Renfrew Collingwood Food Security Institute

[Rainbow chard at the Collingwood Community Gardens]


Mid-summer bounty.

This agricultural season got off to a bit of a rocky start, considering the extended cold temperatures and long stretches without regular rainfall. With the care of local gardeners, the Rooftop Garden and the Collingwood Community Gardens are taking off in a big way.



Here, a community gardener is growing yellow zucchini--bursting with fresh summer flavour! Zucchini typically grows on long wandering vines. This is a hybrid variety which grows in compact bush form. It's an excellent choice for small spaces and container gardening.

For information on growing zucchini and other summer squashes, or to find the right variety for your space, check out the West Coast Seeds website or the Seed and Plant Sanctuary.





Community Gardener Silvia digs for French fingerling potatoes on the Rooftop Garden. Silvia offers this advice for would-be potato growers:

Potatoes sometimes grow just beneath the soil surface and may be exposed to sunlight. This can give the potatoes a "sunburn"--discolouration and a change in texture. To avoid this, mound additional dirt up around the base of the stalk as the potatoes are growing.



Potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant are closely related. We eat the roots of potatoes and the fruits of tomatoes, so this relationship is hard to imagine. Last week during Rooftop Garden Drop In (Tuesdays 1-3pm), Shannon and Sandra came upon the interesting garden find pictured above.

They're the fruits of the potato plant! They look a lot like unripe cherry tomatoes but they are quite toxic and can't be eaten. If you're growing potatoes in your garden and there are children around, they are a great teaching tool...but certainly not great for snacking.

Big thanks to Rooftop Garden Team Member Sandra for doing this research!



Here is Yoko on the Rooftop Garden with some freshly harvested garlic. Yoko was artistic director of last summer's incredible Rooftop Garden Tile Mosaic Project. She continues to visit the garden and help out when she can.



Garlic, like other bulb plants (tulips and daffodils) is best planted in the fall. It takes 9 months to grow to maturity.

Last November, we planted cloves of garlic left over from a Chinese-themed community kitchen. It was snowy and cold that day, and some folks were worried--but look how lovely the garlic grew out.

Rooftop Garden Team Member Jason was the first to make use of the new garlic crop. He and a group of students from Vancouver Technical Secondary (Van Tech) used the garlic to make pizza sauce during a community history workshop. They report the garlic to be sweeter, stickier, and more aromatic than the kind you find at the grocery store.



Here I am with freshly harvested garlic. In the background, you can see a bit of the Tile Mosaic project, some thriving basil plants, more garlic, and a dwarf sunflower getting ready to bloom. The basil was delivered by Yoko and planted by Scott. The sunflower was planted by Mayan farmer Maximo during a Families Branching Out planting workshop.