Two creative approaches to growing food
We are both artists in the medium of food agriculture. But we have very different canvases.
The past few years, Ben has explored container gardening, nurtured indoor plants and worked small urban yards. But this spring, everything will change with a 1,000square-foot plot a few minutes from his home in Guelph, Ont.
For Mark, this season will be business as usual: growing loads of edibles in his one-acre veggie garden, plus taking care of the other nine or so acres of orchards, meadows and flowers.
Two artists, two canvases. How will we work differently? What can you learn from this?
Ben: My 1,000 square feet is a big allotment. But my ambitions started out on a much larger scale, so I want to make the most of the space. My plans include:
“Square-foot gardening” was pioneered by Mel Bartholomew, an American construction engineer who applied his mechanical inclinations to vegetable gardening. I will employ this concept in about onequarter of my allotment. Using string to outline a grid of onesquare-foot sections, planning becomes easy: in each square I will plant 16 carrots, nine onions, four Swiss chard or one broccoli, and so on. This allows for maximum density, and it is easy to plan, organize and maintain. Go to squarefootgardening.com. Intercropping works very well with certain crops — two or more different plants, which benefit one another, will grow in the same space. The most popular example is what Indigenous people call the Three Sisters: sweet corn with climbing beans interspersed and squash spreading across the ground below. The sisters evidently get along very well. The corn provides structure for the beans, and the beans fix nitrogen from the air to feed the corn, while the big leaves of the squash suppress weeds and keep the soil moist.
Herbal tea is a heavily consumed item in my household, and as a crop it keeps well once dried. Mint and camomile are easy to grow and are two of our favourites. The process is simple: harvest the camomile flower and the mint leaves, and hang them to dry — or process them through a dehydrator. Bingo.
A “pollinator’s perimeter” will provide an easy and attractive border, in addition to attracting and sustaining the necessary pollinators. The easiest way to do it is with a bee and pollinator wildflower seed mix with a blend of Black Eyed Susan, Borage Officinalis, Butterfly Weed, Corn Poppy, Blanket Flower, Coreopsis, New England Aster, Wild Lupins, Coneflowers and Wild Bergamot.
Mark: While I have the luxury of space on 10 acres, I also have the luxury of 13 years’ experience on the property and a few more years of growing at three previous homes. My plans include:
My perennial crops are wellestablished. I constructed a wire system to support a bountiful raspberry crop that comes back year after year. The 50-tree apple orchard is coming to maturity. Two years ago, I harvested several bushels of fresh apples.
Parallel to the vegetable garden I’ve grown an “apple fence,” inspired by Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France. This fence was created by growing dwarf apple trees trained along two horizontal wires and delineates the vegetable garden from the rest of the property. Plus, there’s a nice harvest from my Monet apple fence each season.
Crops are rotated to maximize soil fertility and suppress weed and disease pressure. For example, I avoid planting tomatoes after potatoes or peppers, as late blight can overwinter in potatoes and kill the tomatoes. However, planting tomatoes after a legume, such as beans, is beneficial, as the beans will leave the soil enriched by fixing nitrogen out of the atmosphere for the tomato plant’s consumption.
Every artist needs their canvas. Just as Monet plotted his garden in Giverny, we are at the drawing board to finish plotting our gardens for this coming season. Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster, tree advocate and holds the Order of Canada. His son Ben is a fourth-generation urban gardener and graduate of University of Guelph and Dalhousie University in Halifax. Follow them at markcullen.com, @markcullengardening, on Facebook and bi-weekly on Global TV’s Morning Show.