Garden

August 22, 2007

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The Continuing Epic Saga of the Street Garden

Yesterday afternoon, while working on the garden, a woman stopped to chat and mentioned that she had seen my sad and pathetic sign (my words, not hers) and knew who had destroyed the day lilies. It was the dudes who change the advertising on the large billboard that hangs on the wall over the garden! She said that she watched in horror as they intentionally trampled all over the plants — something they did not have to do since there was plenty of room and their equipment wasn’t in the garden and made it possible for them to avoid the garden completely. Never mind the fact that the garden has been sharing space with that billboard for years with minor consequences beyond the annoying lights, the pigeon poop that falls from the nests housed in the billboard structure, and the stray pieces of advertising that falls into the plants. That and the fact that we have to look at ugly advertising splashed onto the side of our building everyday.

As a city-dweller I have become very good at seeing without seeing. So good in fact that I can not provide even a hint as to the content of the current ad and the only ad I can recall in all the years the billboard has been up was for a film with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. Something with Al Pacino as the devil.

Anyway, I stood there speechless, listening to the details unfold and thinking that there is some kind of irony in this somewhere given that I had been working on finally trying to fix that patch when she happened by, and feeling sore that I have had to suffer both a financial and personal time loss while my landlord reaps the benefits of that damned billboard AND my hard work. Gah! At the very least I now know to whom I can call and send my complaints.

Still no idea who went after the thistles but I have since replaced that patch with a native switch grass, Panicum virgatum. As previously mentioned, I am intensely nostalgic and possibly a little nuts in the ways that I anthropomorphize plants. This is only made worse by the fact that each plant comes with a story and a history. Like the daylilies that were gifted to me by a friend. Or the yarrow that was given to me by a stranger who happened to be driving by with a clump of yarrow in the backseat of her car. In many cases I can recall where and when I received or purchased the plant. These feelings of attachment and compassion for the life of each plant is so strong at times that it is very difficult for me to remove and discard plants, even when I know it is beneficial to the garden. I’ve also got a stubborn streak that thinks I can shove one more plant in somewhere or bring that diseased plant back past the point of no return. My style is very Do As I Say, Not As I Do and I often struggle with the very actions I know to be right and advise other people to carry out. The only positive I can glean from the Operation Garden Terrorism experience is that it has prematurely forced me to carry out my long term plan to replace some of the more invasive gift plants with natives. But just because I can find a positive doesn’t mean I’ll be thanking the ad hanging dudes or the thistle stomping stranger anytime soon.

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August 13, 2007

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Easily Amused

The bottoms of all of the ‘Purple Calabash’ tomatoes are so bumpy and misshapen that they are morphing into cartoonish grumpy old man faces as they ripen and mature. Today a friend remarked that we are so programmed to accept perfectly smooth-shaped produce that people often refer to lumpy heirloom tomato varieties as “ugly.” We both agreed that it is their irregularity that makes them so beautiful much in the way that I can study the portrait of a grumpy old man’s face for hours because there is so much to see in every crease, bump, and scar.

Maybe tomatoes are not the best produce to illustrate my point because when push comes to shove I like most tomatoes, smooth, bumpy, pink, purple, or otherwise. I suppose it’s just that within a sea of uniformity unusual shapes and colors are fascinating. They taste better too! And maybe I grew up with enough of a certain kind of pop culture influencing my sense of taste that I just can’t resist the charm of anthropomorphic produce.

Today I traded some garlic and tomatoes from my garden for two tomatoes: a ‘Paul Robeson’ and an ‘Aunt Ginny’s.’ Another round of tomato testing is in order.

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August 10, 2007

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Poised to Be the Best Tomato Harvest Yet

Aside from several handfuls of ‘Whippersnapper’ tomatoes that started ripening over a month ago there have been tomatoes here and there but not in the numbers we’re starting to see on the roof and over at the community garden plot. Despite a tray-full like this I am still eying clusters of green tomatoes dripping off the vines at the garden plot, willing them to ripen faster. I’m anxious to reach that point where the tomatoes are so abundant that we’re nearly drowning in them.

You would not believe how monstrous and prolific the ‘Zapotec Pink Pleated’ plants are! It’s been hard work keeping the plants pruned and staked. The minute I turn my back there is another fruit-laden branch flopping over and threatening to break off.

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August 9, 2007

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It’s a Monster. A Monster!

The result of some interesting cross-pollination found at one of the farm stands at the Farmers Market this afternoon. I’ve seen some strange mixes in the past but let’s just say I don’t see anyone using this miracle of nature as the basis for a new-fangled variety.

I can just see the catalogue description now: “Long, striped green fruit with golden, disease-like pustules splashed across the surface.”

It’s actually kind of disturbing. In a fascinating way.

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August 7, 2007

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Food That Hardly Travels at All

A friend pointed me to this opinion piece in the New York Times that looks at the Eat Local concept as a way to mark environmental impact in food production. The article describes a New Zealand study that challenges the assumption that distance traveled automatically means higher fossil fuel consumption. The study doesn’t undermine the point that local eating advocates make but instead expands the way we are currently looking at energy use to include more factors that arise anywhere in the food production cycle including, “water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.”

I’ve brought up this article here because although few of us as home gardeners are producing on a massive scale I see urban agriculture and growing food in our own backyards, on rooftops, community gardens, and waste spaces as a way to offset some of our own individual carbon input by eating about as local as it gets — literally stepping out our front or back doors to collect tonight’s dinner. And while that is awesome in itself I have noticed or at least pondered the impact my own small scale food production “systems” may have on the environment. While most of the Ã¢â‚¬Å“factor inputs and externalitiesÃ¢â‚¬Â mentioned in the article do not apply to my style of food growing, there are other factors to consider. For example:

How much tap water do I use in my gardens?
What kind of packaging is used in products such as organic fertilizers, soil amenders, and container soiless mix? How is this packaging disposed?
Where do the ingredients in my container soils and amenders come from? For example, are any natural resources being plundered to provide the peat in my mix?
How far do these products need to travel in order to get to my garden?
What about the materials used to produce the containers I grow in? How far do they have to travel?
What about other materials used in the garden? i.e. Stakes, plastic ground covers, tools, etc?
What about the plants themselves? Are they high-impact energy suckers or are they suitable for this climate and the conditions that exist here?

Having looked at each of these factors I would say that their impact varies depending on the garden or type of garden. For example my community garden plot is in-ground and does not require things like purchased soil, and containers. I employ water-saving methods such as amending my soil, and applying mulch. It’s a fact that container gardens require more water than in-ground gardens and since I can not hook up a rainbarrel system to my apartment, the amount of water used directly from the tap is a whole lot higher than at my community garden plot regardless of how much I mulch the containers, employ water-wise tricks, use greywater, or run outside with buckets when it rains.

I bought packaged soil amenders for the community garden this year and then transported them and myself in a cab from a local garden centre to the alleyway next to my plot. I don’t know where the amenders came from originally although I am hoping that since it was predominantly mushroom compost that it came from somewhere local — yeah it probably didn’t. So in the future I could look into where the amenders are from, buy amenders that are delivered to the curb without packaging, or rely soley on compost from the garden. Thankfully Davin and I have got more composters going at the community garden this year than ever before so that last one is very doable. I walk the bulk of my purchased soil amenders and container soils from the store to my gardens in a granny cart so no fossil fuel inputs there.

As far as containers and container soil goes I feel some relief in that I have been using the same containers and the same soil (with some supplementation of new soil, compost, and other amenders every spring) for several years and will continue to use them for years to come. Many of my containers are recycled items like dresser drawers found on the curb, broken watering cans and busted buckets or items purchased from thrift stores and yard sales.

While I don’t have a special calculating method set up to get a really accurate picture of how my gardens are doing against this sort of equation, through estimation I can guess that the food I grow myself is still generating a much smaller footprint than anything purchased at the grocery store. I’m not absolutely certain about how it holds up against much of the local produce I purchase weekly at the Farmers Market but I would guess that since I am doing a pretty good job of keeping most energy inputs low and adding in the fact that I walk or bike to both gardens and harvest everything by hand my total input has got to be lower still.

What about you? Can you think of any inputs I might be missing in this equation?

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