Small Scale Gardening Workshop with Santropol! This is exciting!

[via Santropol]

This is it! Jean-Martin Fortier, family farmer at Les Jardins de la Grelinette, renown organic agriculture expert, and author of Le jardinier-maraîcher will be giving a workshop on small scale organic gardening (this time, in English)!

Come to meet Quebec's pioneer in small scale bio-intensive farming!

During this 2-hour long training, the urban gardener will learn all the tricks and tips of a professional farmer while those who are willing to start their own small scale commercial farming operation will find enough inspiration to get started!

Jean-Martin Fortier has more than 10 years of experience as an organic vegetable grower. He is the founder and co-owner of Les Jardins de la Grelinette, a well-known farm in Québec for its intensive methods of production. Jean-Martin as recently published a book (in french) where he details how he and his wife manage more than 1 acre and half, while using no tractor. His book, le jardinier-maraîcher, explains the methods, tools, and horticultural techniques, which can turn a market garden into a viable small farm. More information on Jean-Martin Fortier and his book can be found at this website:www.lejardiniermaraicher.com.

For a video of Jean-Martin's farm, click here.


During this training, Jean-Martin will present the tools and techniques he uses to make diversified bio-intensive vegetable production possible and productive! In more details, he’ll show us how to:

• Set-up a garden using permaculture design;
• Cultivate on permanent raised beds using a no-till approach;
• Improve weeding using the best manual tools available;
• Efficiently fight against plant diseases and garden pests;
• Extend the gardening season by protecting your plants from cold temperatures using passive structures;
• Use alternative machinerie (vs tractor) to work the soil.

When: Wednesday, November 28th, 6:30-8:30pm.
Where:  Santropol Roulant, 111 Roy East (corner Coloniale).
Cost: 15$ per person. To purchase your tickets, click here.

You can check out the Facebook event or website page here.

For more info, please contact Noémie at 514-284-9335 or by email.

**This training is also a fundraising event for Santropol Roulant’s urban agriculture activities. Thanks for your support!**

Closing the Garden: The dirtiest part of gardening after opening the garden

Welly welly welly welly well, seems like fall has arrived. Time to close the garden! Which is exactly what Campus Crops did on November 3.

What a nice team!  ...and Carl, too, over there.

Closing the garden is a quite crucial step, as the way it is done will determine the quality and compaction of the soil when spring comes. There are also some things that can done at that time if one wants to reduce the risks of diseases for the following growing season. A basic routine for putting a garden to bed consists of about 5 simple steps, namely: (1) uprooting all annuals, (2) cutting back all perennials, (3) amending the soil, (4) mulching the whole thing, and (5) a general clean up of the area (tools, bags of soil, various structures left there).

That's pretty much what we did, but since the soil in our garden is very clayish, we thought we could do a little more to improve it a bit. Clayish soil is, you probably guessed it, a soil that is characterized by a large proportion of clay, compared to the respective proportions of organic matter and sand. Clayish soil drains poorly. This means that it takes quite a long time for water to percolate deep into the soil, which increases the risks of shallow watering and all the bad things that come with it. The converse of draining poorly is retaining water well, so it's easier for the soil to get water-logged and for the plant roots to rot if they sit in water for too long. Clayish soil also cracks and crusts easily when it dries, and, clay being clay, compacts a lot if it's walked too much a lot or if it gets too dry. 

All this amounts to a lot of extra care toward the soil in an environment that is already not so optimal. In order to improve clayish soil, a common method is to mix a lot of organic material into the first 6 inches or so of soil. This increases the proportion of organic matter, and brings the composition closer to that of loam (a well-balanced soil). We could have added sand too, but organic matter enriches the soil, while sand is, well, sand.

It is also possible to improve clayish soil during the growing season with minimal inputs (i.e. instead of hauling half a dozen cubic yards of mulch and compost to the garden): tubers (e.g. potatoes), root vegetables (e.g. carrots) and cover crops with deep taproots (e.g. rye) can be planted. They will break up the soil as they grow, leach nutrients from the deep layers up to the surface and leave some organic matter (their roots) to rot in the soil. That's actually the 'permaculture-approved' method, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and can also demand some sacrifice, like growing nothing but rye for a year because root vegetables and tubers don't grow well in a soil that is too clayish (we had such problems with our root vegetables last year).

Anyway, we decided to get some mulch and compost and turn it into the soil. We got half the compost we used from the city of Montreal and the rest came from Big Hanna, the hot-compost machine on downtown campus.

Getting compost at the city give-away: "Maaaaah!"

Let's focus back on the action. Our plan was quite simple:

1) Arrive at the garden at 1pm.

2) Uproot all annuals.

3) Cut back the few perennials we have (rhubarb, chives and blackberries) and transfer them in pots while we do the rest.

4) Turn, break and level the soil over all the garden.

5) Add a 3-inch layer of mulch and the compost we had.

6) Mix that layer with the turned soil underneath.

7) Cover the whole area with dead leaves in order to avoid extra compaction from the weight of the snow and ice.

8) Call it a day and go eat some vegan chili.

Let's plan shits! We need people, smiles and BLUE TARPS! 

Everything went quite well, aside from the fact that it rained daily during the previous week. Needless to say, the soil was heavy and sticky, though the rain seemed to have softened it a bit. Some lovely and courageous people took a few hours of their day to come and help us; we reached a peak of 9 people around 4pm. It also seemed like we ordered too much mulch, so we couldn't really mix it into the soil because the layer was too thick. Hopefully we'll have a much nicer soil next spring anyway!

Now that we're totally done with gardening until next year, Campus Crops will continue to host various workshops and film screenings throughout the winter. There will be one every month or so. Stay up to date by checking our blog, subscribing to our listserv or sending an email to campuscrops@gmail.com. You can also send us any idea of film you'd like us to screen, or workshop or event you'd like us to host! We also have weekly meetings every  Tuesdays at 5pm in the MUGS Lounge (Burnside, room 305) during which we plan and organize said workshops.

I've said enough, here are more pictures!

Clay, mud and short shovels

"Turning the soil: check! Now we just need to add the mulch and the compost, turn everything into the soil and put some dead leaves over the whole thing. We should be done soon!"

Day 72: Almost done. We finally added the leaves. The night fell a few days ago but the sun never came back. We're running low on food. Fortunately, we can eat the leaves, flowers and roots of the dead plants from the garden. We'll fire another rocket flare tomorrow; hopefully someone will come to our rescue.
(Seriously, though, we finished at 7pm)

Resources for putting the garden to bed:
5 steps to putting your vegetable garden to bed
Putting Your Garden to Bed; Your Best Move for Spring