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Grounds for care and concern

The Guelph Urban Farm Tour highlights the benefits and challenges of growing food in the city

The are many benefits to growing a vegetable garden and the annual Guelph Urban Farm Tour offers people an opportunity to visit established urban gardens and learn from other people’s experience.

One thing Jill Gill, coordinator of the Harcourt Communal Garden, has learned is that if fruits and vegetables go together well on your plate they will likely grow well together in your garden.

“For example, tomatoes, basil, parsley, peppers and those kinds of things grow really well in proximity,” said Gill. “The reason we planted these particular things together in these planters is that at the end of the season we are planning a salsa tasting between several of the community gardens in Guelph.”

The Harcourt Communal Garden and Guelph Community Orchard Project at Harcourt United Church on Dean Avenue were among 14 sustainable farms and gardens on the tour this year.

“We call it a communal garden because it is maintained entirely by volunteers and all the produce goes to Chalmers Community Service Centre food pantry in downtown Guelph at 41 Macdonell,” said Gill. “This is our eighth year of planting and harvesting and in the previous seven years we have harvested just over 4,300 lbs (approx 1,950 kg) of produce, which is quite considerable considering the small amount of land that we have.”

The Two Rivers Community Group maintains two community gardens in the city. One is located near the swimming pool in Lyon Park and the other is at the corner of Manitoba and Huron Streets in the Ward.

“The Huron Street Community Garden is a pretty large community garden,” said Lisa Conroy, coordinator for the Urban Farm Tour. “It is a perma-culture style garden. So, you have some garden plots and a lot of trees and fruits. People pay a fee to be part of the garden and what they grow in their plot is for them but they are also expected to help out with weeding and mowing and just general garden maintenance.”

The site has been very popular with local foodies but a few gardeners decided not to grow this year after contaminates, likely left there by shuttered local industry, were found in the soil.

“This year we had a garden soil test done and it came back with some, not-super-high levels of lead and zinc but they are concerning,” said Conroy. “So, we have come up with guidelines for our members. We said let’s not have any kids digging in the soil and let’s just grow fruiting vegetables because apparently they don’t take up the toxins the way leafy greens like kale and cabbage do.”

They considered moving everything to the Lyon Park Garden but discovered similar levels of contamination there as well.

“Many backyard gardeners are in the same boat,” said Dan Evans from the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition. “What we have discovered over the last month of research using Public Health Toronto, Public Health Wellington Waterloo and other garden networks is that urban growing creates conditions for toxicity. Therefore we are advising against lettuces and leafy greens for now but we can counter that by growing in raised beds. We’ve also started a campaign to raise money so we can all buy raised beds.”

Another option is growing container gardens such as those shown during an Urban Farm Tour workshop led by Bryan McPherson and Joy Sammy from 10C.

“We have been working with the Healthy Landscapes Program through the city to run container garden workshops showing people how to build container gardens that can be used on patios or balconies and extend the growing season,” said Sammy. “It is for their own personal use but for us it is an extension of the rooftop project we started about a year ago and 10C’s Urban Agriculture Project.”

In the meantime a project led by the University of Guelph is assessing the soil in gardens across the city.

“I am doing a three-month research internship,” said U of G student researcher Fernando Montano. “We are measuring soil health condition parameters in community gardens. With all the analysis we are going to do we are going to try and find out how the contamination got there so we can better understand the soils in community gardens.

Then we are going to send our findings to the city.”

To learn more about the Guelph Urban Farm Tour and other community gardens, please click here


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Troy Bridgeman

About the Author: Troy Bridgeman

Troy Bridgeman is a multi-media journalist that has lived and worked in the Guelph community his whole life. He has covered news and events in the city for more than two decades.
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