Author: Sean

#GrowTO

On By SeanIn Compost Education Centre, Johnson-Su Demonstration Farm, Landrace Squash Breeding Project, Lunar Garden and Permaculture SpaceLeave a comment

we’ll be offering a number of free workshops, tours and events on compost, composting and backyard farming as part of Toronto Urban Agriculture Week 2023 from Sept. 16-24…..

spaces are limited: to register for the free workshops and tours at Crooked Farmz or Downsview Park Farm, please see https://crookedfarmz.localline.ca/ under “Toronto Urban Agriculture Week”…..

(note: the evening workshop/demo at Carrot Common Rooftop Garden is by registration with Priya Jain at the Carrot, but I don’t know the specifics yet, whether it is eventbrite or direct email.)

Season One: 2023

On By SeanIn Landrace Squash Breeding ProjectLeave a comment

This is kind of a loose and haphazard way of beginning the landrace squash project, but I trust the technique will more than make up for the initial disarray.

  • planted in 13 Three Sisters companion mounds as part of a “lunar calendar” diagram (plus extra seed scattered wild throughout the field)
  • minor amount of hand-held spray irrigation to assist with germination, but otherwise plants have depended on rainfall
  • very rainy summer season, compared to typical Toronto summers over the past decade
  • no babying of plants, squash will receive a dose of compost tea on Aug. 9, but otherwise the plants will have fended for themselves

Squash seed planted:

  1. Butternut (EFAO Seed Swap)
  2. Sugar Pumpkin (saved Crooked Farmz seeds, originally from William Dam)
  3. Acorn (Crooked Farmz)
  4. Fairytale Pumpkin (P. Jain)
  5. Sibley Winter (Withrow Park Farmers’ Market Seed Library)
  6. Flat White Boer Pumpkin (Withrow Park Farmers’ Market Seed Library)
  7. Delicata (Withrow Park Farmers’ Market Seed Library)
  8. Koginut (Lady Cone Hop Yard)
  9. Georgia Candy Roaster Hubbard (C. Pearce)
  10. Kogigu (C. Pearce)
  11. Sweet Dumpling (C. Pearce)
  12. Red Kuri (C. Pearce)
  13. Giant Banana (R. Teitel-Payne)

Lunar garden update

On By SeanIn Landrace Squash Breeding Project, Lunar Garden and Permaculture SpaceLeave a comment

was out at Downsview yesterday for the first time in a week and a half, and i really was struck by the ways this space was overgrown, and yet how the lunar calendar diagram was still sustaining itself, how alive with insects the entire place was, how the outlines of a ‘permaculture of least intervention’ revealed themselves…. it was truly a living classroom for me and completely reoriented (for at least the third time) how i imagine this place and what my practice will be here.

references include Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘One Straw Revolution’, naturally, but also the intriguing ‘Landrace Gardening: Food Security Through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination’ by Joseph Lofthouse, which i read cover to cover over the break….. my desire for greater biodiversity in compost and soil is shared by Lofthouse who seeks the same thing in seeds and vegetables.