Incoming and ongoing seedling sales in Montréal!

Some resources for the gardeners who are looking for seedlings to add to their garden.

Vert-ta-ville seedling sale at the Concordia Greenhouse

 

Flowers, vegetables and herb heirloom seedlings at 3$ a piece from May 21 to May 24 (or until stocks are exhausted, which tends to happen quite fast).

Find more information in the Facebook event or on the Concordia Greenhouse blog.

Santropol Roulant's Seedling Sale

 

Come one, come all to the Roulant's Annual Seedling Sale!

On Saturday, June 1st, from 11am to 5pm, we'll be selling the extra seedlings from our greenhouses, all of which have been grown from organic seeds using organic methods. They're perfect for getting your garden off to a good start.

All proceeds from the sale will go to Santropol Roulant's urban and peri-urban agriculture programs. With a couple of exceptions, seedlings sell for $3.50 each, or 3 for $10. Most seedlings have been potted up to 3 1/2 inch pots. 

Here's what we expect to have for sale: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, basil, parsley, lettuce, shallots, ground cherries, cucumbers, summer and winter squash, and more!

If you'd like to reserve your plants in advance, please email Tim. See you at the sale!

Santropol Roulant is located at 111, Roy east.

Get your seedlings at Coop La Maison Verte

 

La Maison Verte, in NDG, also offers seedlings that you can order on their website and pick up at their store (5785 Sherbrooke West) every Saturday until June 8.

 

Greening Indoor McGill First Plant Sale

Annual GIMI indoor and outdoor plant sale!
Friday, June 7^th 11-2pm
Downtown campus, intersection of lower fields (between Arts building & Roddick gates)

CALL FOR DONATIONS 

Now that spring is finally here it’s time to think about plants!!  Are any of your indoor office plants getting too big? Do you need to divide your garden perennials?  Are your neighbours and friends tired of accepting your divided perennial “gifts”? Did you start too many tomato plants? We would be thrilled to receive any of them!

The Greening Indoor McGill Initiative is hosting its 1^st Annual McGill indoor and outdoor plant sale on Friday, June 7^th, 2013 from 11-2pm at the intersection, lower campus fields (halfway between Arts building & Roddick gates). Mark your calendars! Pass the message on!

Find more information on their website.

Container garden opening! May 13-14

Credits: Dana Skolnick

UPDATE: Due to the weather on Monday, we are not done setting up the container garden. Join us behind the James Administration building between 1-4pm this Thursday May 16 if you want to help out!
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Finally, it's time to get our hands dirty! Campus Crops will be setting up its container garden behind the James Administration building next Monday and Tuesday, May 13 & 14 from 1-4pm! If the weather is clement, we will start planting in our containers on Thursday May 16 at 1pm.

Bring clothes you don't mind getting dirt on, and working gloves, as we will be shoveling rocks and soil as well as transporting containers across the area. Campus Crops has a few pairs of gloves for those who don't have any.

Here's a map to our "Garden Terrace". See you there next Monday and/or Tuesday!

Email us at campuscrops@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Our container garden! Soon!

It is now a matter of days/weeks (depends how you count) before we can put up our container garden and plant stuff! While our soil garden is being "renovated" (or destroyed, depends how you see it), we planned the design and crops for our garden behind the James Administration building.

It's going to be a great garden, but we'll need help to actually make the containers (since we took all of them apart last year) and plant crops. We have yet to decide on an exact date for this, but stay tuned. If you feel like washing and repairing some containers in the meantime, just email us at campuscrops@gmail.com.

Anyway, here are some cool 3D pictures of the site (we want to thank the MacDonald campus computer labs for their landscaping software).

For those who want to know:
-That's an A-frame.
-That's a hoophouse.
-That's our potato box.
-And that's the model of self-watering containers we're going to build.

To scale. View from the North-East (James Admin building on the left, going upslope).

To scale. View from the South.

The set of 10 containers at the bottom left will be under our A-frame. This plan is to scale.

The characters are a bit small, but that's the best we could get on this blog. This plan is not to scale.

Campus Crops is hiring!

Campus Crops is now hiring a Garden Coordinator

Position Dates: June 1 - September 15

Hours: 20-25 hours/week

Pay Rate: $ 3000

About Campus Crops:

Campus Crops is an urban gardening initiative at McGill University's downtown campus. For five years, we have been running a garden behind the McGill School of Environment building at 3534 University. Three years ago we expanded to the terrace space behind the James Administration building and built a self-watering container garden. Apart from maintaining our two garden plots, we also organize workshops, film screenings and other activities. If you have any questions feel free to email campuscrops@gmail.com or check out our blog for what sort of things we've done in the past!

Responsibilities:

- Day to day operations in the garden: setting gardening hours with volunteers, planting, building self-watering containers, weeding, harvesting, etc

- Community outreach, recruiting volunteers

- Collaborating with Santropol Roulant's Edible Campus Garden on workshops, events, and volunteer base

- Preparing a workshop for RadFrosh at the end of August, as well as other workshops throughout the season

- Liaise with administration on campus (SSMU, SPF, MSE, Grounds, etc.)

- Design and facilitate a training for new collective members in the fall (including an overview of our mandate and consensus based decision-making)

- Prepare a written exit report to be presented to the collective at the end of September

Qualifications:

- Ability to work autonomously

- Ability to work with volunteers (able to organize and delegate tasks to volunteers)

- Ability to work in English

- Ability to plan events

- Gardening experience

- Strong organizational skills

- Strong knowledge/interest of food-related political, social, economic and environmental issues, urban agriculture and/or food preservation

- Commitment to social change and to Campus Crops' mandate of social and environmental justice and ability to apply this to all aspects of the job

Assets:

- Familiarity with Campus Crops’ work

- Familiarity with Montreal-area community groups

- Ability to speak French

- Ability to perform the physical tasks involved with garden upkeep

- Knowledge of plant pests & diseases management

Application Deadline:

Please submit your resume by May 10th to campuscrops@gmail.com. There is an option to submit a brief cover letter explaining your interest in Campus Crops and the position. Selected candidates will be interviewed from the 13th - 17th.  

Notes:

We welcome a diversity of applicants including those from traditionally marginalized groups, and we encourage you to mention this in your application.

[POSTPONED] Garden Opening!!

NOTICE
Unfortunately, due to renovations happening in the garden, we have to postpone the garden opening until later in May. Stay tuned for our bed-making and planting date(s)! We will also start working on our container garden soon!

The renovations implied digging trenches and filling them with gravel, as you can see in the pictures below. All the topsoil (and even more) was removed from the garden and will be replaced with better soil, because (we still can't find any good reason for this, sustainability-wise). Earth was also excavated outside the garden, and retaining walls will be installed around the garden.

Here are some pictures of the renovations:

McGill Grounds Services started the renovations without asking or informing us, so we left them a message. It's been a renewed surprise every day work was done at the garden, as it took us a few email exchanges before being informed of the full extent of the renovations. Hence the WTF.

Following the flood, people at McGill Grounds got worried about water infiltration in the basement of the Birks building (upper right) and the MSE building (upper left, can barely see it). They decided to install a french drain along both buildings and the paved area between them (upper center), which happens to be exactly where our garden is.

Here's the garden. You can see, starting from the upper center and snaking down to the Birks building on the right, where the french drain is going to be installed (the grey stuff, which is gravel and geotextile). We've been told the area would not be covered by earth, so this is a big loss of space for us (the trench for the drain is 18-24 inches wide). The gravel and geotextile near the bottom and on the left will be used to install a retaining wall along the garden edge, in order to direct any running water toward the street through the driveway (upper left). Water conservation, anyone?

UPDATE MAY 1, 2013:

As you can see the garden will be surrounded by a small wall.

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It is time! Campus Crops will be opening for the season on April 3rd. We have a lot of clean up to do because of the flood last January. We will also shape our gardening beds, and amend the soil (add compost). Anyone interested in getting involved is invited to come to any (or all!) of the four weekly gardening sessions happening throughout April (4 per week during 4 weeks, basically):

Monday 5-7pm
Wednesday 5-7pm
Friday 5-7pm
Saturday 1-5pm

The garden is located behind the McGill School of Environment @ 3534 University St.

This is weather permitting. In other words, if it's rainy, or really cold, and the soil is either very wet or frozen, don't bother showing up or ask via email beforehand; it is very likely we will not be able to work on those days.

If you want to learn more, there are also weekly meetings held on Tuesday @ 5:30pm in Burnside 305.
Hope to see you there!

Find the Facebook event here. We'll try to update the event well enough in advance to indicate if the weather allows us to work in the garden.

The only good bombs are seed bombs

Source: http://chrisglass.com/album/2010/03/08/seed-bomb-factory/

Seed bombs are small balls of growing medium (most often soil), fertilizer and seeds that were originally used for aerial reforestation in hard-to-access areas. The most common recipe for home-made seed bombs is credited to Fukuoka, a Japanese biologist who used them in his fields for "no-work" farming. Those seed balls allowed him to seed his farm without equipment or the need for tilling. Today, seed bombs are popular for their use in guerilla gardening, i.e. the practice of adding plants to neglected, vacant or otherwise underused (often urban) spaces, private or public. The aim of an operation of guerilla gardening can either be to beautify a public view, or the seeds can be carefully selected to cause damage to a property (e.g. planting flowers in a local army reserve). Seed bombs can also be used in the home garden for a precise seeding.

Source: http://www.gardenshowblog.com/uncategorized/
seminar-spotlight-get-started-with-guerrilla-gardening/

Fukuoka's recipe used simple ingredients, namely clay, compost and seeds. The clay in the seed bomb helps hold the mix together and prevents birds and insect from nibbling on seeds.  The compost ensures the seeds have good nutrients right from the start.  The clay will begin to break down after a few rainfalls and the seeds should start to sprout. It’s best to use seed bombs when they’re fresh, but they can be stored up to several weeks in cool, dark place (otherwise will start sprouting! and will die without right conditions).  Seedlings usually visible in 1-3 weeks. 



Here's how to make your own!

Materials
-large bowl or tray or container of some sort
-clay (if you're in Montreal, you can find some here)
-good compost (old, completely decomposed)
-seeds of your choice (we suggest native plants, but make sure whatever you're planting is not invasive) 
-water

Recipe
There is a cornucopia of seed bombs recipe, calling for a ratio clay to compost to seeds anything from 1:1:1 to 3:1:1 or 5:3:1 or anything in-between. You can test different ratios until you find a recipe that suits your needs, but the minimal requirements are that the bomb hold together once dry, but that it also breaks down easily under rain.

The correct ratio will also depend on the seeds used in the recipe. The ratios above are good for medium-sized seeds (think sunflower seeds). Bigger seeds, like bean seeds, will probably prefer being added individually in the balls after they're formed, at a rate of about one seed per golf-ball-sized seed bomb. Smaller seeds (most flowers and greens; anything smaller than rice) will probably benefit from a 2:2:1 ratio in small balls, or they can simply be added on formed seed bombs and then pressed into the ball (not too deep).

1) Measure all your ingredients (clay, compost and seeds) and put them in a container. Mix well.

2) Add water, a small amount at a time, until you obtain a dough that holds well together (like cookie dough; try pressing it in flat disks to see how well it sticks together) but that is not too wet (wet seed balls may cause the seeds to germinate prematurely, especially if using small seeds).

3) Form in balls of any size and shape. 

4) Let dry for at least 2 days. Some people suggest drying in sun, but clay tends to crack and crust when it is exposed to sunlight and dries too fast. For a safe drying process, put the balls in a warm, dark place with good ventilation. Turn the balls once or twice per day so they can dry uniformly. If the seeds germinate prematurely, plant them or lose them.

5) Throw! (Or use a slinger!)

Source: http://www.goinghometoroost.com/2010/handmade/how-to-start-seeds-make-seed-bombs/

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Source: http://www.soenyun.com/Blog/blog/2010/10/08/
seed-bomb-controversies/

Note on seeds: It is possible to mix seeds in a seed bomb. Important things to consider, though, are the size of the seeds, their temperature/season of germination, their rate of germination and the needs of the plants in terms of soil and sunlight. Seeds of unequal size are not likely to germinate at the same time, since bigger seeds need more water than smaller seeds in order to activate the germination process. Likewise, any combination of seeds that do not germinate in similar conditions, or of plants that do not grow in the same conditions (e.g. do they need well-drained soil? can they tolerate drought? do they do well in poor soil? does one prefer shade while the other needs full sun exposure?), are likely to favor one plant over another, in which case one will survive and the other will die or won't grow well.

Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is

Organized by McGill's Midnight Kitchen and Concordia's People's Potato, Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is is "a week of food talk, teach-ins, skill sharing around food justice on campus and beyond." Campus Crops will be hosting a seed bomb-making workshop this Tuesday March 19 at 2:30pm!

See here for all the other awesome workshops!