Happy Mother's Day

Hello Foodie Friends. There has been so much going on that I don't know were to start.

SPEC's summer workshop series is going great (www.spec.roundtablelive.org/events).

Marnie and I did our 'Introduction to Food Production' workshop at SPEC in March.

And, again at the Evergreen Earth Day Festival in April.

The SPEC table at Jericho Park.

Our schools project continues to flourish, as do the spuds in tubs.

Seed session.

Catriona and the teachers.

We were really excited to see the new raised beds.

As for the SPEC rooftop garden, things are really coming up.

Roof workers.

Lettuce succession planting in protected culture.

Betsy is patiently waiting for the strawberries.

Happy Mother's Day to the mom's out there!
Cheers,
Tara

SPEC School Gardens Project in VSB news

Read all about our School Gardens Project this year (truly exciting!) in the Vancouver School Board's district news.

Click here to read "Creating a Buzz about School Gardens"

- marnie

Upcoming Gardening Workshops at SPEC

Want to learn more about gardening in small spaces? Please join us this month at one of our workshops. SPEC is co-hosting or facilitating a workshop every Saturday in April!

Saturday April 10th from 2-4pm learn Concepts in Year Round Gardening from Robin Wheeler



Saturday April 17th from 2-4pm learn about Bees, Birds and Biodiversity from Alicia Embree and Mandy Desautels

Saturday April 24th from 9-12pm explore Soil and Plant Health Management from Grant Watson

Suggested donations vary. Attendance is limited so please view more details and register on our events page here

All workshops to be held at SPEC - 2150 Maple Street, Vancouver

- Marnie

SPEC in April

It's a beautiful yet chilly Friday in April. With the sun shinning brightly it's a great day to take a few photos of our Rooftop Container Garden to share.

We will be starting regular bi-monthly Rooftop work days starting this Friday from 9 to 11am. Come start seedlings with us!


Peas are growing! (Will be transplanted to a larger container)


Anise Hyssop and a Calendula flower


Colourful flowers attract pollinators


Carole brought us these lovely broccoli starts!

- Marnie

March 28th Cambie Planting Day

Jodi and Tina bringing trellises and signs



Mandy and Vicky assessing



The brussel Sprouts and doing just fine



Garlic!



New signs! Thanks Jodi!



Planting potatoes - yukon golds (an early variety)



New raspberry plants


- marnie

March Update

Hello! Here's what's new:

School Gardens Project

Spring is in full swing! Our new school gardens are ready for planting and Catriona and I are busy helping these schools embark on their new adventure while continuing to support our school gardens from last year.

I had a lovely time this morning in a Kindergarten/grade 1 classroom at l'Ecole Bilingue facilitating a soils and compost lesson with Mandy, a dedicated volunteer. We looked at rocks, algae, sand, bark and other soil components and then set up an in-class worm composter. Pictures on their way soon!

Cambie Communal Garden

We're bringing more soil over this Friday and planting our cool weather crops this Sunday March 18th at 11am. Come join us for this planting work party and see all our new additions to the garden. Here's a picture of our new Mason Bee home!



Rooftop Demonstration Garden

We will be doing some work and planting of the roof containers this Friday at 10:30am. Join us at SPEC to lend a hand. Some planting was done on March 15th by students of the neighbouring Fraser Academy. Potatoes, oriental greens, broad beans and radishes amoung others should be sprouting out of our rooftop containers before long.

Workshops

We held an intro to organic container gardening workshop on March 20th at SPEC. Our next workshop is entitled Bees, Birds and Biodiversity and will be held April 17th from 2-4pm at SPEC. Cost is $10 per participant. Register here

Advocacy

Check out this link www.cban.ca/Take-Action/Support-Bill-C-474 and send an important email by March 29th to protect our seeds!

- marnie

School Gardens Update February

Hi there,

Ah, Spring! While my grammar teachers have taught me that the season shouldn't be capitalized I think it deserves the honour. While yes, of course I realize that it's only February, and Spring doesn't officially begin until March 21st, you've got to admit it feels like Spring has reached Vancouver (and I'm banking on "it's here to stay"). Regardless, we're forging ahead with our School Gardens to make sure they're ready for seeding before too long.

Most recently students from one of our participating schools made the trip to their neighbouring highschool's woodshop to construct their wooden planter beds. Made of untreated red cedar these beds will last without leaching harmful chemicals into the garden soil.

Here they are. A great beginning to the garden adventure.



- Marnie

Holiday Reading

This break is turning out to be a great time to catch up on some reading and gather up more inspiration for being a part of Vancouver's urban agriculture movement.

Here are a few good sites for those interested:

1) The Tyee's summer series on urban agriculture in BC - here

2) City Farmer's new News Blog for more international stories - here

Have a safe and happy end to 2009. We hope you have a lovely time welcoming in the New Year and that it is filled with great new resolutions, like growing local.

- Marnie

Happy Holidays

As you wind down for the upcoming holiday season the idea of building an organic food garden might be far from your thoughts. Not here at SPEC!

Our School Gardens Coordinator, Catriona Gordon and our School Gardens Facilitator, Marnie Newell, have been busy attending meetings, doing research and gathering resources to help 4 Vancouver Elementary Schools start their gardens in the spring.

It’s amazing what can go into the process when you’re trying to do things right!

We’ve been discussing garden plans/dreams with incredible teams of passionate people at all of our participating schools. But our goal is to start building the physical infrastructure for our garden as soon as the ground has thawed. This means deciding on the design and materials for garden boxes and raised beds, which are the best options for school gardens (the little guys don’t compact the soil by walking on the beds).

Our teams are learning more and more about what needs to go into a garden to make it successful. Perhaps the most important words here are “teamwork” and “staying power”. Many gardens have been built on school grounds only to be torn down soon after because they fell apart or their creators left them and no one kept them up. This is what we’re working to avoid right now. Schools interested in building a garden should establish a Garden Committee with teachers, parents, students, administrators and the community involved. The more individuals who are ready to commit to the garden’s continued success the better. When the project is a whole school and even a whole community initiative more people become invested in its success and ready to offer their expertise or even supplies to help it thrive and grow.

What has been absolutely inspiring in our experience so far is how many people believe in this work and are ready to donate their time and skills to make it the best it can be. The wealth of resources provided by the internet and other agriculture-related organizations is also astounding.

Keep an eye on this blog to learn more about this work. Updates, insights on school garden design and links to resources are on their way shortly.

posted by Marnie

Winter greetings from City Square!

Here are some images from our last meeting of the year, Dec. 7th.

Our beautiful new sign, created by SPEC volunteers Marcie and Carmen. Thanks so much for your contribution!

Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts still going strong, we look forward to harvesting these in the next couple months!

mmm, already looking delicious...

These were the oats we had planted in September, the most successful of the cover crops we planted. Once turned in, they will help to build the complexity of the soil.

Our gardener Beng, with a celery - harvested in December! Only in Vancouver....

Also parsnips! Although dirty, they are beautiful (and tasty!) A highly recommended crop for winter gardening.

This is one of the many marigolds we planted as a companion to tomatoes and other crops. Now that they have finished their life cycle we can harvest the seeds from the pods for next year.

Just open the dried pods, remove the seeds, and put in an envelope for future use. No need to spend $ on expensive bedding plants.

Our next meeting is Sunday, January 17th at 10am.

Seed catalogues are in, which means soon we will begin planning for next season. Let the fun begin!

news from City Square

We have managed to put most of our garden to bed for the winter! here are a few photo updates with some of the joys and lessons of this season

This is damage caused by white flies. The black spots are sooty mold, and seem to have had an effect, not on productivity, but on taste. The tomatoes and beans got hit especially hard, and they moved on to chard and celery later in season. In fact, they're still there.... Prevention and early action are key!

We have planted cover crops to build the soil, this is baby rye coming up. We also planted oats and clover in some of the beds, so we can compare which is more effective.

Ed, helping with clean up - thanks a bunch!

This is proof that pruninig your tomatoes encourages them to grow vertically - this one was 12 feet high! Also, we saw that none of the tomato roots had the root disease that we saw last season. Our tecnique of lasagna gardening really paid off!

Cheesmani tomatoes....productive right to the very end! We removed all the plants and saved the green tomatoes to ripen on windowsills.

In September we planted lettuce, spinach, beets, and radishes. Although they've sprouted, there hasn't been very much growth....

The parsnips are looking great, and can be harvested now. This past week we planted garlic in the other half of this bed, in a shadier spot, and also in a sunnier spot to see the difference. It will be hard to wait until they are next July or August, but we look forward to the scapes!

The beds with no cover cropped have been mulched with dry leaves in order to protect them for winter. The flowers were still too lovely to pull out.....

Although there's not much activity in the garden, we will still meet every second week until close to Christmas, with the next meeting being November 8th.

Harvest Time!

We have been very busy during the last week with our rooftop crops, harvesting, weighing and recording data. Thanks to the volunteers who have helped us out (Erin, Daryl, Laura, Megan, Frank, Ana, Tim and Jon) we have successfully harvested all of our radishes and obtained a lot of data.

The methods we used were as follows: (Each pot had 3 radishes in it)

- Remove the soil from the pot and using a bucket of water, separated each radish (attempting to keep the roots intact).





- Photograph the radishes with I.D tag
- Number radishes/leaves from each pot 1, 2, or 3
- Measure root length, bulb (height and width), and leaf (height and width)
- Weigh radish bulb
- Weigh radish leaves
- Dry the radish/leaves and weigh again

After labeling each radish and it's leaves with a number 1-3 we put them into a paper bag labeled with their I.D (an I.D. for example might read R-GG-1 meaning 'radish-Gaia Green- replicate 1'). We weighed them immediately after harvest as well as 5 or 6 days later after they had dried out. This is to account for any variation in mass due to water retention.

Now the fun part... analyzing all the numbers!

While we are doing that we will soon be starting to harvest the next crop... kale.

We noticed visually that there were increases in size of radish between the control (no amendment) and the ones grown with amendments. Not surprisingly the Miracle Grow radishes were quite a bit larger but we noticed that radishes grown in Gaia Green also did very well and seemed to have healthier, larger foliage.

We will look at the trends that the data tells us to get a better idea and know for sure what the differences are.. stay tuned!

The rooftop is getting greener...

It has been three weeks since we planted the kale, lettuce, peas and radishes on the rooftop and we have seen some good progress so far and some interesting things as well.

All of the crops have sprouted to some degree.

Our lettuce (C.V darkness) was the slowest to germinate. Around the two week mark there were tiny red leaflets showing and since then progress has been minimal. A few of the pots are definitely growing but many of the lettuces are still very small seedlings.

The radish (C.V altaglobe) has certainly flourished. The bright green stalks are a few inches high already and most of the seeds in each pot seem to have germinated (around 5-12 per pot).
Both the kale (C.V red russian) and the peas (C.V little marvel) are growing well. However, something has been eating most of our peas! We think it could be the crows that often hang around the roof top. The peas on the south end of the roof received the most damage; there are still a number of healthy looking peas that escaped being eaten... so far!

We thinned the plants on Sunday to densities more suitable to the size of the pot. We thinned the radishes to three per pot, the kale and the pea to two per pot each, and for now we left the lettuce as is.




Now we wait!
Each week we will document our observations of growth to check for observable treatment effects