POTS & PLANTS
/BE THE FARMER!
Get out those pots and gardening tools — it’s time to do some farming!
by Peter W. Gribble
John Ivison had an excellent piece, “No food shortage, but shocks not over” in the Vancouver Sun recently. He detailed how the potential disaster in the food supply chain was averted for the moment despite panic buying, border closures and initial labour shortages. An interesting detail: the restaurant business accounted for a third of Canadian food processors and farmers’ budgets. To compensate for closed restaurants, 50 farmers’ markets now exist online in Canada.
Ivison’s last line was a zinger, “It is a timely reminder that, for all our sophistication, all that lies between us and ruin is six inches of topsoil and a farmer.”
The gardener in me had an instant reaction: be the farmer!
Traditional farmers seldom start with a five by nine balcony. Even if you face south, taller buildings than yours will eclipse the requisite six hours of sun necessary for most produce. However, I learnt a lot about growing plants on a West End balcony where the building opposite blocked two hours of important afternoon sunlight each day. It was frustrating. Two floors higher and the range of successfully raised provender would have been very satisfying.
Reduced hours of sunlight taught me that some crops don’t need sun or the six inches of topsoil. (An important aside here: on a balcony, we are growing our plants and produce in pots, which need potting soil not topsoil, which is too dense.) As mentioned in previous articles a seed sprouter on a kitchen counter will provide fresh sprouts to add not only a zippy taste and crunch to a wide range of dishes, but a boost of micronutrients to the diet. Scallions need a bright or sunny location but can be grown without soil in a hyacinth glass, their roots in water that is refreshed daily. Microgreens from cress to mesclun mixes can be grown in small pots under lights and be ready for snipping within a week or so. Mint is a herb that grows happily in sun or part shade.
Farmers work with acres, an acre being 43,560 square feet. One traditional measure of an acre was how much one man behind one ox could plough in one day. Strata rules will likely disallow your pet ox, but you could probably pass your plough off as a piece of sculpture.
Let’s take a measure of the apartment building you live in: the acreage beneath and above your feet – all twenty-five floors of it (supposing this is what it is.) For example, if there are ten units per floor each with a nine by five foot (45 square feet) balcony, the total balcony area per floor is 450 square feet. With twenty-five floors to our building, that’s 11,250 square feet, which is more than a quarter of an acre (10,890 square feet.) It’s a start. And that’s not counting window sills and countertops. We can call this vertical acreage.
With the available acreage around you – some perhaps with sunnier vantages than yours – you could put up a message on the notice board asking if anyone else balcony gardens in the building and/or is interested in a grow your own food exchange with simple, friendly tradeoffs. It’ll be the world in small.
If the food industry was able to get back on its feet and put food on the shelves around the country, surely enough like-minded people in almost any building could work together and agree on an easy understanding or free trade agreement on food grown in the building. It happens all the time in garden plots all over the world, particularly at harvest time. It’ll boost the neighbourliness in the building despite the lockdown and physical distancing, while adding to everyone’s gardening knowledge and experience.
With a little creativity, your balcony can become a productive vegetable garden.
Of course, not everyone will be interested or committed or they will promise then flag out a few weeks later. Keep it simple. Some people will be intrigued, but if they are first-time gardeners they might be nervous about making mistakes or killing precious plants, so help them along. Others won’t want to garden but will offer to buy soil or provide cool dry storage for the produce or maybe help in the canning or preserving process. Who knows? In a year from now crop rotation might have taken on a whole new meaning with the south balconies on the 9th floor growing corn one year, then beans the next to re-enrich the soil.
It’s a division of labour, a share in the harvest. Before you know it you might hear – or even better – be part of a story such as ...
Have you heard what the eighth-floor apartments are planning? 802 is growing the parsley, cilantro and mesclun greens; 803, the jalapeno peppers; 804’s onions will be ready in August, 805’s fall-planted garlic is going to be harvested and cured in July. 806 is doing all the tomatoes because her live-in mom’s salsa recipe is the best. Sometime in August when the veggies have been harvested, chopped and mixed, residents in the building will be invited to the eighth floor to bring their bowl and glass and go to door-to-door – à la Hallowe’en – for a scoop of the 8th Floor Salsa. 807 will make a special version of her scrumptious flatbread to go with it and her husband will play selections from his salsa music collection in the hallway. 801 is making his famous champagne sangria – that’s why you brought your own glass. It’ll be a salsa-salsa party for the seven o’clock shout out cheers for the first responders! Depending on the size of the harvest there might be just enough for forty guests so first come, first served until it’s gone. It’s an appetizer. Portions will be small so as many people possible in the building can have some. Once you have your flatbread, salsa and sangria, samba and salsa back to your balcony for the seven o’clock cheer. All are welcome provided they observe the pandemic protocols in place at the time.
North, south, east, or west facing, your balcony can support crops to tempt your (and your neighbours’) palates.
It’s June so there’s enough time to do your own version of this. It’s time to transplant your tomato plants into the ground or larger pots. With the warmer temperatures, you can direct sow broad beans, beets, cabbages, celery, collards, corn (in large pots and if you are higher up, protect from strong winds), kale, endive, radicchio, lettuces, spinach and Swiss chard.
Starters of cucumbers, eggplants, peppers and tomatoes are still available at garden centres but they go fast. Corn seedlings can give you a jump start over sowing the seeds yourself. Don’t forget the pollinators. Grow some lavender and other flowering plants for the bees. Herbs are good to plant anytime now, but don’t put your basil outside until night-time temperatures stay reliably above 16 degrees, otherwise basil will sulk. Think like a basil plant. Would you be happy to spend all night out in those temperatures without a blanket or a pup tent?
Seed sales at garden centres soared this season and we are fortunate to have the great local West Coast Seeds company who selects, tests and grows seeds specifically for the lower mainland. For beginning enthusiasts, read the instructions both in their catalogue (if there are any left) and on the package. Both are excellent and will set you on the road to a successful harvest.
It’s strange how gardening suddenly became a hot topic. Fears of food shortages, stockpiling of foodstuffs with long shelf life while, at the same time, garden centres were closed until they were designated ‘essential.’ At the time, the reopening raised eyebrows in parts of the industry with some saying, “Agriculture is one thing, garden centres quite another.” Growers who supply garden centres were immensely relieved as they had living inventories of plant products with very tight best before sale dates. Unfortunately, the growers had half or less of their usual staff to propagate, water, plant up and ship the product. Work days at garden centres now start much earlier than they used to – hours before opening – so that tables can be restocked and plants tidied and watered.
The pandemic has brought humanity up short. Our global methodologies have created this sorry state. For years there have been plant pandemics throughout the world where whole crops succumbed to single species insects, viruses and diseases. Yet the agriculture and food industry was able to compensate, but the methodologies stayed the same. Further pandemics afflicted humanity’s livestock from chickens, sheep, pigs to cows. The canaries in the mines have been dropping from their perches for decades yet little has changed.
This pandemic is ours and it is forcing us to start to wake up.
