Growing your own (or at least eating local)
It’s summer time, the best time of year for produce in Ontario. I’m reminded of my formative years on the farm where my mother grew vegetables. I learned early on that peas and corn are good frozen. Beans are better canned. And canned peas - well canned peas are a completely different vegetable from their fresh and frozen counterparts but oddly also good. As good though as eating this stuff in the winter was, we knew the summer was the time when we should and did eat what was fresh. We were lucky. I feel lucky still enjoying the bounty of summer harvest.
You’ve learned earlier this year about my addiction to asparagus every June. There is nothing better and for the month, I eat very little else. Now we’re into tomato season and again, I’m laser focussed. Unlike those lovely June stalks that I buy at the farmers’ market or from my friends who farm it, I grow my own tomatoes - just five plants, but enough for me. I have yellow, Roma, beefsteak, and so-called midnight snack, red cherry tomatoes with black tops. I eat them fresh, grilled with my breakfast egg, and reduced to mush with pasta or rice. Damn, it’s a great time of year.
This summer, I’ve paid more attention to what others are growing around me. First, I’m delighted to have found Legacy Farms. This Weston couple saw people’s yards laying fallow. They asked if they could use those yards to produce food. Apparently some said yes. I don’t know the arrangement and it doesn’t matter to me. What I like is the results — fresh mixed greens, micro greens, carrots, kohlrabi, radishes, tomatoes — are sold each week at the Weston Farmers' Market. Theres; Ubuntu Community Collective too, an organization running programs for Toronto-based, single Black moms from Africa and the diaspora. Their programs include a produce farm in Downsview Park. Great food, locally produced. This in contrast to other Farmers’ Market farmers who shlep product down the 401 from Innerkip and other far flung places or worse, those who aren’t farmers at all but resell produce from the food terminal. Their food is great too, but I feel better eating the urban-produced stuff.
Which leads me to what I see in yards around me and those neighbours’ generosity. Earlier this summer I walked past a neighbour with a crew of kids climbing ladders to harvest cherries. I yelled “hi” - I don’t know these people but the tableau called out for some interaction - that’s how Weston is. They invited me to harvest a handful to enjoy on my walk. Then there’s my neighbour who told me he deliberately lets his mulberry tree grow over the street to let us all enjoy its bounty. For a few weeks in June and July I plan my walks around that sweet pleasure, spending the rest of my walk hiding tell-tale blue fingers.
My favourite is the guy on a corner lot who’s grown a vegetable jungle. His pepper selection puts Loblaws’ to shame; he has palm-frond-sized kale leaves; tomatoes of all kinds - mostly green now - peek out from among the foliage; and he’s experimenting with hybrids - cucumber/zucchini I believe and some others I can’t identify that tower high overhead on trestles he’s built. He’s excited to talk to passersby and proudly told us he doesn’t grow them for profit. Instead, he gives his produce to organizations who need it to feed folks who don’t have access to land to grow their own or the money to buy fresh food. I feel good about the conversations but not nearly as good as he should about what he’s doing.
This spring, another neighbour built a rectangular wooden structure in his front yard. Inside was a garden where he planted corn, tomatoes, and other things that mostly like to be in the ground. On a platform on the outside of the structure, he had pots of flowers and produce that would thrive with less earth at their feet. The entire thing was squirrel-proofed with wire. Each time we went, my walking partner and I marvelled to see new additions to the structure and the crops. We complimented him the few times we saw him outside and his smile told us he was enormously proud of his efforts, knowing that he was growing food for himself and at the same time, creating a chance for community interaction.
Then one day we went by and his structure was gone, chucked without ceremony to the curb. Plant pots were upturned on the ground, roots lay exposed to the sun. Corn plants still stood tall amid the ruins. We were shocked. Why would this be? Then we noticed a small sign lying in the dirt with the words: “There, are you happy?” We both felt sick. Either someone had done this as an act of vandalism, or, sadly more likely, he’d done it in a fit of rage himself following an official complaint. I fear people are not yet ready for innovative use of private space. Grass is still the most prevalent front-yard crop in Weston despite its utter uselessness and indeed, the harm it does to the planet; it fails to attract bees, butterflies, or birds and sucks needless water, a plentiful but precious resource.
My own front yard was denuded of lawn before we bought it 11 years ago. It grew a terrific crop of black-eyed susans in our first year here. I made some planting choices around that time I’d prefer to unmake now - principally planting a lot of periwinkle which is not native to Ontario and has taken over beyond where I wanted it, choking out other things I’ve planted. But Jack blocked the vinca-invasion by cordoning off an area for herbs - oregano, mint, tarragon, thyme, chives, and lavender overlap each other, physically while their aromas compete for nostril-time. My gardening approach tends to be pretty casual - live and let live I say - but last weekend I gave much of it a hair cut, allowing some new growth to emerge as we (gulp) enter the fall season.
I know many of you are avid gardeners so please share with me your successes in the comments below! And go make a toasted tomato sandwich - load up the mayo and maybe add a little cheese and bacon. That’s the best!
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