Urban Gardening

April 12, 2009

89 Comments

It is Finished

On Saturday afternoon Mary and Joan (and Davin, of course) came by and helped us clean up hundreds of cigarette butts, several broken bottles, the bamboo fence we built two seasons ago that had been literally and purposefully kicked in inch-by-inch along its entire length, a bag full of miscellaneous garbage, concrete dust left by City workers and three big bags of garden waste.

By Sunday morning the garden had acquired some new garbage and a broken bottle. By Sunday night there was a large, dead, potted palm, 6-8 cigarette butts from the neighbors, and the garbage bag full of waste that we had picked up only the day before had been dumped back onto the garden. Whomever did it took the garbage bag with them.

I’m enraged. I’m heartbroken. Actually, neither of those words are accurate. I’m beyond both. The last few years trying to tend the garden amidst what is happening in this neighborhood has been like fighting a war. I can’t fight this war anymore. It is too painful. And I know now that I can never win.

When Joan and Mary showed up to help yesterday carrying with them their enthusiasm, good cheer, and two delicious salads made by Mary, it was very heartening. A neighbor named Barry also stopped by and gifted me a bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) from his garden. I love bloodroot. It all felt good. It felt like both myself and the garden were cared for by a community. If they had not been there to share in the labor, I would have picked up all of that garbage along with another helping of bitterness and resentment.

The other day, while laying on the proverbial couch bemoaning more troubles with the garden my therapist (who is also a gardener) said, “A garden can feel like your own body. When someone attacks it, it feels like they are throwing up on you.”

It does.

Perhaps that will read as dramatic to many people but it is the truth of my experiences as a gardener. I put myself into it. I’ve tried not to. I’ve tried to detach. It doesn’t work. And even if I could somehow manage to remain emotionless about the act, the fact is that I don’t want to experience gardening in a detached way. I’d call that landscaping.

From the moment I put my shovel into the ground so many years ago, I became responsible for that space. I care about that little patch of land and what happens to it. I don’t think that was ever my original intention, but it is what happened. For me, gardening is an emotional experience and a complicated exchange. When I work in the garden I nurture, I care, I feel, and in return I am nurtured, I nurture myself and I work through my troubles; a relationship develops. I unintentionally set down roots.

Unfortunately, in a neighborhood like mine, this has come with a price. Depending on what is done to the garden it can feel like the perpetrators are literally puking up their utter disregard and trash on me. At other times it feels like they are throwing all of their own self hatred, guilt, shame, and inner turmoil at me. Two summers ago, when someone very purposefully flattened a patch of plants with their feet, I could feel the rage that went into that act. I could feel the anger and pain and hurt. When passersby throw trash and allow their dog to poop without picking it up they are saying, “I don’t care about anything, myself included.” When the people who live directly over top of the garden continue to throw their cigarette butts into the garden, especially after it was so obviously cleaned up by their own neighbor, it is like they are whispering in my ear, “We are so invested in our self-loathing, we can’t see what is in front of our eyes.”

When people dump their diseased and used potting soil onto the garden, it feels like they are assuaging their guilt. When they deposit dead, potted plants into or at the edge of the garden I imagine their confession, “I feel badly that I killed this plant but I can’t accept responsibility for it. I need to pretend it is still alive and that you can save it. Here, you be responsible.”

I can’t be responsible anymore. And that was partly why I asked for help. Cleaning up the garden as a group, as a caring community, lifted some of the burden of what lay at the heart of the acts that went into destroying it from off of my shoulders and heart.

Experiencing these assaults on the garden over and over again makes me angry and filled with rage. But knowing what lies beneath the assaults makes me sad. It hurts. I am not impervious to pain. And I don’t think I can continue to set myself up for it anymore.

Before I go on, I need to be clear that what’s happening with the garden isn’t normal. I’ve been gardening that little patch of land for 10 years, and while there has been garbage thrown, some things destroyed, lots of thieving, and a bit of weirdness, what happened then could never touch what has been going on over the last 2-3 years. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 14 years, and I have watched it change. At first I could attribute an acceleration in violence being perpetrated against the garden as the result of the turmoil being experienced in the neighborhood at large as the effects of increasing and accelerating gentrification took hold. But then the bars went in. This part of the neighborhood is turning into the new club district and the people coming in experience the neighborhood as their personal playground rather than a place where people live. They just don’t give a shit. And many of the street people and disenfranchised who live here are being displaced. And they are angry. Rightfully so.

I think there is a lot that can be said about the fact that when I moved into this neighborhood it was considered dangerous and bad. The “bad part of town.” The other side of the tracks, literally. And now that it is cool and hip and “good” it has become a terrible place to live. That “bad” neighborhood had its problems, but it also had a sense of community and caring that thrived underneath the so-called bad.

Unfortunately, the garden has become a target, something to vent on. Gardens can mean a lot of things depending on where you are coming from and how you look at it. Or don’t. Because unfortunately, many people are so screwed up that anything beautiful can feel like an affront or have so little disregard that they are simply blind to it. As I said before, I can’t disconnect myself emotionally from what I put into the garden. And as a consequence I feel it all. Continuing to try and garden through this feels like I am playing a hand in my own abuse. It’s like I am standing on the street and waiting to be spit on.

Yesterday was the first day of the garden’s year. Hardly 12 hours had passed before new damage was done. Not 24 before a total assault.

After 10 years digging the garden, building the soil, putting in plants, taking out plants when the City decided they wanted to put in a garden, putting plants back in when the City decided they didn’t want to put in a garden, replacing destroyed plants, replacing broken fences, spending my own hard-earned money, wasting hundreds of hours of my own time, picking up shit, filth, garbage, etc.; I am done.

I tried my best. I don’t own this space and always knew that I would have to make my exit eventually. It hurts to walk away from it in this way, having been defeated and feeling like I’ve failed on multiple levels.

Walking outside to that scene tonight was the breaking point. It is finished.

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April 8, 2009

43 Comments

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

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.”

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.

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.

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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March 11, 2009

18 Comments

Growing Food on a Windowsill – Microgreens

Winter is slowly coming to an end around here and it is nearly time to start lettuce outdoors. Until then I’ve been growing and harvesting small batches of micro-sized greens on my windowsill as a way to keep some salad fixings coming through the darkest and longest days of winter.

Microgreens are tender and tangy lettuce and mustard greens that are chopped off young, usually when they are only an inch or so high at the most and barely a few weeks old. They’re smaller and younger than baby greens, which tend to be harvested later when the plants have grown a good three inches tall or more.

It is this short growth span that makes microgreens possible to produce on even the darkest windowsills through the dingiest months of the year. Even the most beginner seed starter can take this growing project on since the plants only need to be kept alive for a few weeks tops. Unlike growing full-sized plants, it’s not the end of the world if they grow a little leggy (thin and stretchy) in the process.

Lettuce Greens to Try

Give yourself a break on the first time out by growing readymade storebought mixes that come in mild or spicy combinations. Some companies sell mixes that include the word microgreen on the package but any salad or mesclun mix can be grown this way. I like Urban Harvest’s Oriental Salad Mix (has a slight kick) and the Mild Mix prepared by Botanical Interests. Once you’ve got a taste for what you like try making your own mixes. It’s more cost effective and you can tailor make mixes that leave out any greens that don’t suit your taste buds.

Spicy: Peppergrass cress, ‘Giant Red’ mustard, radish, arugula, daikon radish, and ‘Wrinkled Crinkled’ cress.

Mild and Tangy: Tatsoi, mizuna, kale, lettuce, miner’s lettuce, and minutina.

How to Grow

They’re not particularly attractive, but I grow mine in recycled plastic takeaway containers and clamshell packaging. They’re always on hand and tend to be the right size for the windowsill. To prepare, simply punch 5 or 7 drainage holes (I always go for odd numbers) into the bottom of a 9″ x 7″ package using an awl, sharp pair of scissors, or knife. Fill ‘er up with well-moistened container mix, potting soil, or seed-starting mix to within an inch or so from the top. Evenly distribute a thin layer of seeds, sprinkling them over the soil surface with about 1/8″ to 1/4″ of space between them. Cover the seeds with a thin layer of soil, about 1/8″ deep. Set it in the sunniest window you’ve got with the lid of the clamshell placed underneath as a drip tray. Water in well to get them germinating.

Sprouts at about the one week mark.

Keep the soil moist like a wrung-out sponge but not soaking wet. To avoid over-watering, dunk out any water that is still in the drip tray within an hour of watering. Microgreens can be harvested with a pair of scissors in 1 1/2-2 weeks depending on how large you want to grow them. I generally let mine grow until the moment their first set of “true leaves” begin to peek out. The first leaves you see are called “seed leaves” since they are actually a part of the seed. “True leaves” are the second set to appear and often look very different than the seed leaves.

Starting Again

Unfortunately, unlike when growing baby-sized and mature greens, you can not grow a second crop from the same stems. This is because the plants you are harvesting are essentially sprouts. Second crops grow from the upper part of the stem above the leaves, and these are harvested on the lower part of the stem below the leaves. The bad news is that you will have to start over with fresh seeds to produce another crop. The good news is that you can reuse the pot and soil if there were no problems with disease or pests on the first go-around.

To prepare for another crop, simply yank the remaining roots and stems out of the soil, toss them in the compost bin, and till the remaining soil with a fork. Sprinkle on a fresh layer of seeds, top it with a thin layer of soil and the process is begun anew.

Start a second crop of microgreens a few days to one week after the first set and you’ll have continuous crops ready for harvest through the winter.

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September 22, 2008

19 Comments

Charles’ Tobacco

To begin, I am going to preface this entry with a note about tobacco since I know this topic is controversial and likely to ruffle some feathers. As adults we are all aware that smoking tobacco is addictive, is accredited to causing various forms of cancer, and is generally not a healthy thing to do. By writing this post I am not condoning smoking tobacco and I am definitely not encouraging anyone to start! But I also believe that it is an interesting plant worth discussing and that if you’re going to smoke, growing your own is a much better way to go.

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One afternoon last year, while riding my bike through an alleyway, I was stopped short by a little garden tucked into a thin strip of soil between the pavement and a garage wall. A large nicotiana sat growing alongside a crop of mint, a sunflower and a tiny coniferous bonsai. By its size and girth I could tell the nicotiana was a smoking tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum) and not one of its flowering cousins, common in many home gardens including my own. I got off my bike to take a picture. Turns out I was right. The grower was actually sitting on a lawn chair in the open doorway of the garage with a group of young dudes. We chatted about the garden and his tobacco plant briefly and I went on my way.

I thought about that plant for the rest of the year, stopping to watch its progress whenever I rode through the area. I hoped to catch the gardener out on a lawn chair again before the end of the growing season. I wanted to ask more questions and possibly take some pictures of him with the plant for my Green Minds Project. Unfortunately the end of the season came without our paths crossing again.

When springtime rolled back around I started to think about that little garden once more. I rode through the alley several times hoping to find a new little seedling in its place. Finally, about a month ago while on my way to photograph my brother’s garden, I happened upon Charles, the urban tobacco farmer out on the lawn chairs again.

Charles is a young guy, probably in his 30s. Whenever I bump into him he’s shirtless and listening to classic rock while smoking joints and enjoying a few brews with his buddies. They make art in the garage. I think he also works long hours in construction which is why he was unable to commit to another plant this year. In addition to growing tobacco, Charles also grows hot peppers that he then uses to make his own homemade sauce. And he cans it too! If you were to look up the photo of a gardener in a book or magazine you would not see a picture of Charles. Not even come close. I’ve met a lot of gardeners by now and the more I meet the further away I get from finding THAT gardener. I’m more certain then ever that the stereotypes we’ve culturally cultivated around the myth of the gardener are a total load of crap. Gardeners, even the hardcore sort, can’t really be pinned down. Ultimately, why we garden is personal and there are just too many reasons to take it up.

And yet while few gardeners I have met actually fit The Profile, what they all have in common is an infectious enthusiasm for their gardens and a generosity about sharing them. In that sense Charles is like all the best gardeners I have met. He has an enthusiasm for growing plants that pours out of him in conversation and has had an obvious effect on his neighbours and friends. While showing me some of last year’s tobacco harvest, still hanging in the garage, he mentioned that a few other neighbors had been inspired to grow the plant in their own yards from seed he was more than willing to share. I explained that despite a dedication to flowering tobacco varieties and a whole lot of enthusiasm for his plant, I am not a smoker and don’t have any use for smoking tobacco. Chances are slim that I will ever grow the plant, yet he still insisted on sending me off with enough seed to start my own tobacco farm.

He also sent me home with a big piece of uncured leaves and a brief outline of the curing and fermentation processes. While they do seem like fairly involved processes and a lot of labor they also seem like something anyone can do with some practice. You’ll have lots of opportunities to try and try again until you get it right since one tobacco plant makes A LOT of tobacco! Growing your own means taking control over the quality of the product, removing the herbicides and pesticides that are most likely in use during commercial growing practices never mind the harmful additives that are used to cure and ferment. And for every smoker that grows their own, there’s a few thousand dollars less per year in the hands of the big tobacco companies.

For More Information About Home Growing, Curing and Fermenting Tobacco:

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August 24, 2008

21 Comments

Mystery Tree in the Garden

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.

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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