Monday, February 14, 2011

Seedy Sunday Toronto Recap

We had such a great time on Seedy Sunday yesterday.  It is so much fun talking to people and selling our seeds in person. The excitement for spring is simply contagious.  Seeing friends, old Internet buddies and meeting people like Dana and Joel from Well Preserved was also great.  Getting out of our Internet bubbles and talking face-to-face is really refreshing, especially near the end of a long winter.
This year's haul
I was able to keep my own seed hording under control this year with a just a few trades and just two seed purchases: some morning glories from my booth neighbors Terra Edibles and some Black Palm Kale from matchbox gardens.

What I mainly wanted was some more blue potatoes from Cedar Grove Organic Farm but I accidently grabbed purple. They’re gorgeous but I’ll have to keep looking for blue.  I’m really excited for the Rose Finn Apple potatoes though; they’re a really nice looking reddish fingerling variety.  I’ll grow these in the old claw foot bathtub in the back yard along with a bag of red potatoes from our good food box that accidently grew a million eyes.

Some of last year's All Blues
I also picked up a bag of worm castings amended for growing tomatoes.  Its from Annelid Cycle out of London Ontario, which is apparently a great place to have a warehouse full of worms.  That’s right, a WAREHOUSE OF WORMS.   Our soil isn’t great and I’m hoping this will help. I’ll be running a few tests with this and will fill you in on the results in the spring.

The best thing we came across is this great little book by Lara Lucretia Mrosovsky.  An Illustrated Guide to Growing Food on Your Balcony is just packed with great information and really fun illustrations.  It goes through everything from what sized container to use for what plant to how to compost on your balcony.  I also like its Torontoness, the cover features an illustration of St James Town.  Lara is currently raising funds to publish a bigger run of her book over on kickstarter.  For a $10 contribution to her campaign you’ll get your own copy when she hits her target.  I’ll be talking about this again in a few weeks.

Here’s a video that shows the whole project in great detail:



Here are a few photos of the event:


Again, I cannot work without the Ergo
Messy seeds are serious business
Hart House was a really nice venue
Seed browsing at our table
We'll be at both the North York and Scarborough Events in the next few weeks. Swing by and talk carrots.

3 comments:

  1. Looks like a great venue!
    Sounds like a wonderful way to spend a Sunday!!

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  2. Hart House is a pretty great space, we had a great time.

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  3. I'm loving your blog and I guess I need to start thinking about getting seeds even though there's a blizzard outside right now!
    Any suggestions about what you supply that would grow on a northern exposure 4th floor windy terrace in the Junction?
    And thank you for the link to Lara's booklet - I pledged and also posted it to my condo's Facebook page. I hope she makes her goal.

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