Garden Harvesting

We have had a great spring and summer in the garden.  We meet every Tuesday from 6:30-8 with 45 kids and adults to take care of our Children's Garden.
Our harvest has doubled this year, as well as the enthusiasm of our mini-gardeners.  Our first treat was these delicious strawberries.

 We also grew a lot of lettuce and this baseball bat size zucchini.  Every week we enjoy 10-15 cucumbers, a huge improvement over the 2 cucmbers we harvested last year.

 After the kids have ripped out piles of weeds, dug and dragged woodchips and spread manure, we need to rest our muscles.  After every Tuesday gardening club, we stretch by doing Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese exercise form that is designed to be done outdoors.  Thanks to our teacher Helena!

Harvest Time

The children and squirrels have been busy in the Garden and we are now enjoying the fruits of our labour!  It is hard to believe that our garden has only been alive for 75 days.  Feel free to join us any Tuesday throughout September from 6-7 pm.

Our very first harvest in Early July.  We divided these 7 tomatoes between 30 children!

Hanging out in the bean teepee.

Our first and only cucumber before they were all destroyed by Cucumber Wilt.  Any suggestions?

Burgundy Okra 

Zakia and the kids showing off their tomatoes and radishes.

The Children's Garden, day 75.

Growing Green

Our garden has been "alive" for 3 weeks now! It has been rapidly changing from brown to green:

 Thorncliffe kids hard at work planting peppers.

 Planting our pumpkin patch, we are hoping for a jack o lantern by Halloween.

40 kids planted 100 flowers in under 15 minutes - they are efficient!  Now let's see what they can do with the grass...

A view across the garden, we have 15 plots for families/individuals and 4 for seniors.

Building Up

This Saturday we built out garden with the help of many hardworking and dedicated volunteers!
Many thanks to Trevor, Steve, Nate, Matt and Ian for all their labour in building the beds.
Thanks to Mohammed, Mike, Nasim, Shailina, Lina, Bilkish, Sheela, Nasim, Evan, Chris, Clifford and countless children for spreading the soil.  Thanks to Naheed, Vivienne, Parveen, Ambareen, Tabassum and Muzghan for bringing food.

A huge thank you to Day Care Centre for providing electricity for the many power tools.

Mike digging out the tree stump.

Steve, Matt and Ian pondering the uneven ground.

Lina was the designated driver of the wheelbarrow, the kids are her assistants!

Teamwork!

Many thanks to the City for delivering this soil.

Trevor and Ian hard at work on the raised bed.  Most kids think this is a swimming pool or giant sand box!

Evan was one of the hardest workers today!

Waiting for plants...

Breaking Ground

This week, we finally got our shovels in the dirt and started digging!  Many thanks to Dave, Mohammed and the eager kids in the park for their help.

 Baby Jonathan surveying the first four plots.

Very proud of their newly dug garden.

 These 10 kids ferociously ripped up unwanted grass and "recarpeted" the bare patches.

Could this be a garden??

YES!  Over the next month we will be creating a Community Garden and a Children's Garden here in the centre of Thorncliffe.  Keep an eye here and watch its transformation!