The New Garden Area

The Parks, Forestry, and Recreation - park Supervisor, has given the Perth Dupont C.G. permission to use an otherwise unused-unusable area of the park to create a small gardening area. It is located on the south side of the park, next to the tennis court. This area is about 13' wide, and about 18.5' long.

The people on the waiting list were invited to help with this project, as they were the ones to be able to use this new gardening area. the plan was to start work on April 10th. We arranged to get a group of student volunteers to help with this garden and to plant the NO WORK POTATOES April 10 - view before we started our garden.

Step 1) we can plant no work potatoes for starters. ... as the name suggests.... very easy.

Step 2) plan the rest of the space. I would like to create a communal garden here, so that the folks on the waiting list can have the opportunity to do some gardening and have some harvest.

... the planning would include the use of the space... pathways and how many garden patches we should make ... measuring it too.

The first thing we did was to remove the winters collection doggy waste ... to remove it all from the growing area, and where we would be walking. Then we took care of the debris .. like pop cans, and other recyclable material. After that, we raked the area completely, to remove any other debris that would contaminate the growing area.

Next, we marked off with a string, the area where we wanted to put the potatoes, and then we sprinkled our certified organic fertilizer, the Spanish River Carbonatite, on the ground.

We got the Potatoes from two different sources.

Some came from the collection of heirloom potatoes that the garden coordinator has been caring for, for the past few years from a donation given to us by a member of the Toronto Community Garden Network - Dagmar Baur. The other source of potatoes came from the Karma Co-op.

The volunteers then placed the sprout-y potatoes - about eight inches apart, across the allocated area. ... right on the grass! That was all a lot of work, but much appreciated. The last step for these potatoes is to cover then with a two foot high layer of straw. This is what makes it "no work" the straw keeps the potatoes at an even temperature, and keeps them moist, so we don't have to worry about watering them.

There is still an area in this garden that is unused. We plan to put a yard or two of compost there, and plant a small garden of other veggies. it will not be suitable for root vegetables this year. The purpose of these methods of gardening is to soften the soil, and our hope is, that it will be easier to dig up in the fall.

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• Follow up May 2011 ... here is a picture of Kelly making the garden.

• Follow up September 2011 the harvest was great, and the soil was so soft that we just planted garlic directly into the soil, and covered it up again with the rest of the straw.