"so this is a container...and this is a garden..."
We hosted our first workshop of the season (a little late I know!) on Thursday, and had an incredible response! More than fifty people got in touch to register for the workshop, so we ended up breaking it into two groups and will be scheduling a second workshop later this month. Alix, a former TGC intern and current garden volunteer led the workshop for the 30 or so participants who attended, and discussed a variety of topics, including container choice, soil structure, watering, and replanting advice. The audience seemed to learn a lot from the workshop and we had some excellent questions about pest control and overwintering perennials. Live Green Toronto lead a train-the-trainer workshop earlier this year which is where Alix learned how to lead this workshop, and they generously provided us with funds for workshop promotion and supplies as well. They provided us with some great container gardening resources which I’ll make available here.
Harvesting
In other garden news, we had another incredible harvest this week, donating a huge variety of veggies to Second Harvest, including six giant cucumbers that, for some reason, the squirrels were not so fond of this week. We’ve put up some signs in the garden in an attempt to minimize theft, but it remains a bit of an issue, with a few tomatoes and zucchinis disappearing each week.
This week's donation!
This is making it hard to tell if our tomatoes are ripening properly. Most of the tomatoes in the garden are still green, and I’ve been wondering if it’s just our late start in the garden or if its indicative of a some sort of deficiency. I know that it’s important to keep tomato plants pruned so that they focus on producing and ripening fewer, larger fruits. Often tomato plants which are allowed to grow freely will produce so many fruit and leaves that they are never able to ripen them, leaving the gardener with nothing to harvest. We’ve been diligent about our pruning, but the lack of ripe tomatoes leads me to believe that as soon as they’re ready, passerby are doing the harvesting themselves! Hopefully we’ll manage to get some to Second Harvest next week.
Finally, I’m sorry to say that so far none of our powdery mildew techniques have proven successful. I’ve read recently that it spreads especially badly in extremely humid weather, which we have definitely been experiencing here in Toronto, so that’s probably a big part of the problem. We will find a solution though!
down the garden path 