Organic Urban Community Garden
Sharing a Garden in Downtown Winnipeg
Yesterday I spent a wonderful hour and a half across the street from my condo in the virtually-empty fourth floor of a warehouse in the Exchange District of Winnipeg.
I was there with Nicole and three others, including Jeff, who rents the space. It was Jeff’s idea to start up a small community garden that we will all share in watering and caring for, and then reap the harvest.* He rents the space and was able to get all of the equipment, but he travels often (he’ll be a speaker at a Green conference in the United States later this month!) so he can’t be around very much to make sure that the plants are cared for. It only takes about five or ten minutes, three times a week to water the plants and make sure that everything is growing well, so we’re doing a rotation for each of the rest of us to come in once every two days to water the plants.
The beginnings of our indoor garden!
So far we have several rows of lettuce, a few tomato plants, an avocado plant, a red pepper plant, a lemon plant, and some cucumbers. We have a compost going with 1,000 worms in a big Rubbermaid container, and we have special lights set up and everything. It’s glorious!
The problem with a lot of fresh produce is that it either a) has been “cleaned” with piles of chemicals, or b) is organic but has been shipped from miles upon miles away. This way we get to have local, organic, fresh produce. I’m so excited about it all! The lettuce will be ready for harvest in just a few weeks. We’ll be getting more boxes of seeds and lamps over the next weeks to fill the entire space, too.
The hope is to be able to expand it all so that we can get more and more people involved as the months go on. In Winnipeg, we get -40 degrees Celsius weather in the winter, which is a bit of a drag when it comes to growing local food. It’s going to be so much fun to see our plants grow as we care for them and to be able to share them with more people as we bring in more plants! I kind of miss having green space since I live in a condo, so it will be great to have a real garden and to be able to have fresh, local, organic leafy greens to eat year-round.
Check out this 2-minute video for a sneak peek of our garden:
Childhood Gardens
“Back in the day”, when I lived in a house in Selkirk (this would have been about eight or nine years ago), I had my own little herb garden. My family had a lovely big backyard. The mother dear and father dear had a passion for gardening; we had all kinds of flowers and trees and a pond with fish and frogs, and multiple sitting areas and a vegetable patch in the back (not much grew back there, except for the piles of rhubarb which we would dip into sugar and munch on). They designed and built the entire thing.
In my herb garden, many of the plants had been grown from seeds. When they were big plants, the father dear would send me out to collect fresh herbs to add to dinner, and I would dry herbs from bags hanging on a line in my room. I loved it. It was a great project to have.
Until yesterday, I’d rather forgotten all about that herb garden. Being able to participate in this community garden – even though there are just five or six of us involved to begin with – is so special.
Do you garden? If you’re living in an urban setting, are you involved with a community garden? Is this something you’d be interested in starting up for yourself?
That is so awesome! I hope it works out! I’d really love to get more into gardening some day. But my garden experience tapped out at my 5th-grade onion sprout.
I hope it works out well too 🙂 With all the passion that we’ve got pouring into this garden, I don’t see how it can’t NOT work out!
sounds brilliant! just started over the last two summers growing thigns and its surprisingly like getting fit. a little work often goes further than alot of work eveyr now and then.
Yes! Constant maintenance is necessary for success.
It’s great the way people in cities are finding ways to have gardens. If you get over most cities now you will see all kinds of rooftop gardens! They grow things here in Florida in setups like you guys have Of course, it usually gets them arrested 🙂
Rooftop gardens are awesome. Some of the tenants in my condo building have been talking about creating one on our roof – I have no idea how feasible it would be, but it would be so cool!
And I don’t think that the father dear, being a retired RCMP, would be very pleased if I got arrested for an indoor garden. Tehe.
So jealous Sagan! Would love to have access to an indoor gardening space to grow stuff year round. Though I do know that I’m fortunate to have my own little garden space at home, even if we do have a short growing season. Enjoy your gardening!
Your “little garden” looks amazing! And you reap a good harvest 🙂
How cool!!!! Here is crazy southern CA, there are public areas for people to garden. I wish! My dad & sis are great at this.. me, I can kill a cactus.. who can do that.. me unfortunately! YIKES! 🙂
Oh, you should see my bamboo plant – the poor thing would be nothing but a pile of wilted leaves if I were left alone with it. The boyfriend waters it when he comes over.
…hmm, I kind of forgot about that. Maybe I should be bringing the boyfriend along with me to the urban garden so that he can water the plants there, too, and decrease the possibility of me killing them…
Hehe.
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Fantastic freshly picked tomatoes from my aquaponics garden, delicious. Every survival plan should include a garden and the aquaponics helps put it in less space and vegetables grow so fast.
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