There are so many satisfying moments that come with tending to a garden over the season. From dumping wheelbarrows full of nutrient dense manure in the early spring on our gardens, ensuring the soil has sufficient fertility to grow healthy plants, to putting the gardens to bed in the fall with a thick layer of straw after a bountiful harvest. Dig In! volunteers accomplished a lot in 2019. We hosted a gardening class series with Alfredo Correa from the City of Toronto in the winter. We built a total of three new raised beds at two different garden sites, and gained access to a new growing space at Lash Miller. We built a rain barrel system at our Campus Co-op garden with the help of Lowell Lo Design. Regenesis made a beautiful video documenting our efforts (see below), and put posters around campus to help us recruit new volunteers. We received a grant from the City of Schools to organize a speaker series on urban agriculture. And of course, we grew a lot of food! On any given work day, volunteers would go home with radishes, peas, beans, kale, mitzuna, arugula, cucumbers, tomatoes, cayenne peppers, and so much more. We only managed to grow a couple of butternut squash at our UTSU garden, but they were oh-so delicious when we were able to share them with the community during urban agriculture week. Unfortunately the squirrels ate all of our corn, but with any growing season you are bound to experience some losses to nature, and we are happy to share our bounty with the campus wild life – as long as they leave some for our volunteers to enjoy too!
Below are a few more of our volunteers favourite moments from the 2019 growing season:
Meal prepared by Trinity in celebration of Urban Agriculture Week
My favourite event from this year was definitely our campus garden tour and meal that was held as part of Urban Ag Week. Being able to collaborate with Sky Garden and the Trinity College Rooftop Garden to make a gorgeous dinner from campus-grown veggies was a great sharing experience, and it’s always good to see so many people turn up for our tours to enjoy the gardens. I hope that we have many more collaborative events, like this one, in 2020!
– Samantha
Volunteers after constructing a raised bed at our Human Biology garden
My favourite event of the season was the raised bed garden build we did within the Human Biology courtyard at New College. This was a great example of the collaborative efforts involved in a successful garden initiative. We timed the purchase of the wood with when our friends at Trinity College were purchasing wood for two raised beds they were building. When you order in bulk, you save money! They kindly agreed to store the wood for us at Trinity St. Hilda’s until we were ready to build ours. New College contributed the money for the project, and ensured the appropriate person was reimbursed for purchasing the wood. The Chief Administrative Officer of New College, Ron Vander Kraats, was so enthused about the project he offered to use his van to pick up the wood for us, and later donated some perennial plants from his own garden for us to use. I used my truck to pick up free soil from our donor at Downsview Park that we filled the garden bed with after it was constructed. Finally, we planted bean and radish seeds that sprouted in a few weeks. Thanks to all the efforts of everyone involved, this raised bed is a wonderful addition to our Human Bio garden, and will allow us to intensify the amount of food grown there in the coming seasons.
– Kristy
There were lots of uplifting moments. The workshops, work parties and opportunities to exchange knowledge about growing vegetables with people we like. Plus gardening in the quiet, early morning sun on weekends. Whether working on our own on communal projects or shoulder-to-shoulder on workdays, it’s a wonderful feeling that comes from being part of a collective effort. – DONNELLY (Longtime volunteers)
Volunteers building raised beds and assembling a rolling composter at our Campus Co-op Garden