Okay, to confess I did complain about it in the forums.

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