Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
MK DuPree wrote: Hi Darryl...and Robert...your posts on the garden are beautiful...please let us hear more, whatever thoughts you may have, experiences, tips, meditations on the wonderments (and sorrows) of gardening, etc etc. The weather has finally turned cool and rainy up here. I had these great intentions to load up a bunch of barn litter last week, but my schedule makes it hard to do this, and the one afternoon I had time to go, my sweetheart had other plans for me. We're still getting strawberries, though. I've told my clients and the neighborhood kids that they can eat as much fruit as they like. Some of the kids stop by two or three times a week to check for strawberries, and since we have WAY more than we can eat ourselves, I've encouraged them. I realize that some of you are having problems with this, but I would rather have young people enjoying my garden's fruit than trampling through it. So far, they've been pretty good about not wrecking my plants! (They're in one of my raised beds, so they don't get trampled.) As I've trimmed the ornamental plants, I've shredded the trimmings and piled the resulting mulch up to decompose over the winter. I'm waiting for my next batch to finish, but I should have enough compost to finish "feeding" the soil around my trees before their leaves fall off. There is still a fair amount of work that needs doing before I'm done with everything, so my compost pile will be even more substantial than has been the case in the past. My one complaint is that the shredder doesn't really do a very effective job with the woody portions of stems I trim off. Oh well . . . Someone posted a question about using "compost starter liquid." I use just enough in my plastic bin to keep things moist, put more on the outdoor pile and dump the rest directly beneath my tree drip lines after it rains. We have a magnolia out in front that looked like it was dying in the spring, but after a singular treatment with about 2 liters, its leaves darkened nicely and it even bloomed TWICE for us this year! It's really great to hear about gardens starting up on the other side of the equator. May all of you enjoy growing things this year, may the bees come back where they're needed, and may each of you find a blessing in working the soil! robert luis rabello "The Edge of Justice" Adventure for Your Mind http://www.newadventure.ca Ranger Supercharger Project Page http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Jesse Frayne wrote: Darryl, I'm grateful for your response, today and for the last few years. But I must jump in: clearly, I hid my point. Not so much how to get people to stop stealing my garden food, but rather, are we about to have a world where people steal garden food? Jesse, I think we already have a world where people steal garden food. I have heard of it happening in community garden plots. It has happened in my yard. Sadly, garden food is the least of the problem. Our business leaders steal from shareholders and customers. Our politicians steal from the taxpayers. I have met too many kids who think that shoplifting is OK, so long as you don't get caught. My belief is that we are building more sociopaths and less community in western society today than in the past. Too much, I think our society measures success in terms that encourage and reward sociopathic behaviour. We are smug about our home gardens, but I think there might ultimately be a change. This was my sense, anyway, from this one guy, in affluent Toronto... Smug? Perhaps, but I don't think so. My home garden isn't a showpiece, and it's a bit of an act of selfishness. To me, it represents food over which I have a large degree of control, but not self-sufficiency. It represents a connection with nature so lacking in my worklife. It represents time to myself, as the rest of my family isn't interested in making the effort. Next year, one thing I will be doing with the square foot garden approach, is allocate space to my son and wife to do with as they wish. The collective approach has not worked, perhaps a sense of ownership will. The underlying question, IMHO, is whether this one guy is the exception, or the rule. So far, I think he's the exception, but the numbers are growing. Then, what do you do about it? I think that is what I was addressing in my last post. Darryl Jesse --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jesse, I feel for you. I have not done guerilla gardening, intentionally anyway. Here's a story for you. When I first started breaking sod at our house, I put in some flower garden close to the street. My plan was to put some posies on the dining room table for my wife once in a while. Some days, I would head out to work past the flower beds, and see the buds, knowing that by evening I'd have a flower or two for the table. By the time I got home, no flowers, no buds. They had been picked. It took a while, but I finally discovered the neighbourhood urchins were picking the flowers, and taking them home. I hope their mothers got the benefit. This went on for a couple of years. Since then, I have never planted flowers outside the fence again. Instead, I have planted beets, carrots, barley, leaf lettuce, spinach and radish. Basically, root crops or grasses - nothing with visible fruit or flowers. Never had a problem with the local youth since. I even tempted fate and told a small group that the lacy-leafed plants in one patch were carrots. They set me straight in short order. No way was the old guy going to fool them with that one. They know that carrots are orange, and presumably come in plastic bags and tin cans. Issues with by-law enforcement has been another issue. The barley in particular made them pretty crazy. It took a while to convince them it wasn't just unmowed grass. It didn't do well there anyway, not enough sun I expect. Anyway, the message from my story is, if your objective is to harvest for your own use, don't plant things people recognize easily in shared spaces, like tomatoes, cucumbers or yellow beans. Unless your objective is to feed others without regard to who gets the fruit of your labour, go with things that only gardeners will recognize. In addition to the root crops, I expect climbing green beans like scarlet runners might escape casual detection. If it were me, I would probably plant some climbing flowers or sunflowers on the street side of the space as additional camoflage. You'll lose the blooms, but the casual observer will likely ignore the non-flowering plants behind, figuring those flowers aren't ready to pick yet. Even in my own yard, I don't grow tomatoes without hiding them from street view - they're just too recognizable to those that don't respect the labour of others. Some days, I think there's a little too much of the little red hen in me. However, I think I should have some say in how the bounty of my efforts are distributed to others, and not leave it to the self-appointed to liberate it for their own use. Darryl Jesse Frayne wrote: Hi gardeners, Our yard at home is small, in the middle of the city, and shaded by a big tree. So we were looking for somewhere to grow vegetables. In the last three years we have had some space on public land that was contested over, puzzled over, dog-run over by our differing neighbourhood uses. We have put in years of meetings to secure this greenspace. We dug deeply through the sod and put in manure
Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Hi gardeners, Our yard at home is small, in the middle of the city, and shaded by a big tree. So we were looking for somewhere to grow vegetables. In the last three years we have had some space on public land that was contested over, puzzled over, dog-run over by our differing neighbourhood uses. We have put in years of meetings to secure this greenspace. We dug deeply through the sod and put in manure from the downtown farm (it used to be a zoo), turned over our little square, put in an apple tree and two grape vines... etc. Okay, the earth is pretty great. LOTS of worms and although in Toronto we surely have clay, not so bad, put the mulch in there for three years and it's starting to break up nicely. Okay, here's the deal. This is a public place, there are dogs, school kids and everyone else walking past the garden. I saw a guy walking away with a big grocery bag of my roma tomatoes. I say to him, Hi, I hope you're enjoying my garden? He says Oh, I thought it was school-kids put this in. Like that would make it okay, humm, and he keeps walking. Interesting. So my daughter put up a sign: Until we have dug a big enough garden to feed the whole neighbourhood, could you please leave the produce to the gardeners? (She has a thing that if anyone would be so hungry as to take food from someone else's garden, it must be okay.) Guys, I'm thinkin', this is the way it's going to be. I feel cranky now. Our new sign, for next spring, is: Here are 5 tomato seedlings. Plant and tend them and enjoy your gardening. I don't want to fence. I want straight-ahead. But I'm wondering what is coming. Thoughts? Jesse --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Appropriately, I spent a few hours on Thanksgiving day clearing most of the plant matter from the garden and putting it on the compost pile. Robert, your recent posts have been an inspiration. Thank you. Our garden did not fare as well this year as in past years. Mostly due to lack of attention on my part, although not enough rain followed by too much rain wasn't helping either. Still, we had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with, even after giving them away to neighbours and taking them to work for barbecues and so on. The yellow cherry tomatoes were a special success. So sweet. My son took away a good haul of carrots, which he is enjoying immensely. Enough beets to make into baby food for my grandson, several feeds of peas in the garden and enough yellow beans to even make it to the dinner table a couple of times (after some serious consumption in the yard first). Squash was a disappointment - lots of fruit, but none big enough to justify harvesting. The radish and lettuce either drowned or were scavenged by local fauna. The spinach did not take at all. The jalapenos were bountiful, and I had been told I couldn't grow those this far north. The raspberries did well in the spring, but no autumn crop to speak of. I think the squash needs more sun, which means I need to find some vegetables and fruits that can do with less sun for certain parts of the garden. I'm also going to have to trim back my beautiful maple tree (a rescued weed from years ago), to let more sun reach the garden. Still, it will continue to provide good shade over the park bench we have outside the fence so neighbours can sit and rest if they so desire. After reading Robert's posts, I wonder if I should have gone for a fruit tree instead, perhaps cherry. However, the responsbility for the failures is all mine. The garden simply did not get the time it needed, as I elected to focus on other things much of this year. (Perhaps more on those in days to come - I have already told you about the electric bicycle victory, and a related campaign has already been joined.) This year, I have been reading the Square Foot Garden by Mel Bartholomew (Rodale). So full of small truths, I think it will transform how I garden from now on. The line about typical residential gardening just being industrial gardening on a small scale really hit home. I have not finished the book yet (priorities again), but already I feel comfortable recommending it. As did the being overwhelmed by harvest when it's ready, but having nothing fresh to eat before and after. While I'm making compost, I'm still hauling it in by the pick-up truck load each year to continue amending the soil. And at least two trips a year go to gardens other than my own. At least the truck is now running on 20% biodiesel from a local supplier. This summer, we managed a vacation in Nova Scotia, with a quick trip to Prince Edward Island. We visited Vesey Seed, and I have a whole array of new seeds to experiment with for next year. Any recommendations on materials to build the raised beds (4 feet square and a foot high)? Cost and appearance are both concerns. Too wet now to go out and finish the job, and rain is
Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Jesse, I feel for you. I have not done guerilla gardening, intentionally anyway. Here's a story for you. When I first started breaking sod at our house, I put in some flower garden close to the street. My plan was to put some posies on the dining room table for my wife once in a while. Some days, I would head out to work past the flower beds, and see the buds, knowing that by evening I'd have a flower or two for the table. By the time I got home, no flowers, no buds. They had been picked. It took a while, but I finally discovered the neighbourhood urchins were picking the flowers, and taking them home. I hope their mothers got the benefit. This went on for a couple of years. Since then, I have never planted flowers outside the fence again. Instead, I have planted beets, carrots, barley, leaf lettuce, spinach and radish. Basically, root crops or grasses - nothing with visible fruit or flowers. Never had a problem with the local youth since. I even tempted fate and told a small group that the lacy-leafed plants in one patch were carrots. They set me straight in short order. No way was the old guy going to fool them with that one. They know that carrots are orange, and presumably come in plastic bags and tin cans. Issues with by-law enforcement has been another issue. The barley in particular made them pretty crazy. It took a while to convince them it wasn't just unmowed grass. It didn't do well there anyway, not enough sun I expect. Anyway, the message from my story is, if your objective is to harvest for your own use, don't plant things people recognize easily in shared spaces, like tomatoes, cucumbers or yellow beans. Unless your objective is to feed others without regard to who gets the fruit of your labour, go with things that only gardeners will recognize. In addition to the root crops, I expect climbing green beans like scarlet runners might escape casual detection. If it were me, I would probably plant some climbing flowers or sunflowers on the street side of the space as additional camoflage. You'll lose the blooms, but the casual observer will likely ignore the non-flowering plants behind, figuring those flowers aren't ready to pick yet. Even in my own yard, I don't grow tomatoes without hiding them from street view - they're just too recognizable to those that don't respect the labour of others. Some days, I think there's a little too much of the little red hen in me. However, I think I should have some say in how the bounty of my efforts are distributed to others, and not leave it to the self-appointed to liberate it for their own use. Darryl Jesse Frayne wrote: Hi gardeners, Our yard at home is small, in the middle of the city, and shaded by a big tree. So we were looking for somewhere to grow vegetables. In the last three years we have had some space on public land that was contested over, puzzled over, dog-run over by our differing neighbourhood uses. We have put in years of meetings to secure this greenspace. We dug deeply through the sod and put in manure from the downtown farm (it used to be a zoo), turned over our little square, put in an apple tree and two grape vines... etc. Okay, the earth is pretty great. LOTS of worms and although in Toronto we surely have clay, not so bad, put the mulch in there for three years and it's starting to break up nicely. Okay, here's the deal. This is a public place, there are dogs, school kids and everyone else walking past the garden. I saw a guy walking away with a big grocery bag of my roma tomatoes. I say to him, Hi, I hope you're enjoying my garden? He says Oh, I thought it was school-kids put this in. Like that would make it okay, humm, and he keeps walking. Interesting. So my daughter put up a sign: Until we have dug a big enough garden to feed the whole neighbourhood, could you please leave the produce to the gardeners? (She has a thing that if anyone would be so hungry as to take food from someone else's garden, it must be okay.) Guys, I'm thinkin', this is the way it's going to be. I feel cranky now. Our new sign, for next spring, is: Here are 5 tomato seedlings. Plant and tend them and enjoy your gardening. I don't want to fence. I want straight-ahead. But I'm wondering what is coming. Thoughts? Jesse ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Darryl, I'm grateful for your response, today and for the last few years. But I must jump in: clearly, I hid my point. Not so much how to get people to stop stealing my garden food, but rather, are we about to have a world where people steal garden food? We are smug about our home gardens, but I think there might ultimately be a change. This was my sense, anyway, from this one guy, in affluent Toronto... Jesse --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jesse, I feel for you. I have not done guerilla gardening, intentionally anyway. Here's a story for you. When I first started breaking sod at our house, I put in some flower garden close to the street. My plan was to put some posies on the dining room table for my wife once in a while. Some days, I would head out to work past the flower beds, and see the buds, knowing that by evening I'd have a flower or two for the table. By the time I got home, no flowers, no buds. They had been picked. It took a while, but I finally discovered the neighbourhood urchins were picking the flowers, and taking them home. I hope their mothers got the benefit. This went on for a couple of years. Since then, I have never planted flowers outside the fence again. Instead, I have planted beets, carrots, barley, leaf lettuce, spinach and radish. Basically, root crops or grasses - nothing with visible fruit or flowers. Never had a problem with the local youth since. I even tempted fate and told a small group that the lacy-leafed plants in one patch were carrots. They set me straight in short order. No way was the old guy going to fool them with that one. They know that carrots are orange, and presumably come in plastic bags and tin cans. Issues with by-law enforcement has been another issue. The barley in particular made them pretty crazy. It took a while to convince them it wasn't just unmowed grass. It didn't do well there anyway, not enough sun I expect. Anyway, the message from my story is, if your objective is to harvest for your own use, don't plant things people recognize easily in shared spaces, like tomatoes, cucumbers or yellow beans. Unless your objective is to feed others without regard to who gets the fruit of your labour, go with things that only gardeners will recognize. In addition to the root crops, I expect climbing green beans like scarlet runners might escape casual detection. If it were me, I would probably plant some climbing flowers or sunflowers on the street side of the space as additional camoflage. You'll lose the blooms, but the casual observer will likely ignore the non-flowering plants behind, figuring those flowers aren't ready to pick yet. Even in my own yard, I don't grow tomatoes without hiding them from street view - they're just too recognizable to those that don't respect the labour of others. Some days, I think there's a little too much of the little red hen in me. However, I think I should have some say in how the bounty of my efforts are distributed to others, and not leave it to the self-appointed to liberate it for their own use. Darryl Jesse Frayne wrote: Hi gardeners, Our yard at home is small, in the middle of the city, and shaded by a big tree. So we were looking for somewhere to grow vegetables. In the last three years we have had some space on public land that was contested over, puzzled over, dog-run over by our differing neighbourhood uses. We have put in years of meetings to secure this greenspace. We dug deeply through the sod and put in manure from the downtown farm (it used to be a zoo), turned over our little square, put in an apple tree and two grape vines... etc. Okay, the earth is pretty great. LOTS of worms and although in Toronto we surely have clay, not so bad, put the mulch in there for three years and it's starting to break up nicely. Okay, here's the deal. This is a public place, there are dogs, school kids and everyone else walking past the garden. I saw a guy walking away with a big grocery bag of my roma tomatoes. I say to him, Hi, I hope you're enjoying my garden? He says Oh, I thought it was school-kids put this in. Like that would make it okay, humm, and he keeps walking. Interesting. So my daughter put up a sign: Until we have dug a big enough garden to feed the whole neighbourhood, could you please leave the produce to the gardeners? (She has a thing that if anyone would be so hungry as to take food from someone else's garden, it must be okay.) Guys, I'm thinkin', this is the way it's going to be. I feel cranky now. Our new sign, for next spring, is: Here are 5 tomato seedlings. Plant and tend them and enjoy your gardening. I don't want to fence. I want straight-ahead. But I'm wondering what is coming. Thoughts? Jesse ___
[Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Appropriately, I spent a few hours on Thanksgiving day clearing most of the plant matter from the garden and putting it on the compost pile. Robert, your recent posts have been an inspiration. Thank you. Our garden did not fare as well this year as in past years. Mostly due to lack of attention on my part, although not enough rain followed by too much rain wasn't helping either. Still, we had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with, even after giving them away to neighbours and taking them to work for barbecues and so on. The yellow cherry tomatoes were a special success. So sweet. My son took away a good haul of carrots, which he is enjoying immensely. Enough beets to make into baby food for my grandson, several feeds of peas in the garden and enough yellow beans to even make it to the dinner table a couple of times (after some serious consumption in the yard first). Squash was a disappointment - lots of fruit, but none big enough to justify harvesting. The radish and lettuce either drowned or were scavenged by local fauna. The spinach did not take at all. The jalapenos were bountiful, and I had been told I couldn't grow those this far north. The raspberries did well in the spring, but no autumn crop to speak of. I think the squash needs more sun, which means I need to find some vegetables and fruits that can do with less sun for certain parts of the garden. I'm also going to have to trim back my beautiful maple tree (a rescued weed from years ago), to let more sun reach the garden. Still, it will continue to provide good shade over the park bench we have outside the fence so neighbours can sit and rest if they so desire. After reading Robert's posts, I wonder if I should have gone for a fruit tree instead, perhaps cherry. However, the responsbility for the failures is all mine. The garden simply did not get the time it needed, as I elected to focus on other things much of this year. (Perhaps more on those in days to come - I have already told you about the electric bicycle victory, and a related campaign has already been joined.) This year, I have been reading the Square Foot Garden by Mel Bartholomew (Rodale). So full of small truths, I think it will transform how I garden from now on. The line about typical residential gardening just being industrial gardening on a small scale really hit home. I have not finished the book yet (priorities again), but already I feel comfortable recommending it. As did the being overwhelmed by harvest when it's ready, but having nothing fresh to eat before and after. While I'm making compost, I'm still hauling it in by the pick-up truck load each year to continue amending the soil. And at least two trips a year go to gardens other than my own. At least the truck is now running on 20% biodiesel from a local supplier. This summer, we managed a vacation in Nova Scotia, with a quick trip to Prince Edward Island. We visited Vesey Seed, and I have a whole array of new seeds to experiment with for next year. Any recommendations on materials to build the raised beds (4 feet square and a foot high)? Cost and appearance are both concerns. Too wet now to go out and finish the job, and rain is predicted for the next five days. Time to work on other things. Like sending out overdue e-mails. Darryl ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version
Hi Darryl...and Robert...your posts on the garden are beautiful...please let us hear more, whatever thoughts you may have, experiences, tips, meditations on the wonderments (and sorrows) of gardening, etc etc. No, it isn't biodiesel, but it's definitely "biofuel." I'm going outside now to get my hands "dirty." Thanks so much for the inspirations...oh...and Thomas Kelly too, forking his "horseshit."Thank you all. Mike DuPree - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 6:49 PM Subject: [Biofuel] Closing the Garden - Ottawa version Appropriately, I spent a few hours on Thanksgiving day clearing most of the plant matter from the garden and putting it on the compost pile. Robert, your recent posts have been an inspiration. Thank you. Our garden did not fare as well this year as in past years. Mostly due to lack of attention on my part, although not enough rain followed by too much rain wasn't helping either. Still, we had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with, even after giving them away to neighbours and taking them to work for barbecues and so on. The yellow cherry tomatoes were a special success. So sweet. My son took away a good haul of carrots, which he is enjoying immensely. Enough beets to make into baby food for my grandson, several feeds of peas in the garden and enough yellow beans to even make it to the dinner table a couple of times (after some serious consumption in the yard first). Squash was a disappointment - lots of fruit, but none big enough to justify harvesting. The radish and lettuce either drowned or were scavenged by local fauna. The spinach did not take at all. The jalapenos were bountiful, and I had been told I couldn't grow those this far north. The raspberries did well in the spring, but no autumn crop to speak of. I think the squash needs more sun, which means I need to find some vegetables and fruits that can do with less sun for certain parts of the garden. I'm also going to have to trim back my beautiful maple tree (a rescued weed from years ago), to let more sun reach the garden. Still, it will continue to provide good shade over the park bench we have outside the fence so neighbours can sit and rest if they so desire. After reading Robert's posts, I wonder if I should have gone for a fruit tree instead, perhaps cherry. However, the responsbility for the failures is all mine. The garden simply did not get the time it needed, as I elected to focus on other things much of this year. (Perhaps more on those in days to come - I have already told you about the electric bicycle victory, and a related campaign has already been joined.) This year, I have been reading the Square Foot Garden by Mel Bartholomew (Rodale). So full of small truths, I think it will transform how I garden from now on. The line about typical residential gardening just being industrial gardening on a small scale really hit home. I have not finished the book yet (priorities again), but already I feel comfortable recommending it. As did the being overwhelmed by harvest when it's ready, but having nothing fresh to eat before and after. While I'm making compost, I'm still hauling it in by the pick-up truck load each year to continue amending the soil. And at least two trips a year go to gardens other than my own. At least the truck is now running on 20% biodiesel from a local supplier. This summer, we managed a vacation in Nova Scotia, with a quick trip to Prince Edward Island. We visited Vesey Seed, and I have a whole array of new seeds to experiment with for next year. Any recommendations on materials to build the raised beds (4 feet square and a foot high)? Cost and appearance are both concerns. Too wet now to go out and finish the job, and rain is predicted for the next five days. Time to work on other things. Like sending out overdue e-mails. Darryl ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
