Gardens galore

By Stphane Groleau
We had a strange summer this year: cold rain until July, then crazy heat in August. The plants really started to grow in August, so crops like tomatoes barely had time to ripen. Luckily, the frost came later than usual (mid-September!). This year, I worked in three different gardens. I still have my no-till perma-mulch veganic garden in the countryside, but since I mainly live in Quebec City, it became a rather long-distance spontaneous garden. Our apartment has great balconies: one is south facing. So I was eager to experiment with container gardening. We also discovered a community garden a few blocks away, so we took a plot there just for fun! So here Ill compare my experiences with these three gardens. For sure, I found them all pretty rewarding, each one with its special characteristics. But maybe because of the novelty, the balcony garden gave me the most pleasure, especially for its proximity. Right outside of my bedroom window, I could see it grow each day; it brought a lot of green, and transformed the balcony into an urban jungle! Probably linked to my chimpanzee genes... living room. For the container garden, I preferred to only use transplants because seeds would take time to germinate and grow, not taking full advantage of that valuable space and dirt. I think containers are at their best with fruit-bearing and continuous growing plants. Climbing plants like beans and cucumbers or indeterminate tomatoes are wonderful because they can grow vertically or extend on the balcony fence continually, saving space. My Spanish beans reached the balcony of my upstairs neighbour! Basil is also good because when we harvest leaves from the main stem, it makes many new shoots and gets bushy. I avoid growing plants that we usually cut (e.g. lettuce, cauliflower), or that we harvest completely (root plants like carrots or beet). For my countryside garden, I like to call it a spontaneous garden because some crops tend to pop up by themselves, with a no-till system, bi-annual and perennial vegetables can simply stay on site and produce seeds the following year. So in the fall, I like to scatter seeds from those plants all over the garden, and the same with annual plants that went to seed. This spring, I was infested with parsnips, cress, red radishes and lettuce. Strawberries also took over part of the garden. I dont really mind because we harvested buckets of red fruits! After the harvest, I walked among the strawberry plants and pulled out handfuls of them, leaving them on the ground as mulch.

Sowing
In the community garden, most plants were started with seeds. The soil had already been worked with a tractor when I got the patch, so the fine bare soil made it easy to sow directly. Thats convenient, so I took advantage of it. Since February, we had many seedlings growing in our

Weeding
In containers, there is almost no weeding. In contrast, for the community garden with its bare soil, the weeding is a pain. All of these little seeds started sprouting. When I was away for a week, I came back and faced a carpet of undesired weeds. Moreover, when pulling them out, I cant really use them as mulch or they tend to reroot. Thats what I particularly enjoy about my no-till garden in the countryside: if a weed passes through, I pull it out and lay it on the mulch. The plant cant make it to the ground before it dries out. Nevertheless, Im starting to have perennial weeds despite the mulch. Thats the downside of no-till. We have to be very careful not to let weeds enter or become established. We try to dig them out, or simply put some cardboard over them. Potatoes are an ideal crop to be planted with cardboard. At first, I was using the cardboard method to extend the garden. Directly on the lawn I would lay cardboard, then I would cut a little hole and put a potato inside in contact with the ground and finish by covering the cardboard with hay. This kills the grass and favours its decomposition. Now, the garden is big enough, so instead of doing it on the lawn, I choose a weedy area to plant the potatoes. One thing I did not have time for this year was to put
GGI No 24 Winter 2009

Buckets of strawberries, or rather hayberries. Photo by Stphane Groleau

18

more hay over the potatoes in the summer after the first layer of hay had mostly broken down. So we lost part of the tubers because they turned green being exposed to light. In fact, theyre not totally useless. Ill keep these toxic potatoes for planting next spring.

OUTRAGE OUTRAGE
THE ANIMAL AID JOURNAL FOR ACTION PHONE 01732 364 546
ANIMAL AID WEBSITE:

Watering
On the balcony, we had different kinds of containers. The most convenient ones were the self-watering containers, which are made from two reclaimed buckets, one inside the other. The bottom one serves as a water reserve. The upper one has a special hole in its base to allow the roots to reach the water. Even with this water reservoir, we had to refill them every day if it was extremely hot. In the community garden, we should have watered more, even though its time consuming, especially compared to the no-till garden, which I have a habit of not watering at all except when transplanting.

www.animalaid.org.uk

The fertilizer issue...

In the no-till, I simply use a mulch of hay. No fertilizer. That hay comes from my parents farm nearby. But now, in town, I had to find another source of nutrients, and had no time for green manures. Being part of a community-composting scheme, we could get a few bags of compost, but it wasnt much and so I kept looking around. I came upon the excellent book Food Not Lawns from Heather C. Flores, and read that a human could annually fertilize a 3000 square foot garden with his urine. Its rich in nitrogen and potassium. Perfect for tomatoes! Human solid wastes would be pretty hard to manage in an apartment, but urine isnt. So this year I tried to collect some of mine to see how plants would react. It reminded me my great stay at Equinox community in Manchester. I only tried it in containers, and its hard to know if the fantastic taste of the cherry tomatoes is linked, but at least I felt relief that I wasnt polluting tap water!

Eco Architecture and Planning

Our aims and work are:

Problems
With the containers, the hardest part I found was to cope with white flies invading the plants. Growing on a balcony, in the city, makes it hard to install biodiversity settings like a pond or hedges! So there werent any natural predators. The other main difficulty was to find enough potting mix for containers. It takes a lot if we want to fill buckets. Living in town, what we can buy often relies on peat moss and I had to use some of it, but I tried to add as much compost as I could, which was okay since tomatoes and cucumber enjoy rich compost and are demanding plants. In the end, Ive been happy to see all the possibilities for gardening that are available to us, even in town. For sure, notill is really a wonderful lazy gardening approach. Maybe I could apply it in the community garden, though I would have to find mulch material. It might also disturb neighbors with its untidy look. The balcony garden brought a lot of green, looked very nice, and has an extended season by taking advantage of the brick wall to keep warm. Though, Im wondering what Ill do with the potting mix now... probably reuse it next year. Happy winter!
GGI No 24 Winter 2009

To design and work with sustainable buildings

To design ecological projects for the long term sustainability and wellbeing of the greater community and wildlife To design Permaculture gardens and parks To design integral waste and natural sourced energy systems We will design and plan sustainable communities individual projects and Permaculture gardens. Planning (Ecological) Planning appeals, Planning applications, Enforcement notices Feng shui Four types of Consultations, Feng shui before purchase. Existing Home, garden. Assessment of a pre-built building. Annual Assessment. There are many factors that will affect your home, natural surroundings, interior design, positive energies , avoiding bad energies

We are happy working with all sectors of the community, as well as private clients as long as they want ecological and social sustainability. For further information Contact: Sophie ChristopherBowes Telephone: 01235 529266 / 07842 573722 Email: sophie@eco-architectureandplanning.com www.eco-architectureandplanning.com
19