Guest Visiting the Garden - John Slack

Certified Organic Fertilizer

Notes form John Slack's visit June 14.

John Slack came to Toronto, Saturday June 14th. He delivered some Certified Organic Fertilizer call Carbonatite to the Perth Dupont Community Garden. He also brought some of his special recipe Compost. Is local peat moss, mixed with horse manure, sheep manure and 10% Carbonatite.

Carbonatite is a Agro-mineral that is naturally found in northern Ont. It contains all of the essential minerals needed for crops, and contains the most extensive suite of trace minerals of any organic or chemical fertilizer that he has ever tested. John is also a organic farmer and makes his own compost.

After John Arrived and dropped off the Carbonatite and compost, John answered some gardening questions. He was also very interested in talking with the other local community garden, gardener-Audrey, from the "Garden Party" at the Lutheran Church about urban agriculture, and the issues we have to face.

He wasn't able to discuss how he gets this mineral from the north, and protects the Nature reserve in the Spanish River Forest, near his mine, but he will be sending that information to me shortly.

We took a tour of the Perth Dupont Community Garden, I pointed out the Butterfly Garden and that we are trying to get a water feature going for our little pollinators. He told me that he is also a bee keeper and what he has found useful is to have some compost and Carbonatite saturated with water in a tray. It isn't like standing water, so it won't attract mosquitos. He finds that the bees will go for the moist mixture first, before standing water.

Nao and Audrey arrived. Audrey had a question about leaf miner in her leafy green veggies like spinach. john suggested companion planting (combinations of plantings produce crops that grow better and are healthier because of their proximity) like nasturtium and lambs quarters, and he also suggested sacrifice plants or trap plants (Lure plants are located near a plant you want protected. Insects attack the lure plant and can be hand picked and destroyed) he said that the leaf miner loves radicchio, and that it is a good lure plant to protect your spinach.

But then he said that the real problem is soil health. he went on to describe how healthy soil makes the plants -not only richer in nutrients for us to eat, but it make them stronger, to resist insects and disease. He also described what is in healthy soil, and what makes it healthy and how that is reflected in the plant. (Clear description of this will be provided soon)

We continued to tour the garden, and we stopped at May's garden, where he took his soil-sampler tool, and took a sample of her soil. He was very pleased to see that there was a good reaction with the solution that he drizzled onto it. We told him about the Sicilian Squash that she grew last year. Each one was over 20lb.s, and the prize one was 25lbs!

The Patel family arrived, and Mr Patel came to join the discussion. Audrey said "Are you the one with the "bionic beans"?" John's ears perked up... So we told him that Mr Patel has connections with the Agriculture University in India. They have developed a bush bean from a favourite pole bean. The original beans grew very tall up trellis's, and you would need a ladder to harvest them. This new variety, is less then 3' tall, and has a second harvest later in the summer.

We continued to walk around the garden, and came to Yves' garden. John could tell that he had double dug his garden. Double digging is a good technique especially, for raised beds. John started to explain that this is the technique that he uses for his garden. It allows him to do Bio-intensive gardening and then we started to talk about John Jevons In his website, he offers "GROW BIOINTENSIVE Workshops, an excellent opportunity to acquire a wealth of information on the most efficient gardening method we know. This information has been gathered from over thirty-five years of research, and is currently in use in over 130 countries around the world." This is an exert from his website.

We then took a look at my garden, and I showed him my potatoes. The "no work" method of growing potatoes is to place them on the ground and put a one and a half feet of straw on top of them. And you can see the green tops of the potatoes coming up.

We also looked at the community gardens' "Garlic Collection" We have several types of garlic that we are documenting for Seeds of Diversity -Great Canadian Garlic Collection. We put straw down as mulch for the winter and wheat is now growing as a companion to my garlic's.

Of course, that brought up the subject of how to get straw down into the city. The good news is that John has connections and can get us organic straw at a very reasonable price. I will set up a time to make a collected order.

John had to leave to go to an other appointment, but he is looking forward to coming back for a soil day.

Every one that came:

• Miro Zawistowski, High Park allotment gardens,

• Audrey Yates, form The Garden Party at the Lutheran Church

• Nao Ito, Friend of the Toronto Community Garden Network

• Edward Bhim, one of our gardeners

• The Patel family, also community garden members

• and me- Susan Berman coordinator of the Perth Dupont Community Garden