City aspires to more urban farming
It’s several years on a waiting list if you want a gardening allotment, so the city plans to increase the number of urban farming spots. The mayor talks here about food production, but I think she needs to also stress the value in terms of mental health and physical activity.
JaneyB 20:03 on 2021-09-01 Permalink
That’s great news!
Kate 21:22 on 2021-09-01 Permalink
I know, and I hope it’s not just campaign talk.
John B 15:21 on 2021-09-02 Permalink
I’m on the board of a community garden, so I have some experience here! It’s been at least a couple of years since any of the messaging we’re getting from the city mentioned anything other than food security. Gardening as a way to improve mental health seems to have been forgotten. It’s to the point where the city requires some minimum portion of the garden to be food production in most community gardens – so if you’re a gladiola lover or something you’ve got to have a bunch of tomatoes & zucchinis in there with your glads.
In the more populated boroughs I feel like funding isn’t as much of a problem as finding space that isn’t contaminated and doesn’t have a building on it. Funding may still be an issue, but this announcement gives me something to go to the borough with and say “let’s find some site for gardens,” which will be hard, but is easier than “lets find gardens and money.”
I feel like the city could do more to encourage gardening on private land. For example, make it easy to test the soil in your yard for contamination, or require all new construction to have a green roof. Roofs are great places to grow sun-loving vegetables.
The article mentions school gardens and fruit treed. I was involved in trying to set up a new school garden before the pandemic hit, and the school board told us we we weren’t allowed to plant fruit trees because they would be too messy and allegedly need more maintenance than non-fruit trees, (pro-tip: they don’t), never mind that the whole point was to get the kids out there looking after them, so it’ll take some arm-twisting or education to get more fruit trees out there.
This sounds good, but hopefully it means there will actually be more gardens in the central boroughs where they’re needed, not a bunch out in the suburbs where land is cheaper and everyone has a back yard anyway.
Kate 11:20 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
John B, I had a garden for a season in the Plateau, but it was just at the point I was moving to Villeray so going there became more inconvenient – so I lost it. They had a lot of rules about not growing flowers and not much fruit, and about having to plant not just food plants but a variety of them. Apparently this stemmed from one gardener who came in, planted his entire lot with tomatoes, disappeared for a couple of months, then came back and harvested his tomatoes with a sort of “Later, shitlords!” attitude. I guess he was lucky because tomato plants can totally collapse if it’s too dry or if they get particular pests, as I’m sure you know.
So they instituted all these rules making sure people had to show up and work on their plots. I see why: if you do get pests or very invasive weeds on a plot, it can affect the whole garden. And some of those gardeners are fierce.