Ballard Edible Garden Tour, Part 3

The rain started to come down, so we could not explore this garden adequately.  The backyard has well-built raised beds with drip irrigation and supports for climbing plants.  Not seen is their "fence" of dwarf espaliered apple trees.  Similar to a couple other gardens, there is a toddler, willing to work.

Across the street is a curious area, also on the tour.  A large area is under construction for raised beds and a public park.  The City of Seattle bought the plot from a church which had died out due to celibacy rules.  This will be one of Seattle's P-Patches.  I would love to return later to see how this unusual open space develops.  More information here: 

By now we were huddling under our hoods because it was raining in earnest.  This last garden utilizes every bit of space on the boulevard all around their corner lot.  Both ornamental and edible plants are thickly planted, and you can see that "lettuce loves strawberries". 

Pots clamped onto a side fence grow attractive lettuce.

See the beads of water on this sign? 

 

Watch for a "NOT" Ballard Edible Garden Tour blog, coming up next!

Strathcona Community Garden

Along with nearby Cottonwood Community Garden, Strathcona Community Garden also had an open garden on July 11. The sign pointing the way emerges from a thicket of blackberry bushes and morning glory.
This community garden has existed longer than the Cottonwood one, and the plots seem a bit larger. This plot is neatly cared for and productive.

Carpenter skills have provided a diamond-shaped structure for Swiss chard, all set in a larger plot with a low fence.

Vancouver's warm weather hadn't really begun, so milk cartons filled with water help warm up the tomato plants.

Gardeners are always changing things--this appears to be a plot under development. Or perhaps there are new gardeners for this plot.

An area given over to flowers--

I caught someone harvesting their garlic.

I had to severely restrain myself from picking these Alpine strawberries. They are the best!

Back to the wild, a space that runs alongside the gardens, this time a marshy area, rather than the blackberry bushes and morning glory that were near the sign to the garden. Retaining wild areas in an urban area is crucial in many ways.

Cottonwood Community Garden

I didn't really need this sign to the Cottonwood Community Garden open house on July 11. I knew that I was at the correct spot when I saw white fluff from the tree covering everything, in this photo adding more mulch to the straw mulch!
The garden is situated next to some non-green industrial land. Think about all those hot and barren roofs. The garden has recently developed a new section with "really" raised beds for persons using wheel chairs or otherwise having difficulty in bending down.

There were countless photo opportunities, but I'll limit this blog to a small selection. Here is a typical scene although nothing is typical in community gardens--too many strong gardening personalities!

Not all is veggie...flowers abound. I liked these poppies.

Oops, these are chicory flowers. Everyone is going to have chicory in their plot next spring.

What a relaxing spot! But perhaps it's a bit too relaxing...morning glories were twining all over the plot, likely not appreciated by gardeners in the neighboring plots. Community life, like gardening, can have its ups and downs.
Next blog will cover the open house on the same day at the nearby Strathcona Community Garden.

Un Jardin Partage

On May 10, I visited a "jardin partage" in Paris near the Boulevard de l'Hopital. This active allotment garden is surrounded by old stone walls and high-rise apartments, offering some shelter from cold weather. Plantings were well-advanced for the season.




In France, gardeners often wait until after the "ice saints"to plant the warm weather vegetables. The ice saints' (St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and St. Gervais) days are on May 11, 12, &13 and folklore is that until after that, there is danger of a late frost. However, in this well-utilized plot, tomatoes, peppers, beans, and zucchini have already been planted by this folklore-defying gardener.

Birds are attracted to any green space in Paris and can be a problem in a vegetable garden, so this gardener has a netting over his lettuce and beans.

This creative gardener is repelling the birds with plastic bottle and CD technology:
Renting a plot for one year costs 100 Euros. The gardener of this plot growing fava beans acknowledged that it is only a hobby; one doesn't recoup one's cost. However, his family is trying to maximize production on the small plot. His wife has interplanted bush green beans between the rows of fava beans.


Borders are crucial in a shared garden area. Here perennial herbs are grown in a circular enclosure, but the mint is escaping!

Of the 4 gardens that I visited, this one was the most actively cultivated, showing community involvement. In fact, the gardeners were gathered for a pique-nique and offered us a glass of wine and home-made food!

Gardens involve work, too, like a clean-up of the garden shed.

Front Yard Gardens in France

This blog has not had many recent entries because I have been in France for 5 weeks. In France, finding edibles growing in a front-yard is difficult because often a front yard does not exist, or it is behind an opaque wall or fence. So, I am going to expand the criteria for the blog slightly to include allotment gardens, edibles growing in public places, and edibles growing in the front of a house that has no front yard.

In Paris there are over 40 "jardins partages" (apologies for no accent--this software is not very friendly for the French language); in Canada we call them allotment or community gardens. I enjoyed visiting 4 of them and will provide some photos in future blogs. You can find a map of the gardens' locations here:

http://www.paris.fr/portail/Parcs/Portal.lut?page_id=7347

Garden with Possibilities for Spring 2009

This vacant lot sits next to a Mennonite church in east Vancouver. The lot is used occasionally for the church's overflow parking, but some young people from the church came up with a vision to open up the use of this land for growing vegetables by people in the church or the community or by refugee claimants who attend the weekly food bank. Permission from the church and creation of the plots took place too late for growing vegetables in 2008, so only a few flowers were grown. Soil was brought in from a construction job site and mixed with purchased compost. Some of the costs were covered by a government grant. The soil must be good because the dandelions were flourishing in November!