Seedlings from Santropol, the Montreal Botanical Garden and Vert ta Ville

All of the seedlings in the garden migrated, with my help, from Montreal. Some seeds were planted by me at a Santropol Roulant workshop, others were planted by horticultural students at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, but most of them by Vert ta Ville volunteers. 

SANTROPOL ROULANT is a wonderful community organization based in Montreal's Mile End. They began as a meals-on-(bicycle)wheels program, but have since expanded to include rooftop gardens and other sustainability initiatives.

On March 22nd (World Water Day) I attended Santropol's seedling workshop where we first learned some of the technical aspects and then got our hands dirty planting our own.

We mixed black earth, compost and vermiculite. (Unfortunately, I don't remember the ratio!)


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Garden Update #1: Building Soil on International Permaculture Day

In this post, on this first day of summer, I will be going back in time to recount the garden's beginnings.

This April I discovered that May 6th has become International Permaculture Day - from the description, it appears that this year was only its second year being celebrated.

I decided it would be the perfect day to get moving on the garden! I made a call out through my networks about holding a garden work day. Although it was last minute, two of my dear friends, Jess and Cameron, responded enthusiastically.

Items on the work agenda included building an outdoor compost from pallets, harvesting dandelions for dandelion wine, and extending an existing bed using the lasagna gardening technique.