Community gardeners wonder if their produce will be safe
Growers left in the dark as to why their beds are considered risky for growing root vegetables
KITCHENER — Lindsay Moise isn’t sure what she’s going to do with the produce she and her children are gardening at the Come-Unity Roots Garden at the Henry Sturm Greenway this season. She’s apprehensive about the quality of the produce.
This is Moise’s first season with the garden. After she joined, she was told the City of Kitchener had told the gardeners they could not plant anything that could potentially reach the city soil, including root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, because their raised garden beds are not two feet (about 60 centimetres) off the ground and do not have impermeable bottoms.
The group says it has asked to see the soil analysis for the site and has been turned down. Josh Joseph, manager of Kitchener’s neighbourhood development office, says the city is working with the consultant who conducted the analysis to develop a common-language summary to share with the group. Joseph says the soil analysis results indicate the site is suitable for gardening, but not for farming, and the city is acting out of an abundance of caution.
But the gardeners are left wondering if it’s safe to eat their produce. They also don’t know if it’s safe to compost the weeds they pulled from the site.
“These are all questions that could be easily answered if we had access to the soil analysis,” says Moise.
Rebekah Haynes is one of the lead organizers of Come-Unity Roots Garden. She says the original requirement they received from the city regarding garden-bed construction was only that they needed to be raised one foot (30 centimetres) off the ground.
The city’s initial startup gardening grant of $1,000 went almost completely to building the beds, one foot off the ground and with permeable landscape fabric bottoms.
Partway through the 2019 season, the group says a Kitchener parks operations manager inspected the garden and told them their beds needed to be two feet off the ground and built with impermeable bottoms.
“I wanted to garden with my kids, and we can still do that, and obviously it’s way better to eat the produce at the end,” says Moise.
“But I’m a little bit apprehensive about doing that,” she says. “If there’s something potentially contaminated in the soil, then why did they pick that spot, first of all? And, second of all, then why wasn’t the communication clear so that you didn’t blow your budget on something that they would then return and say, well you didn’t do it right?”
In 2018, the City of Kitchener announced it was promoting community gardens, and that the Henry Sturm site would be opening as a community garden.
Haynes originally became involved with ComeUnity Roots when she heard her local neighbourhood association’s existing community garden had so many applicants, gardeners were selected by lottery. When she heard about the Henry Sturm garden that was in the works, she volunteered to help organize it.
Today ComeUnity Roots Garden has capacity for six communal beds, five individual beds and three larger community beds designated for growing produce to donate to local charity organizations.
“The vision of the garden is to build community and help people out,” says Haynes.
Her fellow gardeners are worried about the quality of their produce, and she’s frustrated that she can’t reassure them, “we haven’t been given any real answers. It’s really vague.”