First harvest: radishes

I was away from home for the last few days, performing at a barn-raiser and spending time with family in Cobourg. I got a chance to see my cousin Elizabeth's gardens on my grandma's acreage. It was bliss to be out in the country again. The sights, smells, and sounds (and especially lack of sounds) of the countryside are unequaled here in the city. The notion of escaping smogville became doubly attractive for me. If every inch of unused land in Toronto were to be gardened intensively, however, I think I could find summertime breathing to be infinitely more enjoyable.

I came back from my weekend in the country to a tiny patch of now overcrowded radishes, and it finally looked time to celebrate my first harvest:

I picked the biggest ones and ended up with 450 g of radishes (about 2 bunches). I'm banking on the rest of the radishes to increase in size after this thinning.

Before it was a garden

Here are some photos of my tiny plot:

I calculated that I have about 150 square feet of land to grow food on. The backyard has random debris and a thin layer of gravel on it. It looks like it used to be a driveway. Luckily there is a sheet of plastic between the soil and the gravel, so at least the soil has been somewhat protected from harmful chemicals. I am going to enrich the soil by gardening biointensively. Says Wikipedia:

The biointensive method is an organic agricultural system which focuses on maximum yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously improving the soil. The goal of the method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis. Because biointensive is practiced on a relatively small scale, it is well suited to anything from personal, family, or community gardens, market gardens, or 'minifarms.' It has also been used successfully on small scale commercial farms.

In only 200 square feet of land, you can grow enough vegetables for one person for a whole year. However, it takes a couple years to build up both the soil and your skill in order to make that happen. For more information on the fascinating biointensive method, visit Ecology Action.

To begin a biointensive garden on poor soil, one needs enough compost to cover the growing area 1 inch thick, plus enough extra for using in flats. I calculated I'd need about half a cubic yard of compost in total. I ordered compost from Homeland, a family-operated garden centre on the Danforth. Their minimum delivery amount was 1 cubic yard, so I bought that ($30 + $60 delivery charge + tax). Here is 1 cubic yard of compost:


They dumped the compost half inside my backyard, and half on the road. I had to buy a shovel ($15) and a tarp ($8) from the hardware store to move into the back yard and protect it from the elements.