Weeding Back Garden, Planting Seeds, Transition Town, Springridge Commons

March 7, 2011

Ate a date square at UVIC, and myroommate's leftover eggplant curry. For the last few days I have been spending at least an hour in the big back garden trying to rescue it by digging out the weeds: grass, dandelion, pop weeds and creeping buttercup. It is enjoyable to get out and take some ownership of this garden, but the weeds are going to be an ongoing project.

I wanted to get seeds from Seeds of Victoria or Two Wings Farm as local is awesome, but I can't get out to them, and I have no credit card to order online (http://www.earthfuture.com/gardenpath/Seeds_Catalogue.htm and http://www.twowingsfarm.com/ ). I went to the Big Barn by the Root Cellar today to buy gardening supplies at it turned out to be $40: a bag of potting soil ($5), 6 trays ($12), and 8 bags of various open-pollinated, organic seeds ($18). It was more expensive than I thought it would be, but I didn't dare try to germinate the seeds straight into heavy clay soil here, particularly not with the hard frost we had this morning.

I mixed the house and potting soils half and half in the trays and set them out on window ledges. I didn't use all the seeds, trays or all of the soil, that way, I can plant in stages to stagger the harvest season and try to give some insurance in case I do it wrong the first time. My roommate has a few left over seeds of her own; open-pollinated, non-hybrid seeds allow you to save your own seeds from your own plants. So here is a photo of some of the freshly planted seeds, and the crop of last year's potatoes in a bowl. There is a meeting of the food working group of Transition Town Victoria, they will be meeting with representatives of the Springridge Commons Food Forest in Fernwood (http://transitionvictoria.ning.com/group/food and (http://lifecyclesproject.ca/initiatives/springridge_commons/index.php )I don't think I have time to go today, but the Food Forest forest is an awesome initiative: an old parking lot has been converted into a treed area where lots of different kinds of food is grown, on trees and under them, interspersed with plants that recharge the soil and feed the pollinators.