6 eggplants, 3 jalapeno, 3 california wonder peppers, 6 black brandywine tomatoes, 2 radicchio, 1 scotland leek, 1 bleu de solais leek, 4 tomatilloes, 3 savignac tomatoes, 2 black krim tomatoes, 2 large leaf Italian basil, 2 genovese basil, 5 san marzano tomatoes, 3 bloody butcher tomatoes, 3 sophies choice tomatoes, 3 beefsteak tomatoes, 3 princes borghese tomatoes, 3 green zebra tomatoes, 3 blanch de Quebec tomatoes, 6 White Queen tomatoes, 2 Eva purple ball tomatoes, 2 black cherry tomatoes, 2 broccoli roman nats
all within a square foot and a half of space on a corner of my buffet!
here they are - all 60 seedlings - not quite 2 weeks after 2nd planting on 6 April!
... with deep cell seedlings in soil using aerogarden light
side view
IT GOT PUBLISHED & IT WROTE ITSELF ...
Gayla Trail, Community Gardener/Small Urban Potager
Pencils are poised. We’re off to a bit of a late start. Finally Gayla gets down in the ‘hood with her peeps at the Parkdale Horticultural Society on the last Monday of March 09. She has lived here for fourteen years … she’s a little nervous but she’s with BoF’s … it is hard not to notice the wild volunteer tomato plant tat(too) on her bicep as she pushes the key down on her laptop … the show’s begins … and we’re off on a virtual tour down back alleys in this end of the City viewing various untraditional treasured ‘finds’ … raised green beds made from old red milk cases, a container roof garden precariously perched atop a rickety old garage, a mini window gardens’ whispered presence across from City TV, a fecund shopping cart filled with fertilized foliage chained to a fence stuck with a handwritten skiddly old sign, ‘Please Do Not Urinate’ - that gets a giggle … a restaurant container garden fighting for space with an SUV between two buildings and what looks like a fire hydrant skirted with flora cemented into concrete somewhere behind Woolfits.
Early on you get the sense Gayla’s a going concern … if just by the pace at which we’re going through her numerous slides … [I know she is … having followed her for almost a year now on that “wildly popular urban-gardening website”, www.yougrowgirl.com. … heck I gardened my whole first year last summer clutching her book, You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening … last week I dropped everything to attend her seed-planting workshop at our local community greenhouse … and I now attempt to keep up with her & other YGG tweets on Twitter … she’s sent out a call for help to declutter the Queen & Noble curbside garden and as I’m writing this up and a friend calls – our Parkdalian’s in the Globe … bloody hell - where isn’t she this week? … and oh how I’ve got to get this done before it verges on something overly more novel …
Back to the slides … we’re up 3 floors and onto her roof peering into dresser drawers prettily planted with purple pansies down under a hand-crafted chalk board we’re told holds her ever-changing ditties of the day … next we’re sousing out containers with visually stunning red shiso, an Asian herb rich in vitamens & minerals … notwithstanding its anti-inflammatory properties … and Gayla grows it and dries it for tea … sprinkles in rice dishes … uses it in salads, as a garnish & sushi wraps … and know, too, it’s also used to dye umeboshi (pickled ume) called a plum but it’s more an apricot … as well, we’re told it’s the ‘pink’ in pickled ginger. We learn her Chocolate Cherry Sunflower steamed buds taste a little like artichokes. There’s a particularly tall 7 or 8 foot tomato plant guarding a corner called Pink Zapotec. Tomatoes, with basil and other companions, surrounded by chicken wire (to keep cats out) are grown right-side up in garbage cans and upside down in fancy-pants hanging bags from Lee Valley … all are planted singly so as to give each a fighting chance of growing as abundant and huge as any seen in an in ground garden. In trash cans held up off their upturned lids with bricks, there are potatoes that like coffee grounds aka acidic soil. And then – an admission - there is one plant she hasn’t grown up here. There have been no pumpkins! As well she makes an impression with the group when she lets it slip she has mothered this garden for 13 years without a proper watering system – no hose – just buckets of water she carries to & fro … from the bathroom and back again – oftentimes twice a day .. and it gets hot up here … and windy … she’s found a way to create wind blocks by repositioning plants mostly in 12” pots, Strawberries, Jerusalem Artichokes, Anise Hyssop, Calendula, Nasturtiums, Purple Bush & Ruffle Basils, Golden Sweet Peas (these are in bigger pots), Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas (not so big), etc. … all moved hither and about to protect others like lemon cucumbers, her favourites and they don’t like the wind nor the brick wall which absorbs heat … the peppers in 12” pots - they do like the heat … and the cut-and-come-again Lolla Rossa’s are pretty heat tolerant too. Gayla really likes it when her lettuce bolts - there are seeds to harvest and bold aesthetically-pleasing arcs thrusting skyward.
Of course, three stories below, she has made it her plight in life to create a street garden on the corner that is her downstairs neighbours personal ashtray and the neighbourhood urinal and dog potty (and there is a call out to the community for Saturday afternoon helpers to join in) … quickly we trip past this eyesore over to the community garden behind the local beer store where she brings garden & kitchen scraps to the compost and where we finally see her Egyptian Walking Onion … say no more I’m lost in it’s calligraphic beauty and dizzied further by its story and names rolling off her tongue … like full names of best friends & family … Purple Beauty Albino Bullnose Sweet Peppers Royal Burgandy Bush Beans Red Sails Lettuce … some come from Urban Harvest seeds procured years ago or seeds & plants recently traded with friends and/or gotten through seedsavers.org … or from Seeds of Diversity or at Seedy Saturday … her lists go on … someone has asked “Where do you get your seeds?” … and someone else wants to know why she’s not calling heirlooms hybrids since they surely are and she responds with something about open pollination and someone else further explains another technicality that’s thoroughly lost on me … and as we’re also being shown a photo of a 3 or 4 year-old raspberry bush in a planter box, Gayla starts a little tease mentioning yet another book in the works lurking towards publication the likes of which might possibly cover an unmentionably exciting DIY self-watering recyclable bin good for all kinds of things like melon growing –… I’ll end here saying I think she’s as well as done it all – as if there’s not a pumpkin-in waiting in her very near future!
1,066 words
BoFs (Birds of a Feather) *
REF: Gayla Trail: The Sage of Emerald City, The urban plot thickens
by Lisan Jutras, 4 April 2009, globeandmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment